Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/75



It was in some measure to show my appreciation of the spirit which prompted these warm-hearted people that I resolved to signalize our departure with a lunch to the representatives of King Frederick the Seventh, at this most northern outpost of Christian settlement. Accordingly I sent my secretary, Mr. Knorr, out with some formal-looking invitations, gotten up in all the dignity of Parisian paper and rose-scented wax. He came back in a few hours with three couples. Two of the ladies were from the parsonage; the other was the wife of the Chief Trader. Dr. Rudolph, Mr. Hansen, and the missionary, were their escorts. The master of the Thialfe was already on board.

Meanwhile our old Swedish cook had gone half crazy, and the steward kept him company. To prepare a lunch for ladies in these high latitudes was not within their conception of the hard-fisted requirements of exploration dignity. They "could not understand it." The steward contrived, however, to stow away in the bunks the seal-skins which encumbered the cabin, and thus got rid of all our Greenland rubbish but the odor. But it was not until the clean white table-cloth, which he produced from some out-of-the-way locker, was covered with the smoking dishes which his ingenuity had contrived, that his face was lit up with any thing approaching the kindly. Being, however, in a general way a mild-mannered man, his ferocious looks did not materially affect the progress of the preparations; and the solemn face with which he predicted, in great confidence, to the cook that "such folly would bring us all to ruin, indeed it would," at length wore a ghastly smile, and finally exhibited decided manifestations of a forgiving dis