The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World of Ice, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: The World of Ice

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21711]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD OF ICE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

THE WORLD OF ICE, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

CHAPTER ONE.

SOME OF THE dramatis personae INTRODUCED--RETROSPECTIVE GLANCES--CAUSES
OF FUTURE EFFECTS--OUR HERO'S EARLY LIFE AT SEA--A PIRATE--A TERRIBLE
FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES--BUZZBY'S HELM LASHED AMIDSHIPS--A WHALING
CRUISE BEGUN.

Nobody ever caught John Buzzby asleep by any chance whatever. No weasel
was ever half so sensitive on that point as he was. Wherever he
happened to be (and in the course of his adventurous life he had been to
nearly all parts of the known world) he was the first awake in the
morning and the last asleep at night; he always answered promptly to the
first call, and was never known by any man living to have been seen with
his eyes shut, except when he winked, and that operation he performed
less frequently than other men.

John Buzzby was an old salt--a regular true-blue jack tar of the old
school, who had been born and bred at sea; had visited foreign parts
innumerable; had weathered more storms than he could count, and had
witnessed more strange sights than he could remember. He was tough, and
sturdy, and grizzled, and broad, and square, and massive--a first-rate
specimen of a John Bull, and, according to himself, "always kept his
weather-eye open." This remark of his was apt to create confusion in
the minds of his hearers, for John meant the expression to be understood
figuratively, while, in point of fact, he almost always kept one of his
literal eyes open and the other partially closed, but as he reversed the
order of arrangement frequently, he might have been said to keep his
lee-eye as much open as the weather one. This peculiarity gave to his
countenance an expression of earnest thoughtfulness mingled with humour.
Buzzby was fond of being thought old, and he looked much older than he
really was. Men guessed his age at fifty-five, but they were