“I’ll bring you news of the lad in a short time,” he said, turning to the young girl and exhibiting the compass. “This instrument will let me know my bearings, so that I can easily find my way back.”
“Ay, ay, bless you, very soon, for I’ve sworn to stick to you, and my conscience wouldn’t allow me to remain long absent.”
And ducking his head, by way of a bow, Stump departed, presenting a comical figure, as he leaped from berg to berg. He made his way, with a celerity which would not have been expected of a man of his proportions--moving in the direction of the horn which was still blowing, but which, it struck him, did not sound so near as it did an hour before.
This circumstance made him feel uneasy, for, if Harry had succeeded in reaching the boat, it would not now be receding instead of advancing. He hurried on, however, until a sloping iceberg, about ten feet high and fifteen feet in length, barred his further progress. This he would be obliged to scale before he could proceed, for he could not go around it on account of a channel of water, too wide to cross, that bounded it on each side. He looked up dubiously at the top of the frozen pile, and, while still hesitating at its base, he fancied he heard a shout close to his ear.
He looked around in amazement, and as he did so, the cry was repeated, this time louder than before, and seeming to emerge from the very heart of the iceberg.
“Who is that?” cried the shipkeeper, “and where are you?”
“It is I--Harry Marline,” retorted the voice. “Is that you, Stump?”
“Ay, ay, it’s me, bless your eyes, but skin me if I see how you could have condensed yourself so as to get into this solid chunk of ice!”
“You are mistaken,” retorted the laughing voice of the harpooner, “there’s a rift in the berg like a ravine. You can see it if you climb to the top where I was before I slipped into it.”
“And is this where you’ve been all the time?”
“Yes. The inner sides of my quarters are so slippery that I can’t climb them! You had better get a rope and--”
“I have a bunch of ratlin stuff in my pocket!” interrupted Stump, who generally carried a little of every thing useful about him, “which I guess will do.”
And pulling out the bunch of rigging, he fastened one of its ends to his pigtail--for he did not like the taste of tar sufficiently to put the strands in his mouth--and proceeded to scramble to the top of the ice, which he finally gained with much difficulty. Peering through the mouth of the rift, he saw the upturned face of Marline, toward which he now lowered the disengaged end of the piece of rigging. It was soon in the young man’s hand, and Stump was about to unfasten the other end from the pendent mass of hair, so as to secure it to one of the rough projections of ice, when his foot slipped, causing him to descend half way down the frozen declivity, which he had mounted with so much trouble, and where he now hung suspended by his pigtail to the rope; for the young harpooner, believing that his corpulent chum was clinging to it with his hands, and that he was doing him a good service by holding on to the piece of rigging, had not allowed it to escape his grasp!