“Stand up, George!”
“Ay, ay, sir!”
“Give it to him!”
But before the harpooner could dart, he received a blow upon the breast from the whale’s ponderous flukes, and fell over the gunwale—dead!
“Ay, ay, he’s gone, sure enough—poor Wills!” exclaimed the mate, as the men dragged the body into the boat. “I don’t know where I shall find another like him. There blows! there blows! right ahead of us! Put the body in the ice, men, and do it quickly but gently. God have mercy on the poor fellow’s soul! There blows! blows! blows! Lively with that body, lads, it’s high time we were after that whale! We’ll come back and pick up the corpse after we’ve captured that ‘oil-but!’ Heaven pity Wills’ poor old mother! Come, men, bear a hand there; one hundred barrels a-waiting for us to come and take ’em! Poor Wills!—he’s gone to that ‘boom’ from which no man returns! What d’ye say, men, are you ready?”
The men having by this time placed the body upon a shelf of ice, sprung into the boat and seized their paddles. The whale was overtaken and fastened to; but after it had towed the boat a long distance, the line became “foul” and the mate was obliged to cut. A thick fog having risen in the mean time, he was now unable to find the spot where the body of George Wills had been left. After pulling in many different directions for a number of hours, he gave up the search. On the next day, the fog having cleared, the search was continued, but without success. The body was never found by the crew of the Comus, and, as the reader already knows, it was only mere chance that directed the footsteps of Marline to the ice-tomb containing the fleshless remains. Leaving him to muse upon his melancholy discovery, while pursuing his way toward the ark, we will now return to Stump.
CHAPTER X.
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER—CONCLUSION.
Staring at the deserted boat, with open mouth and distended eyes, the shipkeeper remained for a few moments as motionless as though he had been frozen to the ice beneath his feet. Then, in a voice tremulous with emotion, he shouted the young girl’s name, again and again; but there came no response. Nothing was to be heard save the surging of the water around the sides and in the hollows of the ice, together with the light pattering of the falling rain.
“God help the poor thing—God help her, wherever she may be!” groaned Stump. “It can’t be possible that she became so anxious-like as to start off to look for her lover, herself, after I left her, or I would have met her. I shall never forgive myself for leaving her alone—no, never. There’s something always happening to women—sickness, or something else—and I ought to have remembered that and stuck close by her side.”
He moved off—passing from berg to berg, and shouting the name of the lost girl, as he proceeded. But he was soon obliged to sit down to compose himself; for he loved Alice with an affection fully equal to that which a kind father feels for an only daughter, and her prolonged absence inspired him with emotions of grief such as he had never before experienced.