268 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



and the table actually shifted on its gimbals. The sound of many 

 running feet could be heard on the icy deck above. 



"You'd better get started," Captain Hardwicke said. 



And half an hour later two parties went over the icicle-festooned 

 side, bundled up in every scrap of clothing they could find, and 

 armed with a variety of lines and tools. One, led by a very busy and' 

 vociferous seaman named Bates, immediately straggled out across the 

 endless, glaring ice in the direction of a tiny black point near the 

 western horizon like a fly speck on a vast hospital wall — the doomed 

 ship Truelove entombed in her prison of frozen sea. The other, 

 which comprised all the officers, the carpenter, the cooper, and the 

 smithy, just stood about, whacking their arms across their shoulders, 

 puffing jets of frosted vapor from behind the fur trimming of their 

 face hoods, or stamping their feet on the ice so that it rang like metal 

 sheeting. Only one man in this second party was doing anything. He 

 was a thin youth, with strange, almost colorless eyes, jet-black brows, 

 and a tiny pointed beard. He did not even wear a hood but had a 

 towel wrapped around his head, and he did not puff steam Hke the 

 rest. He moved slowly along the straining sides of the ship, pressing 

 a hand or a cheek against her frozen planks, and he seemed to be 

 listening. Why his flesh did not freeze to the slick paint nobody 

 could understand, but he did not even seem to notice the cold. 



It was a strange scene. The great ship lay still under the glistening 

 sun, with a slight list to starboard, like a dead thing, and her tall 

 spars and wide yards spread black against the searing white sky. She 

 looked as if she were just resting gently while some kindly sea thing 

 caressed her; yet she was, for all useful purposes, already a hulk and 

 might just as well have been rotting on the bottom. Between such a 

 position and a more useful future stood nothing but a strange mysti- 

 cal youth who professed he talked with fairies and who ordered his 

 eating by lights he said he saw in the sky. Yet the ship seemed to 

 have confidence in this creature, as did the other men standing stu- 

 pidly around. Not once did she crack, shudder, moan, or shift dur- 

 ing the whole long hour he moved slowly around her sides. 



Then the boy stopped suddenly athwart the foremast on her port 

 side. He placed both hands and his right cheek on her side and she 

 instantly gave a tremendous shudder. 



"Fruch nahil," or something sounding like that, he called out, 



