The World of Ice | Page 7

to protect the
family. "We are always hearing of whale-ships being lost, and,
somehow or other, we never hear of the crews being saved, as one
reads of when ships are wrecked in the usual way on the sea-shore."
Isobel squeezed her mother's hand, and looked up in her face with an
expression that said plainly: "Don't cry so, Mamma, I'm sure he will
come back," but she could not find words to express herself, so she
glanced towards the mastiff for help.

Buzzby felt that it devolved upon him to afford consolation under the
circumstances, but Mrs Bright's mind was of that peculiar stamp which
repels advances in the way of consolation unconsciously, and Buzzby
was puzzled. He screwed up first the right eye and then the left, and
smote his thigh repeatedly; and assuredly, if contorting his visage could
have comforted Mrs Bright, she would have returned home a happy
woman, for he made faces at her violently for full five minutes; but it
did her no good, perhaps because she didn't see him, her eyes being
suffused with tears.
"Ah! yes," resumed Mrs Bright, with another burst, "I know they will
never come back, and your silence shows that you think so too; and to
think of their taking two years' provisions with them in case of
accidents!--doesn't that prove that there are going to be accidents? and
didn't I hear one of the sailors say that she was a crack ship, a number
one? I don't know what he meant by a number one; but if she's a
cracked ship I know she will never come back; and although I told my
dear brother of it, and advised him not to go, he only laughed at me,
which was very unkind, I'm sure--"
Here Mrs Bright's feelings overcame her again.
"Why, Aunt," said Fred, scarce able to restrain a laugh, despite the
sadness that lay at his heart, "when the sailor said it was a crack ship,
he meant that it was a good one, a first-rate one."
"Then why did he not say what he meant? But you are talking nonsense,
boy; do you think that I will believe a man means to say a thing is good
when he calls it cracked? and I'm sure nobody would say a cracked
tea-pot was as good as a whole one; but tell me, Buzzby, do you think
they ever will come back?"
"Why, ma'am, in coorse I do," replied Buzzby vehemently; "for why? if
they don't, they're the first that ever went out o' this port in my day as
didn't. They've a good ship and lots o' grub, and it's like to be a good
season; and Captain Ellice has, for the most part, good luck; and
they've started with a fair wind, and kep' clear of a Friday, and what
more could ye wish? I only wish as I was aboard along with them,

that's all."
Buzzby delivered himself of this oration with the left eye shut and
screwed up, and the right one open. Having concluded, he shut and
screwed up the right eye, and opened the left--he reversed the engine,
so to speak, as if he wished to back out from the scene of his triumph,
and leave the course clear for others to speak. But his words were
thrown away on Mrs Bright, who was emphatically a weak-minded
woman, and never exercised her reason at all, except in a spasmodic,
galvanic sort of way, when she sought to defend or to advocate some
unreasonable conclusion of some sort, at which her own weak mind
had arrived somehow. So she shook her head, and sobbed good-bye to
Buzzby, as she ascended the sloping avenue that led to her pretty
cottage, on the green hill that overlooked the harbour and the sea
beyond.
As for John Buzzby, having been absent from home full half an hour
beyond his usual dinner-hour, he felt that, for a man who had lashed his
helm amidships, he was yawing alarmingly out of his course, so he
spread all the canvas he could carry, and steered, right before the wind,
towards the village, where, in a little, whitewashed, low-roofed,
one-doored and two-little-windowed cottage, his spouse (and dinner)
awaited him.
To make a long story short, three years passed away, but the Pole Star
did not return, and no news of her could be got from the various
whale-ships that visited the port of Grayton. Towards the end of the
second year Buzzby began to shake his head despondingly; and as the
third drew to a close, the expression of gloom never left his honest,
weather-beaten face. Mrs Bright too, whose anxiety at first was only
half genuine, now became seriously alarmed, and the fate of the
missing brig began to