"Take a look at them harps, b'y," said Bill, excitedly. "No! Starboard the glass. There! See them?"
Archie made out a myriad of moving specks—black dots, small and great, shifting about over a broad white surface. They were like many insects. He saw Alexander Bryan & Company's vessel, too; and it appeared to him that the men were just landing on the ice to attack the pack.
"That's the Lucky Star," Bill explained. "She's a smaller ship than we, an' she've got about a hundred men, I s'pose. Never fear, lad, we'll be up in time t' get our share o' the swiles."
"I-I-I-I g-g-guess I'll g-g-go down, now," said Archie.
Half an hour of exposure in the crow's-nest had chilled the lad to numbness. His blood was running sluggishly; he was shivering; his legs were stiff, and his hands were cold and uncertain in their grip. He climbed out of the cask, and cleverly enough made good his footing on the platform of the nest. It was when he essayed the descent that he erred and faltered.
He had a full, two-handed grip on the topmast backstays, and was secure in searching with his foot for the rope ladder lashed thereto. But when his foot struck, he released his left hand from the stays, without pausing to make sure that his foot was firm-fixed on the rung. His foot missed the rung altogether, and found no place to rest. In a flash, he had rolled over, and hung suspended by one hand, which, numb though it was, had unexpectedly to bear the weight of his whole body.
"Be careful goin' down, b'y," he heard Bill o' Burnt Bay say.
The voice seemed to come out of a great distance. Archie knew, in a dim way, that the attention of the man was fixed elsewhere—doubtless on the herd of harps. Then he fell into a stupefaction of terror. It seemed to him, in his panic, that Bill would never discover his situation; that he must hang there, with his grip loosening, instant by instant—until he fell.
He was speechless, incapable of action, when, by chance, Bill o' Burnt Bay looked down. The sealer quietly reached over the cask and caught him by the collar; then lifted him to the platform, and there held him fast. Each looked silently, tensely, into the other's eyes.
"'Tis a cold day," said Bill, dryly.