As the days slipped by and they worked farther north, the _Polly
Ann_ began to encounter nipping weather. Raynor, who had no thick
clothes, suffered a good deal, but fortunately most of his work was
in the galley where it was apt to be uncomfortably warm.
Noddy continued to play his tricks on Pompey, much to the latter’s
mystification. The darky had come to believe that the _Polly Ann_
was haunted. In this way Noddy worked on his superstitious feelings
till the black was quite as anxious as the boys to leave the
schooner. But they did not deem the time yet ripe to broach their
plans to him.
One day a fine pudding, made especially as a surprise for Terror
Carson, vanished from the galley almost under Pompey’s nose. The
negro was sorely puzzled.
“Dey suah am ghostesses in mah galley,” he confided to others of the
crew, who only laughed.
“Alright, yo’ may laff, but ah done see two ghostesses wid mah own
eyes de night ah dropped dat wheel. As spec’s dere’s bin such a
power ob wickedness done on dis hyah boat dat de hants jes natch’ly
sticks round it. Yas sah.”
But when Pompey got back to his galley he was destined to be more
mystified than ever. Lying on the top of the shelf, where he had
placed it before its disappearance, was the pudding.
“Good land ob Beulah, de debbil is in dis galley fo’ sho’,”
sputtered Pompey. “Hey, boys! Whar am dem boys?”
In a few minutes the boys came to answer his repeated calls,
retaining grave faces with great difficulty while Pompey explained
to them the mystery of the vanishing pudding.
“Ah lays it dar an’ it am gone,” he said in an awestruck whisper.
“When ah come back dar it is agin. Now if ghostesses don’ do dat
what does?”
“I dunno. It’s sure mysterious,” said the Bowery boy, “but say,
Pompey, what’s that bit of paper stuck on the pudding?”
“Mah goodness, dat mus’ be some rheumaticacion frum der spirits,” he
exclaimed.
He gingerly took hold of a scrap of paper that lay on the top of the
pudding. There was writing on it. Jupe looked at it in stupefaction.
“De spirits, or debbils or ghostesses or whoeber do dis yer voo-doo
work am writing letters now,” he exclaimed in a dumbfounded tone.
“What do they say?” asked the boys in tones of deep interest.
“Um-ah, les see. Why, dey says hyah, it’s all wrote lak print: Obey
de boys an’ be dere fren’ or de torture ob de parrellel oblongata
parabolensis will be yours. Mah goodness! what am dat torture?”
“I’ve heard dat it’s a special kin’ de spirits has,” said the Bowery
boy, “part of it is to pull off your skin with red hot pincers. I
don’t know the rest, but it’s worse.”
“Wusser ’en red hot pincers. Gollyumption! Say, boys, ole Pompey
allers bin good to you alls, ain’t he?”
“Sure you have,” said Noddy, “but we’re going to ask you a special
favor sometime. Will you do it for us?”
“I sho’ will. Anything at all. Mah goodness if ah didn’t wouldn’ ah
get dat parrot yells and parasols torture. Red hot pincers--ugh!
Reckon dem spirits ain’t got no hearts at all.”
One morning when Raynor came on deck he saw, lying on the sea, not
more than half a mile off, an immense iceberg. Its pinnacles
glittered in the bright sunlight.
Other bergs floated to the south and east. Ragged fields of ice
stretched about them in long floes. The schooner was beating
northward in short tacks but did not appear to be making much
progress. Just then Terror Carson came on deck. He looked about him
and then spoke sharply to the man at the wheel.
“Are we making any northing?” he asked, “Hold her on her course, you
lubber.”
“Faith, yer honor,” rejoined the man at the wheel, a true son of
Erin, “it sorra a bit will she walk at all, at all.”
“What ails her?” demanded Carson, his brows gathering in a scowl.
“It’s the southward set of the current, sor, I’m thinking,” was the
reply. “Divil a bit more north have we made the last hour than I
could swing me mother’s ould cat by her tail. It’s wearisome wurruk,
sor,--an thirsty, too.”
“Well, there’ll be no drinking on this ship,” said Carson sharply,
and strode forward. He hung over the bulwarks amidships, watching
the icebergs intently. Raynor, at his work in the galley, observed
him covertly. He thought Carson appeared worried at the close
proximity of the floating mountains of ice.
Before long Raynor summoned him to breakfast. When he came on deck
again the icebergs were closer. He turned on the steersman in a
spasm of fury.
“You bog trotting land-lubber,” he roared out with stentorian lungs,
“where are your eyes?”
“Sure aich side of my nose, like any dacent Christian’s,” rejoined
the man.
“Confound your impudence,” thundered Carson, “don’t you see the ice
closing in on us.”
“Shure, I couldn’t git overboard and shove it back.”
“You ought to have let me know of this,” growled Carson angrily. He
summoned his mate to his side. Raynor contrived an errand that
should bring him near them.
“The channel is getting narrower,” he heard the captain say. “I
never saw the growlers so thick up here at this time of the year
before.”
“Better put about, sir, if we don’t want to get nipped,” advised the
mate.
“I guess that’s good advice,” muttered Carson, “but I hate to turn
our nose south again. ’Bout ship!” he bawled.
“’Bout ship!” roared the mate. “Lively, boys, be smart! Leggo all
tackles! Hard a-lee on your wheel! Smartly, now.”
The schooner’s sails shivered and flapped as she came up into the
wind. The crew hauled on ropes and halyards. Then the smart little
schooner paid off handsomely and filled away on another tack.
It was none too soon. Ahead of them, drawn together by the ocean
currents, two great bergs crashed together with the force of titanic
steam hammers.
“If we’d been caught there, we’d have been smashed like an
egg-shell,” observed Terror Carson, to his mate, without any
particular emotion now that the danger was over.