Broom went on his way strangely thoughtful. There was a new-found joy in the thought that he had denied himself the drink. He was even conscious of feeling virtuous—a sensation quite foreign to him of late—and under the influence of this new experience life seemed to take on a new aspect. He was not given to conscientious scruples, and the sensation was not altogether pleasant, for, stripped of his habitual indifference, he stood revealed in a new guise, and found the picture not good to look upon. Everything around him was of unsullied whiteness; the very stillness and profound solitude cried loudly to him of the Creator. He felt out of harmony with his surroundings, knew that he was the one black spot in a region clothed with a mantle of purity, and, like the progenitor of the human race, he was ashamed.
Rime fell lightly in prismatic crystals, scintillating and glistening in the bright sunshine all about him, and in the heavens there was a magnificent spectacle, a beautiful celestial phenomenon: the sun shining through the falling rime took the shape of a fiery cross, and on each side of this sublime luminary, at some little distance, shone a luminous ball, and, attached to each of these, on the side farthest from the sun, and rising perpendicularly, was a little rainbow which extended in glowing bands of deep red, orange, and light blue.
Stretching out from these were bars of silver reaching across the heavens on each side like gigantic arms and ending in indistinct vaporous clouds like huge hands which appeared about to clutch the earth in their embrace. Higher in the heavens, and exactly above the sun, a crescent, its colors corresponding with the beautiful sections of the rainbow, shone out brightly, and at different points around the horizon indistinct rainbow hues were visible.
Broom was by now well accustomed to the many splendid phenomena of the Far North, but the present magnificent spectacle—catching him at a time when he stood disarmed, when for the moment his mantle of indifference and cynicism had fallen from him—influenced him strangely. However, a mind perturbed with religious feelings was unusual to Broom, and like the now fast-disappearing phenomenon, this unusual experience was soon gone. With the arrogance natural to mankind he stifled this slight inclination, this prompting toward reform, and lapsed into the hardened, cynical reprobate he naturally was, at least to outward seeming. Alas! what a number of Mr. Brooms there are in the world!
Fate, luck, or Providence, call it which you will, reciprocated Broom’s magnanimous feelings by smiling on him. His hunting-bag by the time he had visited all his traps was swollen to undue proportions and bore significant signs of good luck. He was greatly elated at this success. Scorning his customary long, slouching stride as a mode of locomotion too slow to keep pace with his excited feelings, he covered the ground at a quick trot and arrived at the Fort in a thoroughly exhausted condition.
“Phew! That’s warm work,” he cried as he entered the door and found Sahanderry standing before him with the vestige of a smile on his dark face.
“How many?” inquired Sahanderry shortly.
“Five, my boy!” Broom dropped the bag of foxes to the floor with a long sigh of relief. His face was scarlet. He was “blowing like a grampus,” and now that he was in the house he perspired freely. “Guess I’ve earned a drink,” he said, and passing into the inner room, quickly produced the bottle and mug.
After taking a goodly modicum of whiskey he eyed the bottle dubiously. The liquor had shrunk in an incredible manner: a few more such potations and he would arrive at the bottom of the bottle. To guard against the calamity of running out of liquor altogether the tippler made a mental reservation to drink only one-third of his stock of whiskey on each of the following days, thereby securing an allowance for each day of Roy’s absence.
In theory the scheme was undoubtedly good, and well worthy of the versatile sailor, but in practice it did not turn out as well as he expected. For when he tumbled out of bed on the third morning, with an exceedingly hazy idea of how he ever got into it, he discovered to his chagrin that the whiskey was almost all gone. Evidently nothing but an overpowering fit of slumber had prevented him from drinking the whole.