Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 2.djvu/257

 treated as precious cargo on this vessel, and well provided for.

Dr. Clawbonny looked after himself, and he had had plenty of time, as he had taken possession of his cabin since the 5th of February, the day the Forward was launched.

"The happiest of the animals," he said, "would be a snail, who could make a shell to his own liking, and I mean to be an intelligent snail."

And truly his shell did him credit, for the Doctor took a perfect delight in arranging his scientific treasures. His books, and herbals, and cases, and mathematical instruments; his thermometer, and barometers, and hygrometers, and udometers; his glasses, and compasses, and sextants; and maps and charts; and phials, and powders, and medicine-bottles—all were arranged and classified with an amount of order that might have shamed the British Museum. Inestimable riches were stored up in that small space of six feet square, and it must be owned the good Doctor was not a little proud of his sanctum, though three of his least corpulent friends would have sufficed to crowd it uncomfortably.

To complete the description of the Forward it need only further be said that the dog's-kennel was built right below the window of the mysterious cabin, but its savage inmate preferred wandering between decks and in the hold. It seemed impossible to make him sociable, nobody could do anything with him, and in the night his piteous howls would resound through the whole vessel.

What was the reason? Could it be grief for his absent master? or was it instinctive fear of the voyage? or did it bode approaching danger. This last was the common opinion among the sailors, and many a one joked over it who verily believed the poor dog was an imp of the devil.

Pen, a coarse brutal fellow at all times, rushed so furiously at the beast one day that he fell right against the capstan, and split his head open frightfully. Of course this accident was laid to the "uncanny dog's account."

Clifton was the most superstitious of all the crew, and he made the singular discovery, that whenever the animal was promenading the deck he went to the side the wind was, changing his position as the ship tacked, just as if he had been the captain.