The World of Ice | Page 8

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 amid-ships, 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 be the talk of the neighbourhood. Meanwhile,
Fred Ellice and Isobel grew and improved in mind and body; but
anxiety as to his father's fate rendered the former quite unable to pursue
his studies, and he determined at last to procure a passage in a
whale-ship, and go out in search of the brig.
It happened that the principal merchant and shipowner in the town, Mr.
Singleton by name, was an intimate friend and old school-fellow of
Captain Ellice, so Fred went boldly to him and proposed that a vessel
should be fitted out immediately, and sent off to search for his father's
brig. Mr. Singleton smiled at the request, and pointed out the utter
impossibility of his agreeing to it; but he revived Fred's sinking hopes
by saying that he was about to send out a whaler to the Northern Seas
at any rate, and that he would give orders to the captain to devote a
portion of his time to the search, and, moreover, agreed to let Fred go
as a passenger