Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 2.djvu/255

 to instruct us, for we shall come across other nations with different customs from our own; she is going, in short, where I have never been."

"But you know nothing more definite than that?" exclaimed Shandon.

"I have heard some talk of her going to the North Seas. So much the better if we are bound for the Arctic."

"But don't you know the captain?" asked Shandon again.

"Not at all; but he is a brave fellow, you may be sure."

By this time the steamer had arrived at Birkenhead, and Clawbonny and Shandon landed on the pier, and at once repaired to the shipbuilding-yard. The sight of the brig almost made the little doctor beside himself with joy, and he went subsequently every day to look at her on the stocks.

He made his abode with Shandon, and undertook the arrangement of the medicine-chest, for he was a duly qualified doctor and a clever man, though rather unpractical. At twenty-five years of age he was just an ordinary surgeon, but at forty he was a learned man, well known throughout the whole city, and a leading member of the Literary and Philosophical Institute of Liverpool. He possessed a small private fortune, which enabled him to practice gratuitously in a great many cases, and his extreme amiability made him universally beloved. He never did an injury to a single human being, not even to himself. Lively and rattling as he was, and an incessant talker, he had an open heart and hand for everybody.

As soon as the news of his appointment to the Forward spread through the city, his friends besieged him with solicitations to remain at home. But their arguments and entreaties only made him more determined to go, and when the little man once got a crotchet in his brain no one could turn him from it.

On the 5th of February the Forward was launched, and two months later she was ready to go to sea.

Punctually to the time, on the very day fixed for his coming by the captain's letter, a large Danish dog made his appearance, sent by rail from Edinburgh to Richard Shandon's address. He was an ill-favored, snappish, unsociable animal, with a peculiar expression in his eye. A