“‘Is that other chap the cabin-boy?—him they called the Dean?’
“‘Yes, sir,’ spoke up the Dean.
“In an instant the man was out upon the rocks, and he grasped us warmly by the hands. He had recognized us, now we recognized him. He was the master of a ship that lay alongside the Blackbird when we first went among the ice, catching seals. His ship was the Rob Roy, of Aberdeen.
“This much he said to quiet us, for he saw the state of agitation we were in. Then he went on to tell us that the Blackbird, not having been heard from in all this time, it was thought that she must have gone down somewhere among the ice, with all on board; and he told us further, that he was on a whaling voyage now, and then he said, ‘The Rob Roy will give you a bonny welcome, lads.’
“Afterward he told us that the vessels were, as we had supposed, a part of the whaling fleet, and he said it was fortunate that he had discovered us, as this was our only chance, for all the other vessels that were following him would be very likely, on account of the state of the ice, to hold to the westward, and not come near the land.
“All this time the savages were yeh-yeh-ing round us, greatly to the amusement of the captain of the Rob Roy and his boat’s crew. Then, when I told the captain how good they had been to us, he sent his boat back to the ship, and had fetched for them wood and knives and iron and needles, in such great abundance that they set up a yeh, yeh, in consequence, which, for anything I know to the contrary, may be going on even to this present time.
“But what was the happiness of the savages compared to ours? Our feelings cannot be described. It seemed almost as if we had come from death to life. We could hardly believe our eyes,—that this was the ship we had so long hoped for, this the rescue we had so often despaired of. We cried with very joy, and behaved like two crazy people. The captain of the Rob Roy laughed good-naturedly at us, and proposed at once to hurry us off aboard his ship.
“We kept our promise to give Eatum all our property; but the captain of the Rob Roy wanted ‘Old Crumply’ and ‘The Dean’s Delight,’ and our pot and lamp, and some other things; so he gave Eatum other valuables in place of them. Then we took leave of our savage friends, which we of course did not do without some feelings of sorrow and regret at parting from them, remembering as we did how kind they had been to us, and how they had rescued us from our unhappy situation; and the savages seemed a little sorry too. First came Eatum and Mrs. Eatum, and then the two little Eatums (Mop-head and Gimlet-eyes) that I had so often played with; then Old Grim and Big-toes and Little-nose; and Awak, the walrus, and Kossuit; and the two young ladies who might have been our wives: and then all the rest of them, big and little, old and young.
“Then off we went to the Rob Roy; and a fair wind coming soon, the ice began to move away from the land, the Rob Roy’s sails were unfurled to the fresh breeze, and now, with hearts turned thankfully to Heaven for our deliverance, we were again afloat upon the blue water,—whither bound we did not know, but homeward in the end.”
“O, how glad you must have been!” said Fred.