By-and-by they heard the captain"s voice in the saloon, and immediately after he sent to tell them that the danger was over, and the storm had blown itself out.
By noon next day the sea had gone so far down that temporary repairs were effected, and in a day or two more, in a calm blue sea, the ship was heeled over, and these repairs made good and substantial.
Then the _Alba_ went on her adventurous voyage--adventurous, I mean, for so small a yacht--and the ladies took heart and came on deck to gaze and wonder at the marvels everywhere visible around them.
Into every creek went the _Alba_ searching for tidings of the lost _Kittywake_.
In very few of these did they find inhabitants, and when they did, they had no news, or only sadly confusing news to give.
One day Captain Jahnsen came off from a little Yack village with a countenance beaming with hope and joy.
"I think," he told Lady Alwyn, "I have got news of your son. Bad news partly."
"Oh!" she cried, "it cannot be bad if he but lives."
"Some months ago he was alive. I have met two Indians, who frankly confess they basely deserted the party after the ship had been burned, and a dearth of provisions followed. They are willing to be bribed to conduct us to the spot."
The reader already knows who these Indians were. No time was now lost in getting ready, provisioning, and equipping a sufficient number of strong and ice-worthy sledges.
Captain Jahnsen made every endeavour to persuade Lady Alwyn from joining the toilsome and hazardous expedition, but in vain.
The snows yet lay thick on hill and vale, though the sun had risen for the day--the long Arctic day.
The ice on rivers and creeks was firm and safe, so that the course the sledge party took was a straight one. As they had travelled the road before, Jack and Joe could not now mistake it. Fast and well galloped the dogs, and wonderful was each day"s work that they put behind them; yet to Lady Alwyn"s mind and to Meta"s they could hardly go quickly enough.
The camping out at night, or during the hours that should have been night, was terribly trying to poor Lady Alwyn. How much she must have loved her son, how much she must have repented her false pride, ere she could have exposed herself to hardships such as these.
But the journey is nearly at an end, they have pa.s.sed unscathed through every danger hitherto, and there is but a short fifty miles between them and the inland sea, when suddenly the sky began to darken over and a snow-wind to moan across the dreary wilderness. For days and days they sheltered in a cave.
How trying to nerves and temper! Would the storm never abate? Would the wind never cease to howl and rave? It did at length, and joyfully the journey was resumed.
As soon as they were visible, Byarnie, who had been watching on an icy cliff top, must needs take off his jacket to wave it--a cap would not have met the requirements of the situation; then, still waving his jacket aloft and shouting, he rushed down to the camp like a maniac giant.
"They"re coming! they"re coming! they"re coming!" he cried.
Boy Bounce ran out waving his ladle aloft; Dr Barrett himself ran to meet and welcome the expedition; the men rushed to the tent door, the hale supporting those who were maimed and sick, even Claude being among the number.
But Paddy O"Connell--why, nothing less than dancing a jig could satisfy Paddy O"Connell, or keep his feelings of joy in anything like control.
"Bedad!" he told a messmate many months afterwards, "if it hadn"t been for that jig I"d have bursted entoirely, and it"s the truth I"m telling ye, and never a word av a lie in it aither."
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
"IT IS ALL LIKE A DREAM."
The journey back from the inland sea to the Yack village had been full of adventure and toil, but all happy; and there is hardly anything a person will not do or encounter when buoyed up with hope and joy.
They had stayed for two weeks at the village, that the invalids might recruit their health and strength; and then, with her sails outspread to a favouring breeze, southward she sped, literally on the wings of the wind.
"It is all like a dream," said Claude, as he sat by Meta"s side on the quarter-deck of the yacht _Alba_, one beautiful summer"s day just two months after the events related in the last chapter. "All like a dream, Meta." The vessel was coasting along the western sh.o.r.es of Scotland, many miles off the point of Ardnamurchan.
There was hardly a breath of air; just a little swell on, and a gentle ripple on each round heaving wave, with the sunshine weaving threads of brightest silver all through, and making rainbows in the spray and bubbles that floated away astern in the ship"s wake.
The _Alba_ and her happy crew were returning to their native land, and if nothing occurred they would cast anchor by next morning, at the tail of the bank.
"Yes, dear," replied Meta, "it is all like a dream--a long, long dismal dream."
"I"m not sorry it all occurred, though, Meta; it has tried your faith and mine as well; and perhaps, you know, if things had not turned out as they have done, my mother would never have consented to our union."
"Oh, I love your mother so, _so_ much!" exclaimed Meta, enthusiastically. "I loved her before we were a week together in the ship; but then--"
"Then what, dearest?"
"I was not happy, because, you must know, I thought I was deceiving her, that I was playing a double part, that I ought to have told her at once who I was."
"Do you know, Meta," said Claude, after a pause, "I do not think I shall ever doubt the goodness of Providence again. Oh! you cannot tell, love," he continued, "how dark my heart felt, how sad and gloomy, and how full of despair when poor Paddy reported the desertion of Jack and Joe, the Eskimo Indians. And yet, Meta, had they not deserted, your father would not have met them in the Yack village, and the probability is you would not have found us, or found us dead."
Poor Meta shuddered, and the tears rose to her eyes. Claude hastened to change the subject.
"Do you think, dear," he said, "you will like our country?"
Meta had not been enough in society to be anything else but candid.
"I"m sure I shall not at first," she replied; "only--"
She paused.
"I will be with you," said Claude, beaming.
"Yes. And after a time I dare say I shall get used to--to Scotland; but oh! never to England."
"We will keep this yacht, Meta."
"That will be delightful."
"And when tired of one place, we will go to another. I have a home in the wildest part of the Highlands of Ross; we will live much there. And we will sometimes cruise away north to Norway, and to your dear Icelandic home."
Meta was too happy to reply.
Claude"s thoughts were also very pleasant, so the lovers relapsed into silence.
There are, to my way of thinking, few events more sad than the breaking up of a ship"s company, on her return after a long voyage.
At sea we have been a little community--nay, more, a family almost. We have learned each other"s ways. We have learned to love our messmates, or at all events to regard them with friendship. We know their peculiarities, their habits, even their weak points and faults. We have been, indeed, more than a community; we have been a little world afloat, knowing as little for the time being of any other people as the inhabitants of one planet do about those of another.
But now with the paying-off of the ship"s crew all is over; from the moment the ship sails into the harbour all is changed, and every tie is ruthlessly snapped asunder.