“I like grit—I do like a fellow as can show grit!” he kept on muttering in a discontented kind of way, as he took a piece of pine-wood out of his pocket, and then, hoisting a boot like a canoe upon his knee, he sharpened his knife, and began to whittle.
“Where did you get that piece of wood?” said the doctor, then.
The Yankee turned his head slowly, spat a brown hailstone on to the ice, and then said—
“Whar did I get that thar piece o’ wood, stranger? Wall, I reckon that’s a bit o’ Pole—North Pole—as I took off with these here hands with the carpenter’s saw.”
“I’ll take a piece of it,” said the doctor, and turning it over in his hands, “Ha, hum!” he muttered; “Pinus silvestris.” Then aloud—“But how did you get up here, my friend?”
“Wall, I’ll tell you,” drawled the Yankee. “But I reckon thar’s yards on it; and when I begin, I don’t leave off till I’ve done, that I don’t, you bet—not if you’re friz. Won’t it do that I’m here?”
“Well, no,” said the doctor; “we should like to know how you got here.”
“So,” said the Yankee sailor, and, drawing his legs up under him, firing a couple of brown hailstones off right and left, and whittling away at so much of the North Pole as the doctor had left him, he thus began.