Rebecca came to the kitchen door wiping a dish with slow circular movements of her towel.
"I don't guess you'll freeze very much with all that on," she remarked.
"Thet shows you don't know what seventy or eighty below zero means," said a muffled voice from within the fur cap. "You'll hev suthin' hot, won't ye?" Droop continued, looking appealingly at Phœbe.
"The'll be a pot o' good hot tea," she said. "That'll warm you all right."
Droop thought of something more stimulating and fragrant, but said nothing as he returned to the cupboard. Here he drew forth an apparently endless piece of stout rope. This he wound in a thick coil and hung over his head.
"Now, then," he said, "when I get down you shet the door at the top of the stairs tight, coz jest's soon's I open the outside door, thet hall's goin' to freeze up solid."
"All right!" said Phœbe. "I'll see to it."
Droop descended the stairs with a heavy tread, and as he reached the foot Phœbe closed the upper door, which she now noticed was provided with weather-strips.
Then the two women stood at the windows on the right-hand side of the vessel and watched Droop as he walked toward the pole. He raised the huge iron ring, snapping over it a special coupling hook fixed to the end of the rope.
Then he backed toward the vessel, unrolling the coil of rope as he moved away from the pole. Evidently they were within the forty-foot limit from the pole, for Droop had some rope to spare when he at length reached under the machine to attach the end to a ring which the sisters could not see.