"fat, fair, and forty," and Buzzby's wife absolutely forbade him to go.
Alas! Buzzby was no longer his own master. At the age of forty-five he
became--as he himself expressed it--an abject slave, and he would as
soon have tried to steer in a slipper-bath right in the teeth of an
equinoctial hurricane, as have opposed the will of his wife. He used to
sigh gruffly when spoken to on this subject, and compare himself to a
Dutch galliot that made more leeway than headway, even with a wind on
the quarter. "Once," he would remark, "I was clipper-built, and could
sail right in the wind's eye; but ever since I tuck this craft in tow,
I've gone to leeward like a tub. In fact, I find there's only one way of
going ahead with my Poll, and that is right before the wind! I used to
yaw about a good deal at first, but she tuck that out o' me in a day or
two. If I put the helm only so much as one stroke to starboard, she guv'
a tug at the tow-rope that brought the wind dead aft again; so I've gi'n
it up, and lashed the tiller right amid-ships."

So Buzzby did not accompany his old commander; he did not even so much
as suggest the possibility of it; but he shook his head with great
solemnity, as he stood with Fred, and Mrs. Bright, and Isobel, at the
end of the pier, gazing at the brig, with one eye very much screwed up,
and a wistful expression in the other, while the graceful craft spread
out her canvas and bent over to the breeze.



CHAPTER II.

_Departure of the "Pole Star" for the Frozen Seas--Sage reflections of
Mrs. Bright, and sagacious remarks of Buzzby--Anxieties, fears,
surmises, and resolutions--Isabel--A search proposed--Departure of the