The Arrandoon was not two hundred yards from the Canny Scotia. Now round go the davits on the port quarter, outward swings the boat, men and officers spring nimbly into her, blocks rattle, and down goes the first whaler, reaching the water with a flop, but not a plash, and with keel as even and straight as a ruled line.
“I say, matie,” said Silas Grig, in some surprise, “if that boat ain’t coming straight away here, I hope I may never chew cheese again.”
So far as that was concerned, if Silas chose, he would at least have the chance of chewing cheese again, for the Arrandoon’s boat came rippling along towards them with a steady cluck-el-tee cluck-el-tee, which spoke well for the men at the oars.
“Well,” continued Silas, who, rough nut though he was, always meant well enough, “let us do the civil, matie; tell the steward to fill the rum-bottle, and pitch ’em a rope.”
The rope came in very handy; but there was no need for the rum; even in Greenland men can live without it—the officers of the Arrandoon had found that out.
McBain, with Allan and Rory,—the latter, by the way, seemed to have registered a vow to go everywhere and see everything,—stood on the quarter-deck of the Canny Scotia, the skipper of which craft was in front of him, a comical look of admiration on his round brick-coloured countenance, and his two hands deep in the pockets of his powerful pilot coat.
“Ay, sir! ay!” he was saying; “well, I must say ye do surprise me.”
He put such an emphasis on the “me” that one would have thought that to surprise Silas Grig was something to be quite boastful of ever after.
“All the way to the North Pole? Well, well; but d’ye think you’ll find it?”
“We mean to,” said Rory, boldly.