CHAPTER XXXI
A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE
“Our fortune?” repeated Will, in vague wonderment.
“Yes, Will,” replied Alan, looking around to see that they were not observed. “That cask contains valuable property. No matter what just now. I brought it from the ship to here, heavy as it is, and it has been a source of mystery to the crew all along. I had reasons for not telling them its contents, but if we succeed in getting it safely home we will be rich, and they shall not be forgotten. Someone is coming,” and the appearance of a sailor interrupted the conversation.
The barrel was conveyed to the ship, and Captain Bertram, having some business to discuss with the captain of the ship, Will decided to return to the settlement.
He did not go as they had come, by land, but in an adventurous spirit set out to cross on the ice, which was broken up and already floating.
Leaping from cake to cake, he enjoyed the sport until he found himself on a large piece which, when he came to leave it, had floated several feet from any other piece.
“It will float against some of them again,” he murmured, but to his consternation, he observed that the entire mass was floating rapidly seawards.
He had reason for apprehension now, for he was fast getting in open water.
He could not venture to swim with his heavy clothing on, and besides the ice, if it came together, would crush him.
His face paled as he saw that no one was in sight on land and that the ice was moving in a swift current.
“I am lost!” he cried, wildly. “Oh! why did I foolishly venture on the ice?”
But it was too late to remedy his error, and he could only hope he might drift to some floe.
Darkness came down over the scene. The shore had disappeared. He was afloat on a cake of ice in the open sea!
The horrors of that night poor Will never forgot. At the very verge of a swift journey home with his recovered brother, the cup of happiness seemed dashed from his lips.
In his awful peril eternity loomed before him, and, after an hour of fervent prayer, he resigned himself to his fate.
In wandering over the piece of ice he slipped and fell. The contact with a jagged edge stunned him, and he knew no more.
When he awakened to consciousness he was lying in a warm, cozy bunk, a grizzled old sailor bending over him.
His head was bandaged and he was weak and feverish.
“Well, lad, you’ve come back to life at last, it seems,” spoke a gruff, but kindly voice.
“Where am I?”
“On board the whaler Penguin.”
“How did I come here?”
“Picked up on a floating cake of ice.”
“When—last night?”
The sailor laughed.
“No, indeed. A week ago.”
“And I have been here since?”
“Under the surgeon’s care, yes.”
“Then I must have been injured?”
“You had an ugly cut in the head, and you’ve been delirious since.”
Will thought of his brother Alan with anxiety as he contemplated his grief when he found him gone.
He consoled himself with the thought, however, that Captain Bertram would soon sail for home.
The Penguin made a rapid voyage.
One bright morning the ship anchored at Portland.
The captain provided Will with sufficient money to reach home.
Hence he had sailed a stowaway months previous.
He had returned as poor as he went away, but his experience had been of a character likely to benefit him in after years.
He proceeded within twenty miles of Watertown by rail.
A coach took him to Princeton, ten miles nearer.
Here, just at dusk, he entered a little store to purchase something to eat and was emerging a minute later, when he started and then stood dumbfounded.
A man walking briskly had stopped as abruptly as himself.
“Will Bertram!” cried the man, wildly. “What does this mean? How came you here?”
It was Captain Stephen Morris!
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