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Jennette Lee
A New "Uncle William" Story
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“She’s a good boat,” said the tall man.
“She’s all right, Benjy—and they’re nice children,” responded Uncle William, “and I hope they won’t hurry a mite about getting round the earth.... The rate they’re goin’ now—when they wrote—I reckon it ’ll take just about twenty-five years,” he said reflectively.... “They don’t say how far North they plan to make, but I kind o’ reckon they ’ll cut across from here—from Battle Harbor to Disco, and then skirt along down the Cape, and up,”... His finger followed the course with slow touch and the smoke curled about his head with deep, contemplative puffs. His eye ran back over the course and lingered on a bit of clear water to the North. “It does seem a pity not to go up there—when they’re so near,” he said regretfully, “and best kind of weather, too.”... His eye grew dreamy—“It was along ’71, I sailed there—along with Captain Hall—You know that last voyage of his? We had one eye on whales and one on the Pole, I reckon... and the Polaris, she edged and edged, up and up. Some days I didn’t know but she would strike the Pole—run smack into it.... We ’d got up here through the Strait and up Smith’s Sound... and on beyond—the farthest of anybody’t that time—and Captain Hall, he was for pushing on—and all of ’em, except Buddington—he was sailing master and that slow, cautious kind—no sort o’ timber to go after the North Pole with—but he said we ’d winter right there—’twas somewheres along in August then—and we run back a little to a good place—and that’s where it got its name now, ’Polaris Bay’—we was the ones that named it.” Uncle William looked at it, with the pride of possession, and rubbed his finger on it. “Well, we stayed there.... But Captain Hall—you couldn’t hold him still, and he was all the time sledgin’ off, one way and another—to see what the earth was doin’ up that way—and it run along into October—the last of the month—It all seems like yesterday,” said Uncle William slowly.... “I was a young fellow, you see—not more ’n twenty-two-three, and I’d left Jennie down here, and gone up there—so’s to make money faster.”—His eye traveled about the red room... and came back to the map... “and there we was, settin’ down up there—waitin’ for winter and not a whale in sight—and then, all of a sudden, before you could say Jack Robinson—Captain Hall died.... There was whisperin’s around among the crew about the way he was took and the Navy went into it later—but nothin’ was proved... and Captain Buddington wa’ n’t the kind of man you could stand up to—captain or sailin’ master, or what, he ’d have his way... and we stayed there best part of a year. Then he said we was goin’ home—I remember,’. if it was yesterday, the day we got wind what he was plannin’ for. I’d been out off from the boat all day.... and when I came in George Pelman, he whispered to me we was goin’ home—and then, all in a minute, out there in the snow, I see Jennie’s face looking to me and smilin’, and my eyes kind o’ blurred—with the snow and all that—and that was the last time I see her—” said Uncle William slowly. “She died that winter.... When we got home, along in the spring, they told me she had waited—seems ’s if she kind o’ made her body wait till I’d come—They said it was like her spirit died out, faint, till it just wa ’n’t there.... So that’s the way I come to be here alone... and it seemed pretty good when Benjy come back so, one day, all out o’ nothin’—and there he was standin’ in that door....”
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