“If Sammy goes, I go,” said Mrs. Block. “If it is dangerous for me, it
is dangerous for him. I have been tryin' to get sense enough in his head
to make him stay at home, but I can't do it; so I have made up my mind
that I go with him or he don't go. We have travelled together on top
of the land, and we have travelled together on top of the water, and if
there's to be travellin' under the water, why then we travel together
all the same. If Sammy goes polin', I go polin'. I think he's a fool to
do it; but if he's goin' to be a fool, I am goin' to be a fool. And as
for my bein' in the way, you needn't think of that, Mr. Clewe. I can
cook for the livin', I can take care of the sick, and I can sew up the
dead in shrouds.”
“All right, Mrs. Block,” said Clewe. “If you insist on it, and Sammy is
willing, you may go; but I will beg of you not to say anything about the
third class of good offices which you propose to perform for the party,
for it might cast a gloom over some of the weaker-minded.”
“Cast a gloom!” said Mrs. Block. “If all I hear is true, there will be
a general gloom over everything that will be like havin' a black
pocket-handkercher tied over your head, and I don't know that anything I
could say would make that gloom more gloomier.”
When Margaret Raleigh parted with Clewe on the deck of the Go Lightly,
the large electric vessel which was to tow the Dipsey up to the limits
of navigable Northern waters, she knew he must make a long journey,
nearly twice as far as the voyage to England, before she could hear
from him; but when he arrived at Cape Tariff, a point far up on the
northwestern coast of Greenland, she would hear from him; for from this
point there was telegraphic communication with the rest of the world.
There was a little station there, established by some commercial
companies, and their agent was a telegraph-operator.
The passage from New York to Cape Tariff was an uneventful one, and when
Clewe disembarked at the lonely Greenland station he was greeted by a
long message from Mrs. Raleigh, the principal import of which was
that on no account must he allow himself to be persuaded to go on the
submarine voyage of the Dipsey. On his part, Clewe had no desire to make
any change in his plans. During all the long voyage northward his heart
had been at Sardis.
The Dipsey was a comparatively small vessel, but it afforded comfortable
accommodations for a dozen or more people, and there was room for all
the stores which would be needed for a year. She was furnished, besides,
with books and every useful and convenient contrivance which had been
thought desirable for her peculiar expedition.
When everything was ready, Roland Clewe took leave of the officers, the
crew, and the passenger on board the Dipsey, and the last-mentioned, as
she shook hands with him, shed tears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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