I once passed two weeks in Greenland in the month of October, and exactly two years later was digging away the snow in the Rocky Mountains nine thousand feet above the sea, that I might have bare ground for my blankets at night. My home is in the Adirondacks, where the snow lies four feet deep all winter long, but I have never suffered from the cold as I did during four weeks of this voyage.
And yet at times, when the conditions were such as to make us all most uncomfortable, we often enjoyed life rather better than at any others. Our greatest trouble when the weather first became cold was to pass the evenings. It was stupid turning into wet bunks at 7 p.m., and wretched work trying to play cards or spin stories in a raw, cold, reeking saloon.
But a happy inspiration struck one of us while standing by the hatch leading to the little store-room abaft the cabin. This store-room was in charge of the shortest and thickest man aboard ship—a person who looked as if he had once been a typical quartermaster on a Yankee man-o'-war—a great tall, broad-shouldered, impassive, full-whiskered man, but through some accident had been telescoped down to a stature of four feet nine. The first cold evening after leaving the River Plate a passenger, while walking the deck for exercise, stopped by the store-room hatch just as the captain's valet came there carrying a plate with a tumbler on it.
"Storekeeper?" said the lackey.
"Yes," replied the thick, short man.
"Cocktail."
"Yes, sir. Quickly."
A few minutes later the storekeeper came up the ladder carrying a glass tube about ten inches long and two wide. It was closed at the bottom and had a long-handled silver plunger in it. The tube had about two inches of a light brownish liquor in the bottom over a layer of sugar. Standing the tube on the deck the storekeeper pumped the plunger up and down vigorously. The aroma of gin, bitters, lemon, and something else greeted the nostrils of the passenger. The storekeeper poured the mixture into the glass until the glass was full. Then he looked at the tube. There was a quarter of an inch of the mixture left there. Backing carefully down into the store-room the storekeeper looked up at the passenger. He saw that the passenger was looking at the remnant in the tube. The storekeeper's face was absolutely impassive, as a whole, but when he caught the passenger's eye he looked down at the remnant, moistened his lips with his tongue, looked up slowly at the passenger again, and then his right eyelid trembled expressively as he said:
"It is a cold night, is it not, sir?"
The passenger went down into the saloon and gathered about the table the French merchant, the German count, the miner, the doctor, the Argentine lieutenant, and several others. Then the steward was called. Could he bring some things from the store-room? He would be pleased. What would the gentlemen have?