“I’ll be safer on deck, I think,” said the canny doctor.
But when Rory on the foretop struck an attitude of wonderment, and pointing away ahead, exclaimed, in rapture, “Oh, boys, what a scene is here!” the doctor thought he would give anything for a peep, so he summoned up his courage and began to ascend the rigging, slowly, and with about as much grace in his actions as a mud turtle would exhibit under the like circumstances.
Allan roared, “Good doctor! good! Bravo, old man! Heave round like a brick! Don’t look down.”
Rory was in a fit of merriment, and trying to stifle himself with his handkerchief. Suddenly down dropped that handkerchief; and this was just the signal four active lads were waiting for. Up they sprang like monkeys behind the surgeon, who had hardly reached the lubber-hole. Alas! the good medico didn’t reach it that day, for before you could have said “cutlass” he was seized, hand and foot, and lashed to the rigging, Saint Andrew’s-cross fashion.
The surgeon of the Arrandoon was spread-eagled, and Rory, the wicked boy! had his revenge.
“My conscience!” cried Sandy; “what next, I wonder?”
“It’s a vera judeecious arrangement,” sung Rory from the top.
But the men were not hard on the worthy doctor, and the promise of several ounces of nigger-head procured him his freedom, and he soon regained the deck, a sadder and a wiser man.
They were quickly among the ice—not bergs, mind you, only a stream of bits and pieces, of every shape and form, some like sheep and some like swans, and some like great white oxen. Here was a piece like a milking-pail; here was a lump like a hay-cock; yonder a gondola; yonder a boat; and yonder a couch on which the Naiades might recline and float, or Ino slumber.
It was Rory who made the last remark.