“Come, come, cheer up, doctor,” returned the Captain, heartily, “don’t be cast down; we’ll all turn doctors for the occasion, and nurse you well in spite of yourself.”
“I’ll keep up all heart, Captain, you may depend on’t, as long as two of my bones will stick together, but—well, to change the subject; what are you going to do now?”
“Just all that can be done in the circumstances,” replied the Captain. “You see, we cannot advance over ice either with sail or steam, but there’s a basin just ahead which seems a little more secure than that in which we lie. I’ll try to get into it. There is nothing but a neck of ice between us and it, which I think I could cut by charging in under full steam, and there seems a faint gleam of something far ahead, which encourages me. Tell the steward to fetch my glasses, Benjy.”
“Butterface!” shouted the boy.
“Yis, massa.”
“Fetch the Captain’s glasses, please.”
“Yis, massa.”
A pair of large binoculars were brought up by a huge negro, whose name was pre-eminently unsuggestive of his appearance.
After a long steady gaze at the horizon, the Captain shut up the glass with an air of determination, and ordered the engineer to get up full steam, and the crew to be ready with the ice-poles.
There was a large berg at the extremity of the lakelet of open water into which Captain Vane wished to break. It was necessary to keep well out of the way of that berg. The Captain trusted chiefly to his screw, but got out the ice-poles in case they should be required.