Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/104

 the surface of the water. The depth of water proved, however, to be greater than at first appeared, but the keel actually touched twice as we shot through the opening; and while the schooner was, with some hesitancy and evident reluctance, doing this sledge duty, I must own that I wished myself anywhere else than on her fore-yard.

The officers and men amused themselves with our new allies. Hans was delighted, and he expressed himself with as much enthusiasm as was consistent with his stolid temperament. His wife exhibited a mixture of bewilderment and pride; and, apparently overwhelmed with the novelty of the situation in which she so suddenly found herself, seemed to have contracted a chronic grin; while her baby laughed and crowed and cried as all other babies do.

The sailors set to work at once with tubs of warm water and with soap, scissors, and comb, to prepare them for red shirts and other similar luxuries of civilization. At this latter they were overjoyed, and strutted about the deck with much the same air of exalted consequence as that of a boy who has been freshly promoted from frock and shoes to pantaloons and boots; but it must be owned that the soap-and-water arrangement was not so highly appreciated; and well they might object, for they were not used to it. At first the whole procedure seemed to be great sport, but at length the wife began to cry, and demanded of her husband to know whether this was a white man's religious rite, with an expression of countenance which appeared to indicate that it was regarded by her as a refined method of Christian torture. The family were finally stowed away for the night down among the ropes and sails in the "ship's eyes;" and one of the