BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
JANUARY IN THE NORTH SEA!
A bitter morning, with light, powdery snow spotting here and there a livid background; grey seas travelling fast, and a looming snow-cloud gradually drooping down. The gulls are mad with hunger, and a cloud of them skirl harshly over the taffrail of a stout smack that forges fast through the bleak sea. The smack is coated with ice from the mast-head to the water's edge; there is not much of a sea, but when a wave does throw a jet of water over the craft it freezes like magic, and adds yet another layer to a heap which is making the deck resemble a miniature glacier.
The smack has a flag hoisted, but alas! the signal that should float bravely is twisted into a shabby icicle, and it would be lowered but for the fact that the halliards will not run through the lump of ice that gathers from the truck to the mast-head. All round to the near horizon a scattered fleet of snow-white smacks are lingering, and they look like a weird squadron from a land of chilly death. On the deck of the smack that has the flag a powerful young man is standing, and by his side—by all that is astounding—is an enormous man with an enormous beard and a voice that booms through the Arctic stillness. That is our new scene.
I am not going to play at mystery, for you know as well as I do that the young man named in that gloomy overture was Lewis Ferrier, and that his companion was good Tom Lennard;—though what brought the giant out into the frozen desolation I shall not say just yet.
Yes, Lewis kept his word, and at the time of which we are speaking he had been three weeks at work on the Bank. He had now three cloth coats on over his under-wear, and, over all, a leather coat made at Cronstadt, and redolent of Russia even after weeks of hard wear. With all this he could not do much more than keep warm. Tom was equipped in similar fashion, and both men wore that air of stoical cheerfulness which marks our maligned race, and which tells of the spirit that has sent our people as masters over all the earth.