“And you’re wondering,” said Nat, “where a piece of elongated mortality like myself stretches himself of a night on board the Highflier?”
“Seeing,” replied Rory, laughing, “that you’re about as long as the keel, and maybe a bit longer, I may well wonder that same; and unless you lean against a mast, I don’t quite see how you can stretch yourself.”
“Well, young sir, I’ll tell you how I do it. I double up into four, and lie on my back! that is how it’s done.”
The Little Wonder went off with our party to the Arrandoon; and as Yankees are ever ready to trade, he had not been long on board when McBain had purchased from him a dozen of his best dogs. They were to be kept until the ship returned from a week’s sport among the old seals, then taken on board just before the Arrandoon left for the extreme north. Old Seth was duly told off to superintend the erection of kennels, forward near the bows, and old Seth was in his glory in consequence.
“I’ll feel myself o’ some kind o’ use now,” he said. “Kennel-man in ordinary to the Arrandoon, a free house and victuals found, I guess it ain’t half a bad sitivation.”
About a week after this—the Greenland sealer having been made as good as new again—the Jan Mayen fleet sailed away from the island, and directed its course about north-and-by-east. First on the line went the noble Arrandoon sailing, not steaming, for a nice beam wind was blowing; next came the Canny Scotia with her tall, tapering spars; and the saucy Highflier, with her fore-and-aft canvas, brought up the rear.
Nathaniel Cobb was Arctic meteorologist to a private company of American scientists, but his time was pretty much his own, and he didn’t mind spending a week or a fortnight of it among the old seals. He wanted a skin or two anyhow, he said, to make a warm carpet for his “house,” and some oil to burn for fuel, but promised that everything beyond what he really wanted which happened to fall to his gun should be given to Silas.
Silas Grig was never happier in his life than he was now. Luck had indeed turned, fortune was about to favour him for once in a way. His would be a bumper ship, full to the hatches, with a bing of skins on deck that he wouldn’t be able to find room for below. And when he returned to Peterhead, flags would fly and bands would play, and his little wife and he would live happy ever after.
McBain wanted to show his young companions a little genuine sport, and at the same time do a good turn to honest Silas, by helping him to a voyage; while the former, on the other hand, were all excitement and bustle, for the Arrandoon was about to be transformed into a sealer; and the idea being such a perfectly new one, was correspondingly appreciated.
The little fleet kept well together; it would not have suited them to part company, although, even on a wind, without the aid of her boilers, the Arrandoon could easily have shown her consorts a pair of clean heels. The doctor himself was led away with enthusiasm, and longed to draw a bead, as Seth called it, on a bear itself. He had chosen a rifle from the box, cleaned and polished it, and called it his own.