They looked and
looked until they were tired with looking. The body had, no doubt,
floated up under some cake of ice, and from thence would speedily sink
to a bier of sand at the bottom of the bay.
"By----! I never saw anything like that." It was the remark which began
and ended the episode with the skipper. Then he raised his voice, and
shouted to O'Shea: "It's no sort of use your staying here! Make the rope
fast to your boat, and come up on deck!"
But this O'Shea would not do. He replied that he would remain, and look
about among the ice a bit longer, and that, any way, it would be twice
as far to take his boat home from Harbour Island as from the place where
he now was. The schooner towed his boat until he had baled the water out
and got hold of his oars. The ice had floated so far apart that it
seemed easy for the boat to go back through it.
During this time excited pithy gossip had been going on concerning the
accident.
"You did all a man could do," shouted the captain to O'Shea consolingly,
and remarked to those about him: "There wasn't no love lost between
them, but O'Shea did all he could. O'Shea might as easy as not have gone
over himself, holding the pole under water that time."
The fussy little captain, as far as Caius could judge, was not acting a
part. The sailors were French; they could talk some English; and they
spoke in both languages a great deal.
Pages:
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284