“Rory, lad,” he remarked, after a pause, “we won’t be long together now.”
“No,” replied Rory; “and it isn’t sorry I am, but really downright sad at the thoughts of your going away and leaving us. I say, though—happy thought!—send Stevenson home with your ship and you stay with us in place of him.”
Silas laughed. “What would my owners say, boy? and what about my little wife, eh?”
“Ah! true,” said Rory; “I had forgotten.” Then, after a pause, he added, more heartily, “But we’ll meet again, won’t we?”
“Please God!” said Silas, reverently. “I think,” Rory added, “I would know your house among a thousand, you have told me so much about it—the blue-grey walls, the bay windows, the garden, with its roses and—and—”
“The green paling,” Silas put in. “Ah, yes! the green paling, to be sure; how could I have forgotten that? Well, I’ll come and see you; and won’t you bring out the green ginger that day, Silas!”
“And the bun,” added Silas. “And the bun,” repeated Rory after him. “And won’t my little wife make you welcome, too! you may bet your fiddle on that!”
Then these two sworn friends grasped hands over the table, and the conversation dropped for a time.
But there perhaps never was a much happier Greenland skipper than Silas Grig, when he found his ship lying secure among the ice, with thousands on thousands of old seals all around him. The weather continued extremely fine for a whole week. The little wind there had been, died all away, and the sun shone more warmly and brightly than it had done since the Arrandoon came to the country. The seals were so cosy that they really did not seem to mind being shot, and those that were scared off one piece of ice almost immediately scrambled on to another. “Fire away!” they seemed to say; “we are so numerous that we really won’t miss a few of us. Only don’t disturb us more than you can help.”
So the seals hugged the ice, basking in the bright sunshine, either sleeping soundly or gazing dreamily around them with their splendid eyes, or scratching their woolly ribs with their flippers for want of something to do.