Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/98

84, he had the knack of languages. He understood Eskimos and made the Eskimos understand him.

Jules Brunton, first mate, was ten years younger than these two, and had been skipper of a Cape Breton fishing smack till he entered under McNeal in the Aurora. He was a big, powerful man, friendly and smiling; and he possessed a fine barytone voice in which he sang French ballads. Appearing in the morning, he had a word for every man and dog in sight; and he could be heard humming to himself in the night when he stood his lonely watch at the wheel.

Olaf Michaelis, "the melancholy Dane," matched Brunton in size and endurance. He had been a stranger to the others till they took the Viborg at Copenhagen. Michaelis' Arctic experience had been entirely on that vessel; he had been in the crew on both of its earlier voyages into the Arctic. He was a quiet man with a reputation for sticking to his post in trouble. Given an order, he obeyed implicitly.

Hugo Linn, the cook, was the fourth of the present crew who had been on the Aurora. He