The World of Ice | Page 7

resume the command of his
old ship, or voyage again to the West Indies. He determined to change
the scene of his future labours and sail to the Frozen Seas, where the
aspect of every object, even the ocean itself, would be very unlikely to
recall the circumstances of his loss.
Some time after his recovery, Captain Ellice purchased a brig and fitted
her out as a whaler, determined to try his fortune in the Northern Seas.

Fred pleaded hard to be taken out, but his father felt that he had more
need to go to school than to sea; so he refused, and Fred, after sighing
very deeply once or twice, gave in with a good grace. Buzzby, too, who
stuck to his old commander like a leech, was equally anxious to go; but
Buzzby, in a sudden and unaccountable fit of tenderness, had, just two
months before, married a wife, who might be appropriately described
as "fat, fair, and forty," and Buzzby's wife absolutely forbade him to go.
Alas! Buzzby was no longer his own master. At the age of forty-five he
became--as he himself expressed it--an abject slave, and he would as
soon have tried to steer in a slipper-bath right in the teeth of an
equinoctial hurricane, as have opposed the will of his wife. He used to
sigh gruffly when spoken to on this subject, and compare himself to a
Dutch galliot that made more leeway than headway, even with a wind
on the quarter. "Once," he would remark, "I was clipper-built, and
could sail right in the wind's eye; but ever since I tuck this craft in tow,
I've gone to leeward like a tub. In fact, I find there's only one way of
going ahead with my Poll, and that is right before the wind! I used to
yaw about a good deal at first, but she tuck that out o' me in a day or
two. If I put the helm only so much as one stroke to starboard, she guv'
a tug at the tow-rope that brought the wind dead aft again; so I've gi'n it
up, and lashed the tiller right amid-ships."
So Buzzby did not accompany his old commander; he did not even so
much as suggest the possibility of it; but he shook his head with great
solemnity, as he stood with Fred, and Mrs. Bright, and Isobel, at the
end of the pier, gazing at the brig, with one eye very much screwed up,
and a wistful expression in the other, while the graceful craft spread out
her canvas and bent over to the breeze.
CHAPTER II.
_Departure of the "Pole Star" for the Frozen Seas--Sage reflections of
Mrs. Bright, and sagacious remarks of Buzzby--Anxieties, fears,
surmises, and resolutions--Isabel--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 seashore."
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