CONCORDIA DRESSED FOR THE BALL.
The ball was opened! The Prince and Concordia had gracefully done their duty, and satisfied the public expectation. They had given countenance to the revelry, and the revelry went on. To say that it never stopped, would be to exaggerate; but to say that it never would have stopped had there been something of what Dick Swiveller called “the rosy,” might possibly be, to speak the truth, within bounds. The revellers certainly made “a night of it,” if a night ever was made in a Greenland summer. As it was, the coffee had all given out, a whole box of tobacco had disappeared, the keg had resolved itself into its original staves, and the cracked fiddle had but one string left, and that had been twice tied, when the ladies, with their beautiful boots all knocked out of shape, began to drag their weary bodies off to their huts, and the sailors, with their coats on their arms, hailed for boats.
Meanwhile, much consternation had been produced by a report which was set in circulation, that a Parliamentarian had danced himself away, all but his cap; and a girl had, in like manner, disappeared, all but a ribbon. The consternation was allayed, however, when it was discovered that the two had stolen away together, and were getting married at the parson’s.
Marcus never appeared again in the ball-room after his discomfiture; but I saw him crawling in the shadow of a rock, where he could look through the door and catch an occasional glimpse of his lady-love as she swung round in the Prince’s arms. He beckoned me to him, and whispered in my ear, pointing to the gay and festive room from which the bright light was streaming out into the night, “He no good; me” (pointing to his breast) “son of head man of Bungetak.” Saying which, he smiled in a self-satisfied and “bland-like” manner, and immediately drew himself deep within the shadow of the rock. Then I went my way on board, marvelling how very much a man was half-savage Marcus.
As this was my last visit ashore, I had bidden my friends good-bye, after exchanging some little souvenirs with them. Early in the morning the anchor was tripped, and we were away. The little town in the wilderness was at our backs, and we were threading once more the winding fiord among the islands and icebergs, rejoiced at having seen a spot of earth so full of romantic associations; had beheld its ruins,
“Trod upon them, and had set
Our foot upon a rev’rend history.”
“But these recede. Above me are the Alps,
The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls