"You have a great deal of faith, Doctor. But, if you please, to what part of the world would you sail?"
"Towards the North Pole, of course; there can be no doubt about that."
"No doubt indeed!" said Wall. "Why not towards the South Pole?"
"The South Pole! Never!" cried the doctor. "Would the captain ever have thought of sending a brig across the whole Atlantic Ocean? Just think for a moment, my dear Wall."
"The doctor has an answer for everything," was his only reply.
"Granted it's northward," resumed Shandon. "But tell me, Doctor, is it to Spitzbergen, Greenland, or Labrador that we have to sail, or to Hudson's Bay? If all these routes come to the same end at last,—the impassable ice,—there is still a great number of them, and I should find it very hard to choose between them. Have any definite answer to that, Doctor?"
"No," answered the doctor, annoyed that he had nothing to say; "but if you get no letter, what shall you do?"
"I shall do nothing; I shall wait."
"You won't set sail!" cried Clawbonny, twirling his glass in his despair.
"No, certainly not."