Surrounded by a crowd of men, women, children, ponies, and dogs stood Nimbus, who was evidently the greatest curiosity these Icelanders had seen in many a day. He had stopped to examine one of the ridiculous little Iceland ponies that appear to be more than half mane and tail. Its owner thought he wanted to buy it, and had tried to tell the stranger what a splendid, strong animal it was. Somehow Nimbus gathered an idea of what he was saying, and, to show his utter contempt for such a specimen of horse-flesh, he had suddenly thrown his great arms about the little beast and lifted it from the ground, kicking, squealing, and trying to bite. Other horse-traders had hurried to the spot, dragging their ponies after them, and a crowd had quickly collected to stare at the black man who could carry a horse.
Finally Nimbus seized and lifted from the ground a pony with a man on his back, at which feat the crowd roared with delight. Suddenly the struggling pony screamed out,
“Wow! wow! put me down, or I’ll kick you!”
Nimbus dropped him like a hot coal, the man on his back tumbled off in affright, and the crowd scattered from about the marvellous beast as though he had been a roaring lion.
“Come, Nimbus, let’s get back to the schooner,” said Captain Coffin, who had slipped up behind him; and, turning, the black man now for the first time noticed Breeze, and understood how the pony had been gifted with the power of speech.
They hurried away without explaining the wonder to the bewildered natives, and probably to this day that pony is regarded with awe and veneration as having once opened his mouth and talked.
Three days after this, Reykjavik had been left far behind, and the Fish-hawk was sailing over the stormy waters that wash the desolate northern shore of the island. This was where Captain Coffin had supposed the halibut, or “spraka,” as the Icelanders call them, would be found, but thus far there was no sign of them. In order to search the ground thoroughly, he decided to drop dories at intervals of about a mile apart, and give those in them an opportunity to fish with hand-lines, by which means he hoped some feeding-ground of the halibut might be discovered.
Near each dory was left an anchored buoy, bearing a flag with a number painted on it, and each crew was instructed to fish in a circle about its buoy, but on no account to lose sight of it. As the schooner sailed away the skipper carefully noted the bearing of each of these flags, and the distance between it and the next one, so that there might be no difficulty in returning to it.
Breeze and Nimbus were in the first dory thus left, and the flag on their buoy was marked No. 1. In less than three hours after they had been dropped, the Fish-hawk returned to pick them up. All the other dories had been sighted as she came back, and the crews of two of them were catching fish hand over hand. The buoy bearing flag No. 1 was easily found, but to the dismay and distress of Captain Coffin and old Mateo, who were the only ones left aboard the schooner, no trace of the dory to which it belonged, nor of its occupants, was to be seen.