laddie; if I were skipper I'd joost hae plenty o' food and claes
pit upon the ice, and camp there wi' the boats hanging on aboot. We
could tak' to them when the ice was a' melted doon, an'--"

"Here, hi! lend a hand, my lad!" shouted the mate, and Andrew trotted
off, leaving Steve more low-spirited than ever.

For it seemed so terrible, just on the threshold of an exciting voyage,
in which he had painted to himself plenty of sport and adventure, ending
in the discovery of his uncle and the men who had been his companions.
All had gone wrong, and he felt that they would have to accept their
failure, and try to get back to the nearest Norwegian port, a terribly
dangerous journey in an open boat.

And now, more than ever, he felt the want of some companionship, and,
with a feeling of regret, he thought of the one nearest to him in years.

"They're all men," he said to himself, "and I'm only a boy. They don't
think about me. Wish I hadn't kicked poor old Watty."

As he thought this he walked to the door of the galley and looked in, to
find that the cook was rating the boy of whom he had been thinking.

"What!" he was saying; "want to go and be ready to take to the boats?
You stay where you are till you're wanted. They won't leave us behind.
Such a fuss about getting up a bit of steam; why, I'd have made that
water boil an hour ago if I'd had it to do. They don't know how to
manage it!"

"Ow--!"

This was a dismal beginning of a howl from Watty.

"Here, stop that, you miserable Highland calf! You've got breeches on,
so I suppose you're a boy! Do you suppose an English lad would make
that row? I'll be bound to say Mr Steve Young's somewhere aft, with
his hands in his pockets as usual, looking on as cool as a cucumber."

"Na, he's a cooard!" cried Watty viciously,--"a lang, ugly cooard!
Makking a show o' gooing up aloft, and all the time had to be held on."

"You'd better not let him hear you say that, my lad, or he'll thrash
you."

"Yah! not he!" whined the boy. "He's a cooard, that's what he is; and
he's on deck waiting to be ane of the fust to go off in the boots, and
I'm kep' doon here."

"Stop that row!" cried the cook viciously.

"I canna, I canna! Awm thenking aboot my mither!"

"Bo! you great goose! And nice and proud your mither' must be of such a
booby."

"But I dinna want to be drooned!" sobbed Watty.

"Then what are you drooning yourself for in hot water? It don't improve
you a bit,