“I am much obliged to you, Captain Helding. I suppose there is some other reason for inverting the customary order of things, and keeping the lieutenant on shore after the captain is on board?”
“Quite true! there is another reason. I want you to wait for a volunteer who has just joined us.”
“A volunteer!”
“Yes. He has his outfit to get in a hurry, and he may be half an hour late.”
“It’s rather a sudden appointment, isn’t it?”
“No doubt. Very sudden.”
“And—pardon me—it’s rather a long time (as we are situated) to keep the ships waiting for one man?”
“Quite true, again. But a man who is worth having is worth waiting for. This man is worth having; this man is worth his weight in gold to such an expedition as ours. Seasoned to all climates and all fatigues—a strong fellow, a brave fellow, a clever fellow—in short, an excellent officer. I know him well, or I should never have taken him. The country gets plenty of work out of my new volunteer, Crayford. He only returned yesterday from foreign service.”
“He only returned yesterday from foreign service! And he volunteers this morning to join the Arctic expedition? You astonish me.”
“I dare say I do! You can’t be more astonished than I was, when he presented himself at my hotel and told me what he wanted. ‘Why, my good fellow, you have just got home,’ I said. ‘Are you weary of your freedom, after only a few hours’ experience of it?’ His answer rather startled me. He said, ‘I am weary of my life, sir. I have come home and found a trouble to welcome me, which goes near to break my heart. If I don’t take refuge in absence and hard work, I am a lost man. Will you give me a refuge?’ That’s what he said, Crayford, word for word.”
“Did you ask him to explain himself further?”
“Not I! I knew his value, and I took the poor devil on the spot, without pestering him with any more questions. No need to ask him to explain himself. The facts speak for themselves in these cases. The old story, my good friend! There’s a woman at the bottom of it, of course.”
Mrs. Crayford, waiting for the return of her husband as patiently as she could, was startled by feeling a hand suddenly laid on her shoulder. She looked round, and confronted Clara. Her first feeling of surprise changed instantly to alarm. Clara was trembling from head to foot.
“What is the matter? What has frightened you, my dear?”
“Lucy! I have heard of him!”
“Richard Wardour again?”
“Remember what I told you. I have heard every word of the conversation between Captain Helding and your husband. A man came to the captain this morning and volunteered to join the Wanderer. The captain has taken him. The man is Richard Wardour.”
“You don’t mean it! Are you sure? Did you hear Captain Helding mention his name?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it’s Richard Wardour?”
“Don’t ask me! I am as certain of it, as that I am standing here! They are going away together, Lucy—away to the eternal ice and snow. My foreboding has come true! The two will meet—the man who is to marry me and the man whose heart I have broken!”
“Your foreboding has not come true, Clara! The men have not met here—the men are not likely to meet elsewhere. They are appointed to separate ships. Frank belongs to the Sea-mew, and Wardour to the Wanderer. See! Captain Helding has done. My husband is coming this way. Let me make sure. Let me speak to him.”
Lieutenant Crayford returned to his wife. She spoke to him instantly.
“William! you have got a new volunteer who joins the Wanderer?”
“What! you have been listening to the captain and me?”
“I want to know his name?”
“How in the world did you manage to hear what we said to each other?”
“His name? has the captain given you his name?”
“Don’t excite yourself, my dear. Look! you are positively alarming Miss Burnham. The new volunteer is a perfect stranger to us. There is his name—last on the ship’s list.”
Mrs. Crayford snatched the list out of her husband’s hand, and read the name:
“RICHARD WARDOUR.”
Second Scene.
The Hut of the Sea-mew.
Chapter 6.
Good-by to England! Good-by to inhabited and civilized regions of the earth!
Two years have passed since the voyagers sailed from their native shores. The enterprise has failed—the Arctic expedition is lost and ice-locked in the Polar wastes. The good ships Wanderer and Sea-mew, entombed in ice, will never ride the buoyant waters more. Stripped of their lighter timbers, both vessels have been used for the construction of huts, erected on the nearest land.
The largest of the two buildings which now shelter the lost men is occupied by the surviving officers and crew of the Sea-mew. On one side of the principal room are the sleeping berths and the fire-place. The other side discloses a broad doorway (closed by a canvas screen), which serves as a means of communication with an inner apartment, devoted to the superior officers. A hammock is slung to the rough raftered roof of the main room, as an extra bed. A man, completely hidden by his bedclothes, is sleeping in the hammock. By the fireside there is a second man—supposed to be on the watch—fast asleep, poor wretch! at the present moment. Behind the sleeper stands an old cask, which serves for a table. The objects at present on the table are, a pestle and mortar, and a saucepanful of the dry bones of animals—in plain words, the dinner for the day. By way of ornament to the dull brown walls, icicles appear in the crevices of the timber, gleaming at intervals in the red fire-light. No wind whistles outside the lonely dwelling—no cry of bird or beast is heard. Indoors, and out-of-doors, the awful silence of the Polar desert reigns, for the moment, undisturbed.
Chapter 7.
The first sound that broke the silence came from the inner apartment. An officer lifted the canvas screen in the hut of the Sea-mew and entered the main room. Cold and privation had badly thinned the ranks. The commander of the ship—Captain Ebsworth—was dangerously ill. The first lieutenant was dead. An officer of the Wanderer filled their places for the time, with Captain Helding’s permission. The officer so employed was—Lieutenant Crayford.
He approached the man at the fireside, and awakened him.
“Jump up, Bateson! It’s your turn to be relieved.”
The relief appeared, rising from a heap of old sails at the back of the hut. Bateson vanished, yawning, to his bed. Lieutenant Crayford walked backward and forward briskly, trying what exercise would do toward warming his blood.
The pestle and mortar on the cask attracted his attention. He stopped and looked up at the man in the hammock.
“I must rouse the cook,” he said to himself, with a smile. “That fellow little thinks how useful he is in keeping up my spirits. The most inveterate croaker and grumbler in the world—and yet, according to his own account, the only cheerful man in the whole ship’s company. John Want! John Want! Rouse up, there!”
A head rose slowly out of the bedclothes, covered with a red night-cap. A melancholy nose rested itself on the edge of the hammock. A voice, worthy of the nose, expressed its opinion of the Arctic climate, in these words:
“Lord! Lord! here’s all my breath on my blanket. Icicles, if you please, sir, all round my mouth and all over my blanket. Every time I have snored, I’ve frozen something. When a man gets the cold into him to that extent that he ices his own bed, it can’t last much longer. Never mind! I don’t grumble.”