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Updated: May 8, 2025
In the We're Here's cabin the fathers took stock of each other behind their cigars. Cheyne knew well enough when he dealt with a man to whom he could not offer money; equally well he knew that no money could pay for what Disko had done. He kept his own counsel and waited for an opening.
The woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled down the ladder, and stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft. "Be you anyways interested in Harve?" said Disko. "Well, ye-es." "He's a good boy, an' ketches right hold jest as he's bid. You've heard haow we found him? He was sufferin' from nervous prostration, I guess, 'r else his head had hit somethin', when we hauled him aboard.
Disko spoke of whaling voyages in the Fifties; of great she-whales slain beside their young; of death agonies on the black tossing seas, and blood that spurted forty feet in the air; of boats smashed to splinters; of patent rockets that went off wrong-end-first and bombarded the trembling crews; of cutting-in and boiling-down, and that terrible "nip" of '71, when twelve hundred men were made homeless on the ice in three days wonderful tales, all true.
The hour struck clear in the cabin; the nosing bows slapped and scuffed with the seas; the foc'sle stove-pipe hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it; and the boys slept on, while Disko, Long Jack, Tom Platt, and Uncle Salters, each in turn, stumped aft to look at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor held, or to veer out a little more cable against chafing, with a glance at the dim anchor-light between each round.
Harvey would tallow the cup at the end, and carefully bring the sand, shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to Disko, who fingered and smelt it and gave judgment As has been said, when Disko thought of cod he thought as a cod; and by some long-tested mixture of instinct and experience, moved the We're Here from berth to berth, always with the fish, as a blindfolded chess-player moves on the unseen board.
Harvey could have sworn that a bright sun was shining upon his lifted face; but the drawl went on: "Sa-ay! You fellers guyed us consid'rable t'other night." "We don't feel like guyin' any now," said Disko. "I know it; but to tell the honest truth we was kinder kinder driftin' when we run agin young Olley."
Next day they encountered the first ice, huge floating icebergs of wild, jagged form or washed into rounded lumps by the action of the waves, and ten days later the ships anchored near Disko Island, on the west coast of Greenland. Here they met another vessel which had come up north with an additional store of provisions and equipment.
The said "hog-yoke," an Eldridge chart, the farming almanac, Blunt's "Coast Pilot," and Bowditch's "Navigator" were all the weapons Disko needed to guide him, except the deep-sea lead that was his spare eye.
There was a rapping on the deck. "Uncle Salters has catched his luck," said Dan as his father departed. "It's blown clear," Disko cried, and all the foc'sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great rollers behind it.
The rigging dripped clammy drops, and the men lounged along the lee of the house all save Uncle Salters, who sat stiffly on the main-hatch nursing his stung hands. "Guess she'd carry stays'l," said Disko, rolling one eye at his brother. "Guess she wouldn't to any sorter profit. What's the sense o' wastin' canvas?" the farmer-sailor replied.
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