The World of Ice | Page 6

men, Captain Ellice and his son were themselves again, but those who judge of men's hearts by their outward appearance and expressions, in nine cases out of ten judge very wide of the mark indeed. Both had undergone a great change. The brilliancy and glitter of this world had been completely and rudely dispelled, and both had been led to enquire whether there was not something better to live for than mere present advantage and happiness; something that would stand by them in those hours of sickness and sorrow which must inevitably, sooner or later, come upon all men.
But Captain Ellice could not be induced to resume the command of his old ship, or voyage again to the West Indies. He determined to change the scene of his future labours and sail to the frozen seas, where the aspect of every object--even the ocean itself--would be very unlikely to recall the circumstances of his loss.
Some time after his recovery, Captain Ellice purchased a brig, and fitted her out as a whaler, determined to try his fortune in the northern seas. Fred pleaded hard to be taken out, but his father felt that he had more need to go to school than to sea; so he refused, and Fred, after sighing very deeply once or twice, gave in with a good grace. Buzzby, too, who stuck to his old commander like a leech, was equally anxious to go, but Buzzby, in a sudden and unaccountable fit of tenderness, had, just two months before, married a wife, who might be appropriately described as "fat, fair, and forty," and Buzzby's wife absolutely forbade him to go. Alas! Buzzby was no longer his own master. At the age of forty-five he became--as he himself expressed it--an abject slave, and he would as soon have tried to steer in a slipper bath, right in the teeth of an equinoctial hurricane, as have opposed the will of his wife. He used to sigh gruffly when spoken to on this subject, and compare himself to a Dutch galliot that made more lee-way than head-way, even with a wind on the quarter. "Once," he would remark, "I was clipper-built and could sail right in the wind's eye, but ever since I tuck this craft in tow I've gone to leeward like a tub. In fact, I find there's only one way of going ahead with my Poll, and that is right before the wind! I used to yaw about a good deal at first, but she tuck that out o' me in a day or two. If I put the helm only so much as one stroke to starboard, she guv' a tug at the tow-rope that brought the wind dead aft again; so I've gi'n it up, and lashed the tiller right amidships."
So Buzzby did not accompany his old commander; he did not even so much as suggest the possibility of it, but he shook his head with great solemnity as he stood with Fred, and Mrs Bright, and Isobel, at the end of the pier, gazing at the brig, with one eye very much screwed up, and a wistful expression in the other, while the graceful craft spread out her canvas and bent over to the breeze.
CHAPTER TWO.
DEPARTURE OF THE POLE STAR FOR THE FROZEN SEAS--SAGE REFLECTIONS OF MRS. BRIGHT, AND SAGACIOUS REMARKS OF BUZZBY--ANXIETIES, FEARS, SURMISES, AND RESOLUTIONS--ISOBEL--A SEARCH PROPOSED--DEPARTURE OF THE DOLPHIN FOR THE FAR NORTH.
Digressions are bad at the best, and we feel some regret that we should have been compelled to begin our book with one; but they are necessary evils, sometimes, so we must ask our reader's forgiveness, and beg him, or her, to remember that we are still at the commencement of our story, standing at the end of the pier, and watching the departure of the Pole Star whale-ship, which is now a scarcely distinguishable speck on the horizon.
As it disappeared Buzzby gave a grunt, Fred and Isobel uttered a sigh in unison, and Mrs Bright resumed the fit of weeping which for some time she had unconsciously suspended.
"I fear we shall never see him again," sobbed Mrs Bright, as she took Isobel by the hand and sauntered slowly home, accompanied by Fred and Buzzby, the latter of whom seemed to regard himself in the light of a shaggy Newfoundland or mastiff, who had been left 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