Archie laughed.
"Is you apt?" Bill inquired.
"I've learned courage," Toby replied, "an' 'tis a hard lesson t' learn."
"God knows!" Bill agreed.
"I'll be jus' 's fit an' able 's anybody, mark me," Toby boasted, "afore this v'y'ge is out!"
"I believe you!" said Archie.
Foul weather fell with the crews on the floe—a brief northeast gale of cold wind. The floe went crunching to the southwest—jumping along with the wind like a drove of scared white rabbits. And the pans packed; and the lakes began to close—the lanes to close. Bill o' Burnt Bay gathered his watch in haste. Seals? Drop the seals! It was time for caution—quick work for crews and ship. Cap'n Saul snatched the other watches from the ice and footed it back for Bill's watch before the press nipped the Rough and Tumble and caught her fast; and Bill's watch was aboard before dusk, leaving the kill to drift where the wind had the will to drive it.
Cap'n Saul was proud of the smart work—smelling out a swift gale of northeasterly wind with that old foul-weather nose of his, and picking his crew from the ice with the loss of not a man. It was a narrow shave, though—narrow enough to keep a man's heart in his mouth until he got a mug of hot tea in his stomach. And that night there was talk of it below—yarns of the ice: the loss of the Greenland's men in a blizzard—poor, doomed men, cut off from the ship and freezing to madness and death; and of how the Greenland steamed into St. John's Harbour with her flag at half-mast and dead men piled forward like cord-wood.
Tales of frosty wind and sudden death—all told in whispers to saucer eyes and open mouths.
"A sad fate, Toby!" said Jonathan, to test the lad's courage. "Mm-m?"