“If Leonardo done it,
It is a masterpiece.
If Mr. Lucas made it,
’Tis but a mass o’ grease.”
“We gotta git some pitchers fer them walls,” declared Sipes, “an’ you buy ’em fer us. Git some colored ones that’s got boats in ’em, an’ some fight’n scenes. I’d like to git a nice smooth han’-painted pitcher o’ John L. Sullivan, an’ I don’t care wot it costs!”
The old man wanted these things to enjoy. His purse pride had not yet suggested the idea of posing as a connoisseur and condescending patron of the enshrined dead, without love or understanding of what they did, but the germs were there that might enthrall him in the future, for affluence sometimes begets strange vanities.
Great masses of ice had been tumbled and heaped along the shore by the winter waves, and we saw little of the lake, except when we climbed the bluffs. The winds howled over the desolate beach at night in angry portent, and one morning a driving storm came out of the north. Occasionally, from somewhere out above the waves that thundered against the ice, we could hear plaintive cries of gulls that groped through the blinding snow. The drifts piled high against the bluffs on the wild coast. The flying flakes were swept along in thick clouds by the fury of the gale. The house was almost buried. The wind subsided after about twenty-four hours, but the snow continued and fell ceaselessly for three days.
When the skies cleared we opened the trap door to the “crow’s nest,” the covered platform over the roof, and looked out over the white waste. A few straggling crows accented the immaculate expanse, the blue billows were pounding the ice packs, and a part of the mast of the Crawfish protruded in the foreground, but everything else was white and still.
We were snowbound for ten days, but contentment reigned at Shipmates’ Rest. We dug deep paths that enabled us to reach our water supply, and to communicate with Napoleon in his cosy little barn in the ravine.
The plentiful supply of canned goods, that Narcissus had wisely laid in, was drawn upon for sustenance.
“Them air-tights is life savers!” exclaimed Sipes, as he mixed up some lobster, lima beans, ripe olives, and prunes on his plate. “Wot’s the use o’ monkeyin’ with them fresh things w’en you c’n git grub like this that’s all cooked an’ ready? All ye need is a can opener to live up as high as ye want to go. Gimme some o’ that pineapple fer this lobster, an’ pass John them dill pickles!”
“You better let Cookie chop up that mess fer you an’ squirt some lollydop on it, an’ eat it with a spoon,” advised Saunders; “yer git’n’ it all over us!”
“It’s too bad they can’t can pie,” said Sipes, “but we got pudd’n’s. Hi, there, Cookie, fetch some o’ them little brown cans an’ tap ’em!”