Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/526

17, 1859.]



were running so far south that the sailors said in jest that the skipper intended to circumnavigate the Pole. A snow-drift three feet deep often lay upon the lee side of the quarter-deck; big icicles bristled, bayonet-like, beneath the gallows and even ruffed the galley; hot water had to be poured upon the blocks before the iron rod-like ropes and fast-jammed sheeves would move. Far into the morning a dull dusk continued; the day was but a twilight; the stars came out at three. An ice -watch had been set, for a huge berg, more than a mile long and some seven or eight hundred feet high, had passed us at noon in very disagreeable propinquity. The sight of that dismal Delos sullenly surging on the leaden waves—lit by a few shivering sunbeams from a patch of cold yellow in the leaden sky—had cast a chill upon our spirits, too. It wasn't pleasant to remember, as the brief day waned, that we might be running right on to a similar monster slowly coming up to meet us. No songs were sung that night at the little club, which a few of us had got up in the second mate's cabin. He lay smoking within his bunk, determined to be warm as long as he could, and dreading the approach of eight bells, when he would have to take the deck. We, the passengers whom he admitted to his sanctum for the sake of the entertainment, vocal and conversational, we gave him, were by no means paying our rent for the apartment, but sat on box and bench, puffing our pipes and sipping our grog in the most solemn of silences.

"Why, I verily believe you're funky!" presently cried out the mirth-loving little officer. "If you can't sing us a song, you might spin us a yarn."

But even our anecdotical powers were frozen, and we should have spent a very Quaker-like evening, had not our host thrust aside his red curtain, and given three hearty knocks on the bulkhead which separated his "house" from that in which the carpenter and sail-maker were lodged.

"What's wanted?" was the responsive query.

"You, Chips!" the reply.

Presently the cabin-door opened; and, preceded by a blast that pierced like a plump of Cossack lances, Chips thrust his blue-brown face and snow-powdered whiskers—frosted before by age—into our little company. It was as much as he could do to shut the door again, for the wind pushed solidly against it, like a beam. At last, however, it was secured, and the carpenter, having been provided with a seat on a water-cask, and a glass of rum from a carboy of that beverage, which served as our common decanter, was told why he had been sent for.

"These gentlemen are all in the downs to-night," said the mate, "so I want you to spin us one of your yarns to enliven us a bit."

Chips's notion of cheerful narrative must have