The World of Ice

ight, and sagacious remarks of Buzzby-Anxieties, fears, surmises, and resolu

ils 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, stan

ered a sigh in unison, and Mrs. Bright resumed the fit of

ter 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 wh

hat said plainly, "Don't cry so, mamma; I'm sure he will come back," but she coul

usly, 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

n case of accidents!-doesn't that prove that there are going to be accidents? And didn't I hear one of the sailors say that she was a crack ship, A number one? I don't know what he meant by A num

t's feelings ov

the sadness that lay at his heart, "when the sailor said it was

elieve a man means to say a thing is good when he calls it cracked? and I'm sure nobody would say a c

as didn't. They've a good ship and lots o' grub, and it's like to be a good season; and Captain Ellice has, for the most part, good luck; and th

mph and leave the course clear for others to speak. But his words were thrown away on Mrs. Bright, who was emphatically a weak-minded woman, and never exercised her reason at all, except in a spasmodic, galvanic sort of way, when she sought to defend or to advocate some

elm amid-ships, he was yawing alarmingly out of his course; so he spread all the canvas he could carry, and steered right before the wind tow

d as the third drew to a close, the expression of gloom never left his honest, weather-beaten face. Mrs. Bright, too, whose anxiety at first was only half genuine, now became seriously alarmed, and the fate of the missing brig began to be the talk of the neighbour

t immediately, and sent off to search for his father's brig. Mr. Singleton smiled at the request, and pointed out the utter impossibility of his agreeing to it; but he revived Fred's sinking hopes by saying that he was about to

to prosecute his medical studies, and the two friends had only met at rare intervals. It was with unbounded delight, therefore, that he found his old companion, now a you

y, she undid the lashings of the helm with her own hand, and told her wondering partner, with a good-humoured but firm smile, to steer where h

she were his only child, and felt a secret pride in being in some indefinable way her protector. Buzzby philosophized about her, too, after a strange fashion. "You see," he would say to Fred, "it's not that her figurehead is cut altogether after a parfect pattern-by no means, for I've seen pictur's and statues that wos better-but she carries her head a little down, d'ye see, Master Fred? and there's where it is; that's the way I gauges the worth o' young women, jist accordin' as they carry their chins

ping. Mrs. Bright, too, although three years had done little to alter her character, seemed

having hastily but earnestly bade Mrs. Bright and her dau

obel, won't you? to Upernavik, on the coast of Greenland. If none of our ships are bound in that direction, writ

ump aboard," shouted th

ther moment he was on the quarter-d

s, spread her canvas, and plunged

ve embarked in her, and the land now fades in the distance, until it sinks from view on the distant horizon, wh