“Well, it is some comfort,” retorted Benjy, squeezing the water from his garments, “that Alf is as wet as myself, for that gives us an opportunity of sympathising with each other. Eh, Alf? Does Buzzby offer no consolatory remarks for such an occasion as this?”
“O yes,” replied Alf; “in his beautiful poem on Melancholy, sixth canto, Buzzby says:—
“‘When trouble, like a curtain spread,
Obscures the clouded brain,
And worries on the weary head
Descend like soaking rain—
Lift up th’umbrella of the heart,
Stride manfully along;
Defy depression’s dreary dart,
And shout in gleeful song.’”
“Come, Alf, clap on to this tow-rope, an’ stop your nonsense,” said Captain Vane, who was not in a poetical frame of mind just then.
“Dat is mos’ boosiful potry!” exclaimed Butterface, with an immense display of eyes and teeth, as he lent a willing hand to haul out the sledge. “Mos’ boosiful. But he’s rader a strong rem’dy, massa, don’ you tink? Not bery easy to git up a gleefoo’ shout when one’s down in de mout’ bery bad, eh!”
Alf’s reply was checked by the necessity for remounting the sledge and resuming the journey. Those in rear avoided the pond by going round it.
“The weather’s warm, anyhow, and that’s a comfort,” remarked Benjy, as he settled down in his wet garments. “We can’t freeze in summer, you know, and—”
He stopped abruptly, for it became apparent just then that the opening close ahead of them was too narrow for the sledge to pass. It was narrowed by a buttress, or projection, of the cathedral-berg, which jutted up close to a vast obelisk of ice about forty feet high, if not higher.
“Nothing for it, boys, but to cut through,” said the Captain, jumping out, and seizing an axe, as the sledge was jammed between the masses. The dogs lay down to rest and pant while the men were at work.
“It’s cut an’ come again in dem regins,” muttered the negro steward, also seizing an axe, and attacking the base of the obelisk.