d. No excitement. You will be quite cool?"

"Yes," cried Steve, snatching at the glass and starting for the
main-mast shrouds.

"Stop!" cried the captain. "Come here."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

AMONG THE NATIVES.

Steve walked back to the captain looking puzzled, and feeling damped by
this sudden change, while his eyes gazed questioningly in his leader's.

"What did I say to you?" cried Captain Marsham.

"I was to go up to the crow's-nest and make observations," replied the
boy.

"Coolly, warily, and without excitement, because you were going to make
a dangerous ascent, over what is ten times as slippery as glass."

"Yes," said Steve; "and I was going."

"Going!" cried the captain angrily. "Yes, just as if you were about to
run up somebody's carefully sanded steps to the front door."

"But I should have been as careful as could be as soon as I started,
sir."

"It looked like it. What do you say, doctor?"

"That he seemed to me as if he would have given me a job to mend some of
his bones before he was half-way to the main-top."

"Oh, Mr Handscombe!" cried Steve reproachfully.

"It's a fact, sir," said the captain sternly. "I dare not let you go
about so serious a task in that jaunty way. There, give me the glass."

Steve slowly handed the glass, in so despondent a fashion that the
captain spoke more quietly.

"I can't help it, my lad. I regret checking you; but you see the state
of the rigging, and that a slip might be fatal. I dare not let you go."

Steve said nothing, but glanced up at the crow's-nest, which glistened
like silver in the sunshine; and he noted again how the rope ladders
were all coated with ice, and he found it hard to imagine that he had
been jaunty and careless; he told himself he had only been eager to do
what was required, and hence it seemed to be doubly hard.

"I did mean to be very careful, sir," he said at last.

"I know it, my lad," replied the captain quietly; "but I was wrong to
think of it, and your quick, eager way showed me the risk, and made me
wiser."

"But I don't think it is so dangerous, sir," cried Steve. "Let me try."

"I do think it dangerous," said the captain. "There, you shall hear
another opinion. Johannes!"

The Norseman answered the hail, and came quickly aft, after laying down
his pole.

"Can you get up to the crow's-nest, and make a few observations?"

The man looked up at the ice-hardened rigging, and his eyebrows
contracted a li