Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/136

 *comfortable rather than dangerous, as there was always help at hand.

The schooner was, for a time, in rather an alarming situation, and there were many doubts as to whether we should get her off; but not even the consciousness of this circumstance, nor the repeated plunges into the water by the giving way and tilting of the ice, could destroy the inexhaustible fund of good-humor of the ship's company. From this happy disposition I must, however, except two individuals, who were always apt to be possessed of a sort of ludicrous gravity when there was least occasion for it, and, as is usual with such persons, they were not very serviceably employed. One of them, with great seriousness and an immense amount of misdirected energy, commenced chopping into my best nine-inch hawser, that was in nobody's way; and the other, with equal solemnity, began vigorously to break up my oars in pushing off pieces of ice which were doing nobody any harm. He even tried to push the schooner off the rocks, alone and unaided, with the tide-pole, an instrument which had cost McCormick two days to manufacture. Of course, the instrument was broken; but the poor man was saved from the sailing-master's just indignation by following the fragments into the sea, where he was consoled, in the place of prompt assistance, with assurances that if he did not make haste the shrimps would be after him, and leave nothing of him but a skeleton for the Commander's collection. The temperature was not below zero, and no worse results followed our exposure than a slight pleurisy to the mate and a few twitches of rheumatism to the destroyer of my oars.

Our efforts were, however, finally rewarded with