"Oh, mamma, I do hope the weather will be fine!" said pretty Miss
Hodson.
"Well, my dear Clara, isn't it fine? Why, a more delightful day could
not well be imagined."
"Yes, now, mamma; but I mean all along on this adventuresome voyage that
we are about to take."
"Don't you bother your little head, my mouse," said her father, fondling
one of her little hands in his. "I know enough about the weather to
give a forecast a week beforehand, and a good deal about the sea, too,
though I confess I've never been on it much. Ahem!"
The speakers were seated in a cab that was rattling along the quay of
Aberdeen on a lovely morning in April. There were monster boxes on top,
another cab filled with luggage only came up behind, and still another
containing three gentlemen.
Very distinguished men these were, indeed, though oddly ill-matched in
appearance. Number 1, let me call him, was a true type of a middle-aged
John Bull--tall, whiskered, stout, strong, yet calm and thoughtful
withal. Number 2 might have been a Boston editor or an Edinburgh genius
of the old school. He was medium in height, lanky rather, high in
cheek-bone, deep in eye. He wore no beard, but had a bushy moustache
and very long grey hair. Number 3 was evidently a fat Frenchman, rotund
to a degree, black as to hair, which was cropped as short as a
convict's, and moustache, but _so_ fat! You could best describe his
outline by letters, thus--take a big O and a little o and two letters l.
Now stick the little o on the top of the big O and you have his head
and body. Then clap on the two l's to represent his legs, and you have
his lines complete. He was so stout that when he stuck out his little
white hands, with their palms upwards, as Frenchmen have a habit of
doing in argument, the finger-tips did not project an inch beyond him in
front. But Number 1 was no less an individual than Sir Thomas Merino;
Number 2 was the Baron de Bamber; and Number 3, Count Koskowiskey
himself.
The little boys in Aberdeen had never before seen such a strange
procession of cabs, nor such a strange crew inside, so that they felt
constrained to run alongside and wave their ragged bonnets and shout
themselves hoarse.
The _savants_, for such they were, thought to purchase peace with a
shower of coppers. This only increased the crowd, and no beggars in
Cairo ever yelled for backsheesh as did those boys for "bawbees."
But things do not last for ever, and at length the cabs drew up, one by
one, at a gangway that stretched from the shore to the quarter-deck of
the good ship _Icebear_. The gangway was covered with scarlet cloth, a
neatly dressed sailor stood at each side of the shore end to steady it,
and Captain Claude Alwyn stood at the other ready to receive his guests.
He looked very handsome did our Claude, in his peaked cap,
reefing-jacket of simple blue, and gilt buttons.
He doffed his cap as he handed the ladies on board, and was rewarded by
a smile from Mrs Hodson, and a blushet--let me coin a word--from Clara,
her daughter.
Now, it was evident that Professor Hodson was the head of the party; for
no sooner had every one of them taken a good look round the gallant ship
than he remarked, "Now, gentlemen, what do you say--shall we have an
early dinner and then sail, or sail first and have a more comfortable
one out at sea! I propose the latter plan."
"Professor," said his wife, sternly, "I propose the former; and ladies,
I think, should carry the sway."
"They generally do," sighed the professor, who looked subdued and
henpecked, as distinguished _savants_ are apt to be.
"Your proposal is best, madam," put in Claude, smiling. "It is best to
have it over. You can sup afterwards; that is," he added mysteriously,
"if any of you will care to."
"Oh, we shall all sup," said the professor. "The ocean always gives me
an appetite." (N.B.--He had been three times from London to Ramsgate by
steamer.)
"Most sartainlee, capitaine," said the French _savant_.
To have seen the way the gentlemen, and--pardon me, my lady readers--the
ladies also, enjoyed that excellent dinner, one would have said there
would be little need for supper.
The saloon was long and comfortable, though there was nothing of the
boudoir about it. Claude himself had seen to everything personally. It
was a very brilliant and select little party that assembled on deck
about an hour afterwards. The _elite_, or rather the literary _elite_,
of the city had come to wish the _Icebear_ "God-speed?"
"What am I to do with all these flowers, sir?" the steward asked that
same afternoon, when he got a word with the captain.
"Keep the choicest for the saloon," was the reply, "and distribute the
rest impartially for'ard."
The _Icebear_ was a lovely vessel, both fore and aft. She had been
originally intended for a man-of-war to add to the navy of a far-off
foreign potentate; but as the potentate in question did not, or could
not, pay at the right moment, after waiting a goodly time the builder
very properly put her in the market, and she was knocked down at a
reasonable figure to our _savant_ friends. About 1500 tons burden she
was, low in bulwarks, flush in deck, with no great breadth of beam,
though with more than the coffin-ships they often send poor Jack to sea
in--things with no breadth at all to speak of, and that go over and down
in a breeze, and in sea-way that a Peterhead herring-boat would laugh
at. The _Icebear_ was sturdy and strong all over, had good engines,
good shaft and screw--she carried a spare one. Forward, the bows were
of triple strength, moderately sharp, and shod with iron, to aid in
boring through the ice.
She had three respectable masts, not heavy enough to weigh her over on
her beam-ends if a squall struck her broadside, nor light enough to snap
like pea-sticks if a puff came. When under sail the screw could be
hoisted up into a kind of covered well, and the advantage of this will
be found when the ship gets farther north.
Not a yard of canvas, not a fathom of cordage, that had not been
examined and tested by Claude himself.
So much for the exterior. "Downstairs," as landsmen would say, she was
fitted up with a view to the utmost comfort. The men's sleeping-berths
forward and amidships were bunks and hammocks. The crew all told was
ninety men, or would be when the vessel lay in at Kirkwall to ship
additional hands.
Remember, there was no lumber of any kind on the upper deck. No
unsightly cabins or rooms, only forward was the winch and then the
steerage cabin, the capstan, the midship companion; and aft the saloon
and cabin skylights and companions, the wheel-house and binnacle. I
hope I am not talking Greek to my readers, who are probably not all
nautical; but I wish it to be understood that the _Icebear's_ decks were
most roomy, nothing at all unnecessary being built or even lying
thereon--a deck on which you could waltz with delight, or fight without
discomfort. The captain's quarters, or rather his private room,
occupied the after-part of the ship under the wheel-house, and was
charmingly furnished, with a splendid stove, warm, soft carpets, a
lounge, easy-chairs, a swing-cot, a library of choice books, and two
ports that looked out over the sea. There, then I what more would you
have in a private room afloat? and, mind you, it was the whole width of
the ship. It had a private staircase. But the wardroom, or principal
saloon, which lay under the quarter-deck, had cabins off it for the
officers of the expedition, whose acquaintance we will make in good
time.
It may be asked what were two ladies and four learned landsmen doing on
board a ship bound for the icy North? It was a proposal of Mrs Hodson,
to which her husband knew he dared not say nay, that the party we now
see on board should accompany the vessel as far as Kirkwall, for what
she called "the pleasure of a sail."
Well, the pleasure of the sail really commenced before they were beyond
the pier-head of Aberdeen. The long granite breakwater, which they were
steaming past, was crowded with people, and, greatly to Mrs Hodson's
delight, a lusty shore-porter sprang up to the top of a parapet and,
commanding silence by a wave of his arm, proposed "Three cheers for the
two gallant ladies, who were sailing away to the North Pole never to
return."
And the cheers were given too--not three, but three times three; and
when Mrs Hodson smilingly bowed her acknowledgments, and pretty Clara
waved a handkerchief, which the crowd firmly believed to be wet with
tears, then the cheering was redoubled, and kept up till the ship was
over the bar. Next, guns were fired from the fort; and when this salute
was returned from the _Icebear_, and the flag dipped and hoisted again,
the voyage had commenced in earnest.
All the way to Peterhead it was most enjoyable, but as night stole over
the ocean, and the sun dipped towards the sea, and just as Professor
Hodson was proposing to go down to supper, the wind sprang up; then--let
me say it in my own queer way--all on board that were sailors, _were_
sailors, and those on board who were not, were very much the reverse.
Surely this is better than saying that certain folks were sea-sick.
But it was a pity that the cruel wind should blow so high, and that the
waves should not have respected the _savants_ a single bit, nor Mrs
Hodson either, nor even the pretty Clara.
It was not only a pity, but it was excessively annoying; for Professor
Hodson, who had once written a treatise on the physical geography of the
sea, had meant to give a scientific lecture in the forenoon; while Sir
Thomas, the bold Saxon, was to have lectured on astronomy under the
stars, the dredging machine was to have been set to work, and the
mysteries of the ocean depths revealed to the wondering gaze of poor
Jack; while Mrs Hodson had pictured to herself the pleasure she would
have in presiding at the head of the table, and lecturing, not only her
husband, but everybody else; and Clara--she, too, had had her dreams.
There could be no harm, Clara had thought, in looking her best, and
dressing her best, and even engaging in the delicatest of flirtations
with the handsome Lord Claude. She had had a lovely sailor costume
made, but, oh dear!--my heart bleeds to mention it--it was never worn,
and the only miserable consolation left to her was to remember, that
this nautical rig would do for Henley Regatta. Ugh!
But oh! the cruel, cruel ocean, and oh! the merciless waves, not one of
all those dreamers left his or her cabin till the _Icebear_ lay safe and
sound in Kirkwall.
Thus ended the pleasure sail from which so much joy had been expected.