“Have a cigar?” said the Prince, passing along a box out of a smoky cloud. “Capital Havanas! plenty of the same sort left.”
The Prince was clearly quite at home, as usual, and was already looking out generally for the public pleasures; for he continued:
“Lively times expected. Old chap there has sent for girls, and we’re to have a dance.”
And sure enough he had; for the girls came streaming in presently, and there was a repetition of the Julianashaab “break-down” (I know no better title by which to distinguish it). Of course, the Prince managed to pick out the prettiest girl, who had the advantage of being the daughter of Motzfeldt, and, by a pleasant coincidence, bore also the name of Concordia. This one had black hair and eyes, however. But, since there did not appear to be any Marcus to torment, the young gentleman clearly preferred the girl (with the auburn hair) he had left behind him.
Kraksimeut is one of the dozen principal outposts of the Julianashaab district, and the most remote one on the north; and it is, besides, one of the most productive. Its products are exclusively (if we except a little eider-down), the skins and blubber of seals; and during the season it is, according to all accounts, a very lively place. Peter Motzfeldt gets his pay out of the colony’s production, upon which he receives five per cent. This, added to his salary (one hundred Danish dollars), makes his income over a thousand dollars of that money annually, and sometimes reaches fifteen hundred, which equals about seven hundred and fifty of ours. Upon this he has lived happily, as he says, and I do not doubt it, for fifty years. He has raised two families, and provides now for twenty-four persons, himself and wife included. This wife is a most tidy person, a native, with a slight mixture of Danish blood, and dresses always in the native costume. Indeed, there is not, and never was, a petticoat in Kraksimeut. From pitying Peter Motzfeldt, as I did at first, I began in the end to wonder whether he was not a most sensible fellow after all, when I discovered that his income was more than sufficient for his needs, and that even, although his family was large, he lacked for nothing that he wished to send for from Copenhagen. Really, it is not so bad after all, to be the solitary white man, in a solitary house, on a solitary island.
Besides the Motzfeldt family, there are about forty other inhabitants, all natives, who live in the usual native huts, that are scarcely distinguishable in the general waste of rock.
I found that an American had been at Kraksimeut before, and that Motzfeldt preserved the most lively recollection of the “Americana,” who had taught him the little English he knew, and instructed him to sing “Yank Doodle” and “Hail Columby,” which he repeated for us with variations not originally made and provided. This American was Colonel Shaffner, who some years ago, after the first failure of the Atlantic Cable, interested himself to establish a line by way of the Faröe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador; and it was a pity that his scheme was impossible of success. You would think so at least if you heard Peter Motzfeldt praise him; and I doubt not that he well deserved it all, for there have been few more spirited enterprises set on foot this many a day. I say it was impossible of success; not that the cable might not be laid and the shore-end secured, but it would be simply absurd to think of keeping it in a sea where icebergs ground in two or three hundred fathoms water.
On board the steamship Panther there was a man, common enough in point of rank, but the like of which never was seen before with respect to qualities. He was the mate. Why he was ever put there in that capacity, unless it was to “try our virtue by affliction,” I can not imagine. He would beat a “reformer” any day for wrong-headedness, or a discontented donkey for obstinacy. As if these qualities were not enough, he was afflicted with the curiosity of a magpie. But the particular direction of his curiosity was aquatic. He was great on finding bottom. Upon one occasion he tried to find it by dropping overboard a gun; on another he got into a kayak and shoved off from the ship’s side, to find himself very quickly head downward, with the boat fast to his heels; and he would have been as certain of drowning as if he had undertaken to swim with his feet fast to a bladder, had his head not struck bottom, where luckily there was a lot of sea-weed, which he grasped and drew himself out among the shells and slime; there he got a footing, and, the water being shoal, he came right side up, with a great deal of water and very little breath in him. Had his disposition to find the bottom with the top of his head terminated there, it would have been well; but unhappily his weakness extended to the Panther’s keel. If there was the remotest chance of putting her on the rocks at any time, he was sure to make the effort. And he was, moreover, very sly. He always waited until the captain was down below or had gone ashore, before he gave his mind to it. At Kraksimeut, he waited until the captain was well enveloped in a cloud of smoke, in the house of Peter Motzfeldt, before he tried the depth of the water in the harbor. Slacking up a rope, or neglecting to put out one, it matters not which, he let the Panther swing with the tide, and her stern slid up as nicely on a rock as if she were coming to her bearings in a dry-dock. This astonishing mate then, with great apparent satisfaction, looked over the stern, and amidst the mud and sea-weed, which had been loosened, and which was bubbling up about the rudder-post, there read XIV.; and thus he had found the depth of Kraksimeut harbor, and was satisfied. Then he smoked his pipe while waiting for the water to fall; and we came on board to find the Panther’s stern going steadily out of the sea, with great danger of breaking her unfortunate back. Meanwhile the mate was never before known to be in such capital spirits.
Fortunately, as it happened, the Panther was not materially damaged, owing to her amazing strength of back-bone; but we were detained nearly a whole tide beyond our time. But when at length under way, we had a splendid sail among the islands, until we struck the open water of the fiord of Sermitsialik, when we stood fairly up midway between its lofty banks, directly for the glacier.
For a time we could not see the object that our eyes so eagerly sought, owing to a bend in the fiord, but, passing this, a great long line of whiteness came gradually out against the sky, and beneath it dropped a white curtain to the sea. As we proceeded this seeming curtain became a solid wall.