"Certainly, cook, you shall have two."
"Tank you, sar!"—and he bends himself half double, meaning it for a bow, and goes back well pleased to his stove and his coppers.
Our cook is quite a character. He is much the oldest man on board, and is the most singular mixture of adverse moral qualities that I have ever chanced to meet. He makes it his boast that he has never been off the ship's deck since leaving Boston. "Vat should I go ashore for?" said he, one day, to some of the officers who were reciting to him the wonders of the land. "Me go ashore! De land be very good place to grow de vegetables, but it no place to be. I never goes ashore ven I can help it, and please my Hebenly Fader I never vill."
A CHEERFUL EVENING.
I have passed an hour of the evening very pleasantly with the officers in their cabin, have had my usual game of chess with Knorr, and now, having done with this journal for the day, I will coil myself up in my nest of furs and read in Marco Polo of those parts of the world where people live without an effort, know not the use of bear-skins, and die of fever. After all, one's lines might fall in less pleasant places than in the midst of an Arctic winter.
CHAPTER XIII.
INCREASING DARKNESS.—DAILY ROUTINE.—THE JOURNAL.—OUR HOME.—SUNDAY.—RETURN OF SONNTAG.—A BEAR-HUNT.—THE OPEN WATER.—ACCIDENT TO MR. KNORR.—A THAW.—"THE PORT FOULKE WEEKLY NEWS."—THE TIDE-REGISTER.—THE FIRE-HOLE.—HUNTING FOXES.—PETER.
The steadily increasing darkness was driving us more and more within doors. We had now scarcely any light but that of the moon and stars. The hunt was not wholly abandoned, but so few were the hours wherein we could see that it had become unprofitable. The gloom of night had settled in the valleys and had crept up the craggy hills. The darkness being fairly upon us, we had now little other concern than to live through it and await the spring, and a return to active life and the performance of those duties for which our voyage had been undertaken. As a part of the history of the expedition, I will continue to give from my diary our course of life.
November 5th.