Solemnly first De Long, then Chipp, Ambler and I all shook our heads, gazing blandly at Collins for further elucidation as to what the joke might be.
Collins looked from one to another of us, then in disgust burst out,
“The farther all of you get from San Francisco, the weaker grow your intellects!” He leaned back sulkily. “By the time we get to the Pole, you won’t know your own names. Why, that one’s good! They’d see it in New York right off. I’ve half a mind to try it out on that Indian, Alexey. I’ll bet even he sees it!”
“Why don’t you try it on Ah Sam instead, then?” queried Danenhower, rising. “If our cook sees it, there’s hope. Maybe next you can make him see why he ought to put some coffee berries in the pot when he makes coffee, and that’ll be something even my thick skull can understand!” He jerked on his peacoat, lifted his bulky form from his chair, and strode to the door. “I’m going on deck. I’m too dumb, I guess, to see the points of Collins’ puns. But maybe if I’m not too blind yet, I can see the ice, anyway.”
With a wink at Ambler, our navigator vanished. It seemed to be working; perhaps we might yet cure Collins of his continuous stream of puns, for most of them were atrocious, and anyway, having now had a chance to get acquainted at close range with punning, I heartily agreed with whoever it was, Samuel Johnson I think, in averring that a pun was the lowest form of wit. With us the case was serious—here with the long Arctic night approaching, locking us within the narrow confines of our vessel, we were shipmates with a punster and no escape except to break him of it!
I rose also and went out on deck, the while Collins turned his attention to Dunbar, trying to get him, who also knew something of navigation, to admit that he at least saw the point in the meteorologist’s play on words, but I am afraid he picked the wrong person, for Dunbar’s grim visage remained wholly unresponsive.
Out on deck, clad in a heavy peacoat with a sealskin cap jammed tightly down over my bald spot, for the temperature was down to 26° F., I looked around. A distant view was impossible because of fog. Nearby were a few disconnected pools of water covered by thin ice, but short of miraculously jumping the ship from one pool to another over the intervening floes, there seemed no way for us to make progress. I glanced down our side. For several feet above the waterline, the paint was gone and our elm doubling was everywhere scraped bright with here and there a deep gouge in the wood from some jagged floe.
De Long joined me at the rail, looked despondently off through the mist, his pipe clenched between his teeth, the while he puffed vigorously away at it.
“A grand country for any man to learn patience in, chief,” he remarked glumly. “Since we can’t push through the pack to Wrangel Land over there on the western horizon, I’ve been hoping and praying at least to get the ship in to Herald Island to make winter quarters before we were frozen in, but look what’s happened!” He gazed over the bulwark at the nearby hummocks. “Yesterday I hoped today would make us an opening through to the land; today I hope tomorrow’ll do it. And tomorrow—?” He shrugged his shoulders and left me, to climb our frosted ratlines to the crow’s-nest on the chance that from that elevation he might see over the fog. This turned out a futile effort, since not till one p.m. when the fog finally lifted, were we able to move.
With the weather clearing, I got up steam while De Long, armed with binoculars, perched himself once more in the crow’s-nest, Dunbar again straddled the fore topsail yard, Chipp took the bridge, and we got underway for as odd a bit of navigation as all my years of going to sea have ever witnessed.