The skipper then began to ask me a multitude of questions concerning the behaviour of the schooner.  But we were now passing through the narrow street and I was interrupted; for we overtook old Colin Lothian, the wandering beggar, who was trudging along over the frost-covered stones with his dog at his heels.

“Weel, Colin, auld crony,” exclaimed the skipper as we came alongside the old man, “you’re aye travelling.  Think you we’re to have some more snow?”

“Nay, captain, I dinna think it; the wind’s ower high for that,” the wanderer replied, looking up at the dull sky above Gray’s signboard.

“Then if it isna snow it’ll be a night o’ hard frost,” said the skipper.  “Will ye come in and take something to warm ye, Colin?”

And Colin silently complied.

Entering the inn we found a goodly number of men gathered round the cosy stove with steaming glasses before them.  Most of them were men of Pomona; but I noticed also a young man who sat somewhat apart from the rest, and in him, despite the absence of naval uniform, I had little difficulty in recognizing Lieutenant Fox of the Clasper, who had boarded the Falcon some weeks before in the Sound of Hoxa.

Then, too, there were Peter and Jerry, both of whom welcomed me with many words of kindness, and made room for me beside them.

Captain Flett ordered Oliver to bring in a glass of hot rum for himself, and two mugs of coffee for Lothian and me; and we had not been seated long before Peter Brown inquired of me the particulars of my solitary voyage in the Falcon.  At first very few of the men paid much attention to my narrative, but when I came to the discovery of the ship that had been imprisoned in the ice, and told about the man I saw through the porthole, they all drew their chairs nearer to me and listened with rapt attention.  When I spoke about the dead captain’s wife, and said that her features were still lifelike, there was a murmur of incredulity; none of the men would believe that I was not romancing.  But the young lieutenant here interposed.

“Let the lad go on with his yarn,” he said.  “Believe me it’s quite possible that the woman’s face should show no signs of death.  I have known frost and ice preserve a dead body for many months.”

With that they were quieted.  But again, when I spoke of the log book and said that the ship had been enclosed in the ice for thirteen years, even the lieutenant seemed to disbelieve me.

“Thirteen years!” he exclaimed.  “Come now, come, draw it mild, my lad, that won’t do at all, you’ve mistaken the writing somehow.  Show us the log book and then we’ll believe it.”

“I’m sure I did not mistake, sir,” I protested, “for the writing was as plain as plain could be,

“’New Year’s Day, 1831.  The ice still closing in on us.  Opened last bag of biscuits.  Murray died this morning.’

“These were the very words, and I’ll show you them if—­”