On recovering, I found myself in the cabin of the Leda, with Captain Hartly hanging over me, and chafing my hands and temples, in anxiety and solicitude, with hartshorn and vinegar; for being a kind-hearted fellow, he was seriously alarmed.
In these friendly offices he was ably assisted by Cuffy Snowball, his black cook, who burned several grey goose-quills under my nose, and who brought me a rummer full of brandy-punch steaming hot from the galley. On swallowing this, which they forced me to do at two draughts, I became considerably revived and invigorated.
"Why did you leave me there, Hartly—it might have been, to die?" I asked, reproachfully.
"I did not leave you, my dear boy, at least not a moment longer than we could help," he replied. "It cost us no small trouble to get clear of that lubberly barque. I wish the Black Schooner had sunk her, when athwart her hawse! We had to clap on all hands to warping into the fairway, and once there, we had to keep constantly forging a-head, as other craft were crowding into the channel astern of us."
"Then I was pretty near being left till the wharf-keeper came next morning. My heaven! I should have been stiff enough by that time!"
"I sent Paul Reeves and Hans Peterkin to bring off the cask on a sledge, and you may imagine the fright we were in on finding you cramped up and lifeless as a pickled herring!"
"Oh, Hartly," said I, "the torture I endured was frightful! I now repent of my undertaking, and wish myself back again."
"Repent—bah! It has been a stupidly managed job, but it is over now, and there is an end of it. Take another sip of the hot brandy-and-water, and come on deck; we are abreast of the Crow's Nest now, and in ten minutes more will be in blue water; then hurrah for the ice-fields!"
I followed him on deck, and found that we were, as he said, abreast of a high sugar-loaf shaped rock, crowned by a little battery named the Crow's Nest, and that around us a very exciting scene was passing.
The Leda was now in the fairway, or main channel, which was formed through the ice in the centre of the harbour, and into which there were cut more than fifty canals, or connecting links, along which the sealing ships were being warped from the various wharves at which they had been fitted out. All were gaily decked with their owners' private colours, and had their courses, or lower sails, cast loose, and were accompanied by crowds, who were conversing, laughing, and expressing their hopes of a successful fishery to the crews, whose voices rang cheerily as they tripped round the capstan or wrenched at the windlass, till they came abreast of the kedge anchor which was wedged in the ice; and then it was torn up, and carried off a-head towards the Narrows. when the cheering, warping, and tripping began anew.