Once or twice, since the departure of his shipmates, he had heard the sound of a horn, but the notes of the instrument were so faint that he believed the boats were receding from, instead of approaching, the spot he occupied.
While his mind was still busy with conjectures and fears, he suddenly started to his feet, listening with eager attention, for he fancied he heard a rushing noise ahead of him like that of some heavy object forging slowly through the ice. The noise became louder every moment, and presently the ears of the young man were saluted with the creaking of ropes, the dull flapping of canvas, and the murmur of voices. An instant afterward the broad black bows and the square foresail of a ship loomed up indistinctly through the fog, a few fathoms ahead of the boat, which lay directly in the track of the vessel.
“Ship ahoy!” thundered Marline. “Up helm, and keep off, or you will run me down!”
He was evidently heard by those on board, for a dark face was suddenly thrust over the bulwarks forward, but its owner, instead of directing the man at the wheel to “keep off,” ordered him to “luff.”
The head of the advancing ship, as she came booming on, was therefore within a few feet of the boat before it could obey the helm, the consequence of which was that the bows of the little craft received a thump from the vessel as she swung to windward, that caused a few of the thin planks to give way like the shell of an egg beneath the blow of a man’s fist.
The boat filled rapidly, and as it sunk the young harpooner leaped upon one of the blocks of ice by which he was surrounded, in time to seize a rope, which was thrown to him by Tom Lark, as the ship came up into the wind with her main topsails aback.
“The Montpelier!” shouted Marline—“the Montpelier, by all that’s good!”
“Ay, ay,” gruffly responded Lark, “and the less said about it the better!”
The speaker was a tall man, of herculean frame, and with one of those swarthy, hang-dog faces, that never fail to inspire the beholder with feelings of distrust. He wore gray pants, a fez cap of blue cloth, and a black woolen shirt, the latter of which, being open at the throat, disclosed the sinewy muscles of an enormous neck.
“What is the ship doing here?” pursued Harry. “We left her anchored in the bay. And how came you at liberty? Where is Stump? and Alice How—”