I say that we read this letter again and again, always discerning some new meaning and seldom forgetting to remind ourselves that a madman wrote it. Somewhat to my surprise, our skipper heard it less patiently than Roderick, and would often tell me that I would have been wiser to show it to him before we sailed and not afterward as I had done. Chiefly, I think, he was concerned about the American story and Osbart's belief that another expedition would arrive in Greenland before us. Rumour had spoken of this even in England, and surely it was a little wonderful that Osbart had heard of it in the seclusion of his prison.
"It's just this, gentlemen," the Captain would say, "there's been a syndicate put together in New York to hunt down this treasure, and your mad friend has got wind of it. Maybe they tried to buy him and would not pay the price, or he may have known too much about them to listen. Anyway, the fact is that we may find others there before us, and, if we do, look out for squalls."
Roderick replied that squalls were what he would have expected in that latitude; but I tackled the Captain boldly with knowing more than he would tell, and presently he admitted it.
"Has this been a straightforward voyage from the beginning?" he asked me in turn. "Could any fair man make it out to be that? I'll say nothing about the three fellows at Falmouth, and the trick they played upon us—but what of the crew themselves and their bogeys? Did they learn what they know from us or from others? And, if from others, then what others? Doesn't it all say that there have been stories about, even at Dolphin's Cove, and that they have listened to them? If not, to what then, I ask you?"
"You mean to say," said I, "that the men know something of Jo Mitchell's expedition?"
"Of course they do. Jo has been in five treasure hunts in as many years. He was after the Spanish galleon stuff on the West Coast of Ireland not nine months ago; he went to the South Atlantic with the Chilian millionaires who thought to find pieces of eight not a hundred miles from the Magellan Straits; and here he is after Black's lot now. Well, he won't be a nice partner at the game of Bo-Peep. There'll be heads broken if Jo Mitchell's before us. I suppose you have thought about that, gentlemen; you were prepared for it when you set out?"
Roderick answered that the skipper's prophecy savoured too much of an Irish wake to be taken seriously; and, in truth, I could see that he thought very little of this Jo Mitchell or of his chances.
"Half-a-dozen Government ships have looked for this stuff and failed to find it," he said in his own drawling way; "we know where it is, or we think we do, and that's not a bad beginning. First catch your hare, Captain, and see that you get him by the tail."
"Roderick means," said I in my turn, "that if it comes to a fight, we ought not to do so very badly, Captain. After all, we have sixteen rifles on board, and some of us can use them. I don't suppose this wonderful Jo Mitchell is going to sail an iron-clad; and, if he were, I would back Captain York against him every time. Now, wouldn't you, Roderick?"
Of course, Roderick agreed to it, and, of course the Captain was very well pleased. Even these silent men are not averse to flattery, and our skipperh was not proof against an ancient method of attack. When next he took up the thread of his argument, he seemed to have forgotten that he had ever expressed any apprehensions at all.
"Hurry is our motto, and plenty of it," he exclaimed with emphasis. "This crew has a bee in its bonnet, and it will remain there until we lose sight of the shores of Greenland and are heading home again. We musn't let them think about it. If Jo Mitchell is there when we sail in—why, then we'll trick him at a game of wits, if we can; and, if not, we'll fight him. Flesh and blood will not frighten our fellows; it's the other stories that shake them, and shake them badly."
"You mean this silly stuff about the hunchback being on board?"
"I mean nothing less, sir," said the Captain quietly. "The crew believes that we shipped the one-eyed man at Dolphin's Cove, and that he's aboard us now. Even my own mates are full of it. More than one of them swears he has seen the fellow in the middle-watch, and who's to argue with that? I tell you that if we go down, it will be the shadow of a man that sinks us. You can't fight superstition, sir; you are fighting the air."
I agreed that you could not; but I put it to him that the crew were quite honest in their belief, and that, at any rate, he could trust them to the last man. Judge of my astonishment when he hesitated to reply.
"Then you have your doubts!" I exclaimed. He could not deny it.
"There is one man, and one only, who does not please me," he said at length. "Perhaps you know his name."
"You mean Bill Fairway, Captain?"
"I mean no other, Mr. Mark. That man is a rogue, or I never saw one. Remember it, should the occasion arise; perhaps it will come sooner than you think for. Unless I am mistaken, our voyage is over. Let us go and see if I am right."
He opened the cabin door, and in a moment we understood. Such an excited crew, such wild faces of eager men, I have never seen in all my life. Every man Jack of our fellows was at the taffrail, I do believe, and as for little Mary, she was skipping about like a fairy. Our voyage, indeed, was done, and yonder lay the shores of Greenland.
CHAPTER IV
WE ARRIVE AT ICE HAVEN
Now, it was at seven bells in the second dog-watch that we espied the headlands of Captain Black's haven, and about an hour later when the wonderful shore became fully visible. Such a scene of solitude and grandeur a poet might not imagine; nor could I wonder that the spell of it put other thoughts from our minds and compelled us to pay silent homage to its majesty.
And here I would remind you that I had last looked upon this scene from the deck of the Nameless Ship, at an hour when the dead pirate set out to brave Europe and to sail to his destruction. All my thoughts had been of home and country then; a passionate desire to escape the bondage and to flee that dreadful company had possessed me. Now, for the first time, the grandeur of the home which Black had chosen became apparent to me, and I could tell with pride what hitherto I had named but with fear.
Imagine a wall of glittering schists; a vast cliff, limned, as it were, in jasper and chrysoprase and chalcedony; say that this jewelled rampart lifted a resolute face to the gentle waves of an Arctic sea; let the walls fall back by here and there to the curves of soft bays, all aglitter with rivers of solid ice, whence the bergs float down to the Atlantic. Do this, and set the towering caps of snowy mountains above them all, and you have the shores of Greenland as the crew of the Celsis first espied them, and as I who write looked upon them for the second time.
I shall not try to tell you of all that passed between us on the quarter-deck while we stood to watch this entrancing scene, and to speculate upon our good fortune in making the haven without fault.
A hundred questions were put to me and answered as readily. I told them how the giant headlands which guarded the entrance to the inner waters were more than a thousand feet high. I spoke of a monstrous chasm lying between an outer fiord and the great lake beyond. I promised them that they should visit Black's home with me and sleep in a house that surely had been one of the wonders of the world. And then, escaping from them for the ship's sake, I took Captain York apart and spoke to him of the anchorage and of what I knew of it.
"You have the Government chart," said I, "and will know more than I, Captain; but one thing is certain—we shall drop no anchor in the fiord, for it is more than a mile deep. Black used to warp the Nameless Ship against the northward cliff, and we ought to be able to pick his moorings up. If we don't, you may care to try the narrow passage, and make the lake beyond; but it's dangerous work, and we would lie more snugly in the outer basin if by any chance we find ourselves in company."
The Captain looked up under his shaggy eyebrows.
"Meaning if Jo Mitchell should