Part 6 (1/2)

”Hush, lad,” said the Captain with a little smile, ”of course I shall take you with me and also your two cousins, but I want one other man to complete the party--but he must be a heartily willing man. Who will volunteer?”

There was silence for a few moments. It was broken by the doctor.

”I for one won't volunteer,” he said, ”for I'm too much shaken by this troublesome illness to think of such an expedition. If I were well it might be otherwise, but perhaps some of the others will offer.”

”You can't expect me to do so,” said the mate, ”for I've got to guide our party home, as agreed on; besides, under any circ.u.mstances, I would not join you, for it is simple madness. You'll forgive me, Captain. I mean no disrespect, but I have sailed many years to these seas, and I know from experience that what you propose is beyond the power of man to accomplish.”

”Experience!” repeated the Captain, quickly. ”Has your experience extended further north than this point?”

”No, sir, I have not been further north than this--n.o.body has. It is beyond the utmost limit yet reached, so far as I know.”

”Well, then, you cannot speak from _experience_ about what I propose,”

said the Captain, turning away. ”Come, lads, I have no wish to constrain you, I merely give one of you the chance.”

Still no one came forward. Every man of the crew of the _Whitebear_ had had more or less personal acquaintance with arctic travel and danger.

They would have followed Captain Vane anywhere in the yacht, but evidently they had no taste for what he was about to undertake.

At last one stepped to the front. It was b.u.t.terface, the steward. This intensely black negro was a bulky, powerful man, with a modest spirit and a strange disbelief in his own capacities, though, in truth, these were very considerable. He came forward, stooping slightly, and rubbing his hands in a deprecating manner.

”'Scuse me, ma.s.sa Capting. P'r'aps it bery presumsheeous in dis yer chile for to speak afore his betters, but as no oder man 'pears to want to volunteer, I's willin' to go in an' win. Ob course I ain't a man-- on'y a n.i.g.g.e.r, but I's a willin' n.i.g.g.e.r, an' kin do a few small tings-- cook de grub, wash up de cups an' sa.r.s.ers, pull a oar, clean yer boots, fight de Eskimos if you wants me to, an' ginrally to scrimmage around a'most anything. Moreover, I eats no more dan a babby--'sep wen I's hungry--an' I'll foller you, ma.s.sa, troo tick and tin--to de Nort Pole, or de Sout Pole, or de East Pole, or de West Pole--or any oder pole wotsomediver--all de same to b.u.t.terface, s'long's you'll let 'im stick by you.”

The crew could not help giving the negro a cheer as he finished this loyal speech, and the Captain, although he would have preferred one of the other men, gladly accepted his services.

A few days later the boats were ready and provisioned; adieus were said, hats and handkerchiefs waved, and soon after Captain Vane and his son and two nephews, with Anders and b.u.t.terface, were left to fight their battles alone, on the margin of an unexplored, mysterious Polar sea.

CHAPTER FIVE.

LEFT TO THEIR FATE.

There are times, probably, in all conditions of life, when men feel a species of desolate sadness creeping over their spirits, which they find it hard to shake off or subdue. Such a time arrived to our Arctic adventurers the night after they had parted from the crew of the wrecked _Whitebear_. Nearly everything around, and much within, them was calculated to foster that feeling.

They were seated on the rocky point on the extremity of which their yacht had been driven. Behind them were the deep ravines, broad valleys, black beetling cliffs, grand mountains, stupendous glaciers, and dreary desolation of Greenland. To right and left, and in front of them, lay the chaotic ice-pack of the Arctic sea, with lanes and pools of water visible here and there like lines and spots of ink. Icebergs innumerable rose against the sky, which at the time was entirely covered with grey and gloomy clouds. Gusts of wind swept over the frozen waste now and then, as if a squall which had recently pa.s.sed, were sighing at the thought of leaving anything undestroyed behind it. When we add to this, that the wanderers were thinking of the comrades who had just left them--the last link, as it were, with the civilised world from which they were self-exiled, of the unknown dangers and difficulties that lay before them, and of the all but forlorn hope they had undertaken, there need be little wonder that for some time they all looked rather grave, and were disposed to silence.

But life is made up of opposites, light and shade, hard and soft, hot and cold, sweet and sour, for the purpose, no doubt, of placing man between two moral battledores so as to drive the weak and erring shuttlec.o.c.k of his will right and left, and thus keep it in the middle course of rect.i.tude. No sooner had our adventurers sunk to the profoundest depths of gloom, than the battledore of brighter influences began to play upon them. It did not, however, achieve the end at once.

”I'm in the lowest, bluest, dreariest, grumpiest, and most utterly miserable state of mind I ever was in in all my life,” said poor little Benjy Vane, thrusting his hands into his pockets, sitting down on a rock, and gazing round on the waste wilderness, which had only just ceased howling, the very personification of despair.

”So's I, ma.s.sa,” said b.u.t.terface, looking up from a compound of wet coal and driftwood which he had been vainly trying to coax into a flame for cooking purposes; ”I's most 'orribly miserable!”

There was a beaming grin on the negro's visage that gave the lie direct to his words.

”That's always the way with you, Benjy,” said the Captain, ”either bubblin' over with jollity an' mischief, or down in the deepest blues.”

”Blues! father,” cried the boy, ”don't talk of blues--it's the blacks I'm in, the very blackest of blacks.”

”Ha! jus' like me,” muttered b.u.t.terface, sticking out his thick lips at the unwilling fire, and giving a blow that any grampus might have envied.

The result was that a column of almost solid smoke, which had been for some time rising thicker and thicker from the coals, burst into a bright flame. This was the first of the sweet influences before referred to.