It had been a very narrow escape for them, for, although not far from the open water where the Polar Star lay with foreyard aback, they were unable to reach it, being once more frozen in, and had not good Silas appeared at the time he did, probably in a few weeks at most there would not have been a single human being living on board the lordly Arrandoon.
No sooner had Silas satisfied himself with his own eyes that it was the Arrandoon that lay ice-bound to the nor’ard of him, than he called away the boats and gave orders to load them with the best of everything, and to follow his whaler.
His whaler took the ice just as eight bells were struck on the Polar Star, and next moment, guided by the fan in the crow’s-nest of the yacht, he was hastening over the rough ice towards the Arrandoon.
McBain and his boys, and the doctor as well, were all on deck, when who should heave round the corner of an iceberg but Captain Silas Grig himself, looking as rosy and ten times more happy than they had last seen him.
He was still about fifty yards away, and for a moment or two he stood undecided; it seemed, indeed, that he wished not to walk but to jump or fly the remaining fifty intervening yards. Then he took off his cap, and—Scotch fashion—tossed it as high into the air as he possibly could.
“Arrandoon, ahoy!” he shouted. “Arrandoon, ahoy! Hurrah!”
There was not a soul on board that did not run aft to meet Silas as he sprang up the side. Even Freezing Powders, with Cockie on his shoulder, came wondering up, and Peter must needs get out his bagpipes and strike into The Campbells are coming.
And when Silas found himself once more among his boys, and shaking hands with them all round; when he noticed the pale faces of Allan and Rory, and the pinched visage of the once strong and powerful McBain, and read in their weak and tottering gait the tale of all their sufferings, then it must be confessed that the bluff old mariner had to turn hastily about and address himself to others in order to hide a tear.
“Indeed, gentlemen all,” said Silas, many, many months after this, “when I saw you all looking so peaky and pale, as I first jumped down on to your quarter-deck, I never felt so near making an old ass o’ myself in all my born days!”
For three weeks longer the Arrandoon lay among the ice before she got fairly clear, and, consorted by the Polar Star, bore up for home. Three weeks—but they were not badly spent—three weeks, and all that time was needed to restore our invalids to robust health. And that only shows how near to death’s door they must have been, because to make them well they had the best medicine this world can supply, and Silas Grig was the physician.