[A BATTLE OF ICEBERGS.]
BY DAVID KER.
"Well, Jack, my boy, d'ye see anythin'? Keep a bright lookout, you know, for we all looks to you!"
"Come, don't make fun o' me, Bob! P'raps I'll have as sharp eyes as yourn afore I'm half your size."
Anybody might well have wondered to hear a child's voice speaking from the mast-head of a North Sea whaler, and still more surprised would he have been at sight of the figure from which that voice proceeded.
There were two persons in the "crow's-nest," as the lookout post of a whaler is called. This is simply a big cask firmly lashed to the mast with small ropes, and supported by two pieces of stout planking.
One of the two watchers on this occasion was a grim old sailor, with a voice as harsh as his face, which, roughened by the storms of fifty years, and framed in short iron-gray hair and whiskers, looked very much like the battered figure-head of some weather-worn old ship. His companion was a little boy of ten, whose fair hair and round ruddy face appeared quite babyish beside the granite-hewn visage of the "old salt."
But young as he looked, Jack Raikes was no baby. Those blue eyes of his were as sharp as any on board; and to run up the weather-rigging in a stiff breeze, climb to the mast-head and hang his cap on it, was mere play to "little Jack," as the sailors affectionately called him.