" Having no other resource, I determined once more
to try my fortune upon the ocean.
* * * * *
"Allah wakbar--God is everywhere! It was your talleh--your destiny,
Huckaback."
"It was his kismet--his fate, your sublime highness," rejoined Mustapha,
"that he should go through those perils to amuse your leisure hours."
"Wallah Thaib--well said, by Allah! Let the slave rejoice in our bounty.
Give him ten pieces of gold; we will open our ears to his next voyage
to-morrow. Murakhas, you are dismissed."
"May your sublime shadow never be less," replied Huckaback, as he
salaamed out of the pacha's presence.
Chapter XIII
THE LAST VOYAGE OF HUCKABACK.
Your highness will be surprised at the unheard-of adventures that
occurred to me in my last voyage, and I think I can boldly assert that
no man, either before or since, has explored so much, or has been in the
peculiarly dangerous situations in which I have been placed by destiny.
Notwithstanding the danger which I incurred from my former expedition to
the Northern Ocean, I was persuaded to take the command of a whaler
about to proceed to those latitudes: we sailed from Marseilles early in
the year that we might arrive at the northward in good time, and be able
to quit the Frozen Ocean before the winter had set in. We were very
fortunate on our arrival at Baffin's Bay, and very soon had eighteen
fish on board. The autumn was hardly commenced before I proposed to
return, and we were steering in a southerly direction, when we
encountered two or three large icebergs, upon the edges of which the
walruses or sea-horses were lying in herds.
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