“You’re right, boss,” observed Mr Lathrope. “This air snow-storm is jest like one of them blizzards I told you about when we were aboard the old ship that I had noticed in Minnesota. I didn’t kinder think then that I should come across another o’ them this side of the globe! I’d ha’ bet agin it any day.”
“Aye,” responded the other, “it is a fortunate thing for all of us that we cannot foresee the future, and that our strength is apportioned by degrees to the burdens sent us to bear. The great majority of us would succumb at once if we only knew the struggle that lay before us, the griefs, the trials, the mental weariness, the physical pain!”
“Oh, papa,” said Kate, “don’t speak so sadly! Let us rather think of the joy and unlooked-for happiness which so frequently comes to our lot when we have the least cause to expect them; and—and—” but here the girl’s voice faltered.
Kate well knew the reason of her father taking so sombre a view of life, and she shared the sorrow that filled his heart, for her mother had but died a short period before they left England.
“Think, papa,” she added, after a pause, “of the glorious hope of eternity, and the city within the golden gates, where we shall all of us meet the loved ones who have gone before!”
“Thank you, my child,” replied Mr Meldrum, drawing her fondly to his side, and speaking as if they were alone together. “You have taught me a lesson, and I will repine no longer about the immutable. It is best to look forward, as you say. We ought to recollect that all our days must not necessarily be gloomy because for the moment they may happen to be overcast!”
“No, sirree,” interposed Mr Lathrope, “and I guess this air blizzard ain’t going to last for ever:— it looks now railly as if it wer’ goin’ to leave off snowing.”
“I think you are right,” said Frank Harness, who had been sitting on the other side of Kate, listening quietly to the conversation between her and her father. “I don’t see any flakes now coming through the chinks of the door, as they were doing a short time ago. It is either leaving off, or the wind has chopped round to the southward and westward again.”
So saying, Frank got up and went to peer without the portal, the others that were in the general room not stirring, for the greater number of the seamen were asleep in their dormitory. It was getting towards evening and most of the limited duties which it was possible to give the men to do, now that they were continuously confined indoors, had been already got through for the day.
Only Ben Boltrope and Karl Ericksen, amongst the hands, were up and awake; and they were engaged in playing a game of chequers with a set of counters which the Norwegian had skilfully carved out of black basalt and white pumice-stone, both of which had been found lying close together at the bottom of the creek. The board that they played on was made by the carpenter, but it had been divided into proper squares through the aid of Mr Meldrum’s compasses and parallel ruler, wielded by Mr Lathrope; so that all of them, so to speak, had a hand in the construction of the complete article.