He shut his eyes for a minute, and then continued: "But beyond Purgatory, through Death, and the other side of Hell——"
Just here Enoch came in to inquire after his health, and sat down for a minute's chat. Enoch is first, last, and all the time captain of a whaler; he knows about whales and whale-hunters just as an engineer on the road knows every speck of scenery along the line, every man, and every engine. Enoch couldn't talk ten minutes without being "reminded" of an incident in his whaling life; couldn't meet a whaleman without "yarning" about the whale business. He lit his pipe and asked: "Been whaling, or hunting the North Pole?"
"Well, both."
"What ship?"
"The 'Duncan McDonald.'"
"The—the 'McDonald!'—why, man, we counted her lost these five years; tell me about her, quick. Old Chuck Burrows was a particular friend of mine—where is he?"
"Captain, Father Burrows and the 'Duncan McDonald' have both gone over the unknown ocean to the port of missing ships."
"Sunk?"
"Aye, and crushed to atoms in a frozen hell."
Enoch looked out of the little window for a long time, forgot his pipe, and at last wiped a tear out of his eye, saying, as much to himself as to us: "George Burrows made me first mate of the first ship he ever sailed. She was named for his mother, and we left her in the ice away up about the seventy-third parallel. He was made of the salt of the earth—a sailor and a nobleman. But he was a dare-devil—didn't know fear—and was always venturing where none of the rest of us would dare go. He bought the 'McDonald,' remodeled and refitted her after he got back from the war—she was more than a whaler, and I had a feeling that she would carry Burrows and his crew away forever——"