Then away went Silas home, as he called it, to his ship. He lowered himself down by a rope, clambered over the doorway of the cabin, took one glance at the chaos around, then walked tenderly over the bulkhead, and so literally down to his bed. He found the mattress and bed-clothes had fallen against the side, and so there this good man, this true sailor, laid him down and slept the sleep of the just.
But the Scotia did not go to the bottom; she lay there for a whole week, defying all attempts to move her, Silas sleeping on board every night, the only soul in her, and his crew remaining on the Arrandoon. At the end of that time the ice opened more; then the prostrate giant seemed to begin to show signs of returning life. She swayed slightly, and looked as if she longed once more to feel the embrace of her native element; seeing which, scientific assistance was given her. Suddenly she sprang up as does a fallen horse, and hardly had the men time to seek safety on the neighbouring bergs, when she took the water—relaunched herself—with a violence that sent the spray flying in every direction with the force of a cataract. It would have been well had the wetting the crew received been the only harm done.
It was not, for the bergs moved asunder with tremendous force. One struck the Arrandoon in her weakest part—amidships, under the water-line. She was stove, the timbers bent inwards and cracked, and the bunks alongside the seat of accident were dashed into matchwood. Poor old Duncan Gibb, who was lying in one of these bunks with an almost united fracture of one of his limbs, had the leg broken over again.
“Never mind, Duncan,” said the surgeon, consolingly, “I didn’t make a vera pretty job of it last time. I’ll make it as straight as a dart this turn!”
“Vera weel, sir; and so be it,” was poor contented Duncan’s reply, as he smiled in his agony.
“Dear me, now!” said Silas, some time afterwards; “I could simply cry—make a big baby of myself and cry. It would be crying for joy and grief, you know—joy that my old shippie should show so much pluck as to right herself like a race-horse, and grief to think she should go and stave the Arrandoon. The ungrateful old jade!”
“Never mind,” said McBain, cheerfully, “Ap and the carpenters will soon put the Arrandoon all right. We will shift the ballast, throw her over to starboard, and repair her, and the place will be, like Duncan’s leg, stronger than ever.”
It did not take very long to right Captain Cobb’s cockle-shell, and all the vessels being now in position again, and the ice opening, it might have been as well to have got steam up at once, and felt the way to the open water. McBain decided to make good repairs first; it was just as easy to list the ship among the ice as out of it, and probably less dangerous. Besides, the water kept pouring in, and the beautiful arrangement of blankets and hammock-cloths which Ap had devised, hardly sufficed to keep it out.—This decision of the captain nearly cost the life of two of our best-loved heroes, and poor old Seth as well. But their adventure demands a chapter, or part of one at least, to itself.