While AH-NI-GHI´-TO wrote the invitations to an “At Home,” her playmates shovelled a path through the deep snow from the tent to the ship.
VIII
Just before it was time for the guests to arrive, Charley took out a steaming pot full of chocolate; three plates piled high with cake, cookies, and sandwiches. AH-NI-GHI´-TO came after some taffy she had made the night before, and last of all Charley took out an oil-stove, which he placed in one corner of the tent. “For,” said he, “it is all very well for Miss AH-NI-GHI´-TO and her young Eskimo friends to be out here with the temperature 70 degrees below freezing, for they are dressed in furs from head to feet, but the invited people would have the good things freeze in their mouths with no fire at all.”
Billy, one of the ship’s men, acted as butler, and the party was a great success.
The guests stayed as long as the eatables lasted, and then the Eskimos licked the cups and the crumbs, and amid shouts of laughter the dishes were brought aboard. But when Charley asked who would help wash up, every one was much too tired and sleepy.
“A Snow Wall all around the Ship.”
The “Windward” would not have been taken for a ship now except for her masts and spars. For weeks the men had been cutting blocks of snow from the hard drifts and building a snow wall all around the ship, close to her hull and a few feet higher than her rail. At night water was thrown on this wall until it became solid ice, through which no wind could come.
From the top of this wall, across the ship to the other side, canvas was stretched as a roof, and this gave a covered place on deck, where AH-NI-GHI´-TO and her friends played when the wind howled and whirled the snow so fast that it was not possible to stand up against it.