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 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 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 ship-owner 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 in company with his own son Tom.
Now Tom Singleton had been Fred's bosom friend and companion during his
first year at school, but during the last two years he had been sent to
the Edinburgh University, to prosecute his medical studies, and the two
friends had only met at rare intervals. It was with unbounded delight,
therefore, that he found his old companion, now a youth of twenty, was
to go out as surgeon of the ship, and he could scarce contain himself,
as he ran down to Buzzby's cottage to tell him the good news, and ask
him to join.
Of course Buzzby was ready to go, and, what was of far greater
importance in the matter, his wife threw no obstacle in the way. On the
contrary, she undid the lashings of the helm with her own hand, and told
her wondering partner, with a good-humoured (but firm) smile, to steer
where he chose, and she would content herself with the society of the
two young Buzzbys (both miniature facsimiles of their father), till he
came back.
Once again a whale-ship prepared to sail from the port of Grayton, and
once again Mrs Bright and Isobel stood on the pier to see her depart.
Isobel was about thirteen now, and as pretty a girl, according to
Buzzby, as you could meet with in any part of Britain. Her eyes were
blue, and her hair nut-brown, and her charms of face and figure were
enhanced immeasurably by an air of modesty and earnestness that went
straight home to your heart, and caused you to adore her at once.
Buzzby doated on her as if she were his only child, and felt a secret
pride in being in some undefinable way her protector. Buzzby
philosophised about her, too, after a strange fashion. "You see," he
would say to Fred, "it's not that her figure-head is cut altogether
after a parfect pattern; by no means, for I've seen pictur's and statues
that wos better; but she carries her head a little down, d'ye see,
Master Fred, and there's where it is; that's the way I gauges the worth
o' young women, jist accordin' as they carry their chins up or down. If
their brows come well for'ard, and they seems to be lookin' at the
ground they walk on, I knows their brains is firm stuff, and in good
workin' order; but when I sees them carryin' their noses high out o' the
water, as if they wos afeard o' catchin' sight o' their own feet, and
their chins elewated so that a little boy standin' in front o' them
couldn't see their faces nohow, I make pretty sure that t'other end is
filled with a sort o' _mush_ that's fit only to think o' dress and
dancing."
On the present occasion Isobel's eyes were red and swollen, and by no
means improved by weeping. Mrs Bright, too, although three years had
done little to alter her character, seemed to be less demonstrative, and
much more sincere than usual, in her grief at parting from Fred.
In a few minutes all was ready. Young Singleton and Buzzby having
hastily but earnestly bade Mrs Bright and her daughter farewell, leaped
on board. Fred lingered for a moment.
"Once more, dear Aunt," said he, "farewell! With God's blessing we
shall come back soon. Write to me, darling Isobel, won't you? to
Uppernavik, on the coast of Greenland. If none of our ships are bound
in that direction, write by way of Denmark. Old Mr Singleton will tell
you how to address your letter, and see that it be a long one."
"Now, then, youngster, jump aboard," shouted the captain; "look sharp!"
"Ay, ay," returned Fred, and in another moment he was on the
quarter-deck, by the side of his friend Tom.
The ship, loosed from her moorings, spread her canvas, and plunged
forward on her adventurous voyage.
But this time she does not grow smaller as she advances before the
freshening breeze, for you and I, reader, have embarked in her, and the
land now fades in the distance, until it sinks from view on the distant
horizon, while nothing meets our gaze, but the vault of the bright blue
sky above, and the plain of the dark blue sea below.