“That’s so,” replied the Captain,—“that’s so, sure enough; only they wouldn’t stay frightened, while we did, you see.”
“What! did they find you out?”
“That they did, my lad, just as soon as they had finished the old narwhal. We were sound asleep when they came; and they soon woke us up with the great noise they made close to the hut.
“But stop a bit!” exclaimed the Captain, reflectively; “my story’s got ahead of me, or I’ve got ahead of the story,—one or the other; so I must go back a little,”—and he paused, not with his finger to his nose this time, as usual, but to his forehead, as if feeling in his brain for the end of the “yarn,” as he always called the story.
In a moment the old man appeared to have quite satisfied himself about the matter, for he started off as fast as he could go:—
“I didn’t tell you anything about the fort we built, nor the time we had provisioning it,—did I?” said he.
“No,” answered William, “nothing about a fort.”
“Then there’s the broken end of the yarn at last,” and the old man took his finger from his forehead and stopped feeling for it.
“Well, it was a good long time,” continued the Captain, “before the bears finished the old narwhal; but, finding how much they were occupied in that quarter, we went to our storehouses, and brought all our stores away, and stowed them close to the mouth of the hut, thinking that, if they were discovered, we should there be better able to protect them.