“Spring? When does spring arrive around these parts?” asked Danenhower irrelevantly, passing his plate.
“God knows, I don’t!” replied Chipp. “By June, I hope though. Why, Dan?”
“By June, eh?” The navigator counted on his fingers. “Nine months yet. And nine months more of having to navigate these careened decks is going to be tough on the legs. I’ll have a permanent limp in my left leg long before that, trying to keep erect.”
Dr. Ambler seated in the middle of the table looked at Danenhower, nodded seriously, and in his quiet Virginian drawl observed,
“You’re right, Dan. And since we can’t right the ship, we’ll have to level off the crew. What Chipp just said gave me an idea. How about my amputating a couple of inches from everybody’s left leg, just enough to counteract the list? That’ll keep you all on an even keel.”
“Hah, hah!” roared Chipp, looking at the doctor in mock amazement. “For a naval surgeon, my dear Ambler, your lack of seamanship pains me! Shorten our left legs, indeed? That’s all very well for a starboard list when a man’s going forward, but where’ll he be when he comes about and wants to go aft? Worse than ever, with his short flipper on the wrong side! Not for me, doctor. I’ll reef my legs myself on whichever side’s necessary. Your idea’s worse than mine!”
“I’m sunk,” admitted Ambler with a grin. “So that won’t work after all! And it looked such a grand scheme with a little easy surgery on the crew to avoid having to operate on all that ice!”
“If we stay here long enough,” observed Newcomb, “according to that new theory which my fellow naturalist, that great English scientist Darwin, recently advanced, Nature will accommodate us to our environment. The survival of the fittest, you know.”
“Well, ‘Bugs,’ that means we’ll all ultimately become polar bears or perish,” commented Ambler. “And since I don’t look with pleasure to doing either, let’s hope you and your biology are both wrong.”
By this time, fortunately all were served, and in the ensuing attack on the salt pork, conversation languished. But in spite of the badinage about our situation and the half-humorous remedies proposed to alleviate the nuisance of forever battling the sloping decks in working, the sloping tables in eating, and even the sloping bunks when we tried to sleep, it was evident that in the back of everyone’s mind was a lurking fear of what next the ice had in store for us. And the futility of our efforts in combating the ice pack were now too plain to all of us to sustain any further hope of effecting in the slightest degree any position our ship might assume, let alone her movements.