“I want a man I can depend upon to take charge of the boat,” he said, addressing the young harpooner, “while I go with the crew to search for our shipmates and inform ’em of our condition!”
“Wouldn’t it be better, sir,” suggested Marline, “for all of us to stay here, and wait for the other boats? If we blow the boat-horn I have no doubt that they will soon reach us.”
“Ay, ay,” growled the mate, impatiently, “and do you suppose that I would be contented to stay here in this plight, waiting for the boats? Not a bit of it, young man. I am now in a hurry to get aboard ship, for that cutting from the whale has spoilt all my fun.”
“If you will take my advice, you’ll not go far, in search of the other boats,” said Marline, “for I think it hardly possible that you will find them, in this fog.”
“And I think exactly the other way,” retorted the mate, impatiently. “All a man has to do to find ’em is to follow his own nose to the north’ard, as I take it; for we’ve been going south, and the other boats must be somewhere astern of us—not far off either.”
At this moment the sound of a horn was heard, apparently proceeding from the direction in which the mate had stated that his fellow-officers might be found; and he now turned his eyes triumphantly toward the harpooner.
“Ay, ay—d’ye see, young man—it’s just as I said. Them boats are astarn of us, though further off than I thought they were. But by moving quickly over the ice, we’ll soon reach ’em. Come on, men—there’s no time to lose,” he added, turning to the crew.
Leaping from berg to berg, the five men followed closely upon the footsteps of their leader, and in a few seconds they were all shrouded from the view of the harpooner by the dense fog.
“It’s a wild-goose chase,” muttered Marline, as he proceeded to bail out the boat, “and nobody except a man of Briggs’ restless and impatient nature would have thought of undertaking it until he had first sounded the horn, and that had failed to bring our shipmates to us.”
As minute after minute passed away, and neither the party nor the boats made their appearance, the young man became more confirmed than ever in his opinion, that Briggs’ expedition was a useless undertaking. He even began to fear that the mate and his men had lost themselves among the floating galleries and caverns of ice, and were, therefore, neither able to advance in the right direction nor to return.