The novel, Fast in the Ice written by R.M. Ballantyne has a story of much hearty cheer given as the brig left Old England for the Polar Seas. Many a tearful eye gazed that day as she steered her course into the unknown regions of the far north. But she was never welcomed back with a cheer, and no one ever looked up to see her sails heading toward land as they rose on the distant horizon. The captain of the brig Harvey was a tall, strong man, with short, curly black hair and stern black eyes. The narrator refers to Frome as "the yank of a chain" and depicts him as "the most stunning figure in Starkfield," "the ruin of a man," and with a "careless powerful look, in spite of a lameness stopping each movement." The narrator seeks to discover more about him out of curiosity. He learns that Frome's limp resulted from an injury sustained in a "smash-up" twenty-four years earlier, but further information is withheld. The narrator also learns little else from Frome's neighbors, aside from the fact that Ethan's attempt at higher education decades earlier was derailed by his father's sudden illness following an injury, which forced him to return to the farm to help his parents and never leave again.
