Half an hour later poor Jalap was being outwardly thawed by a roaring fire of great logs, and inwardly by cupful after cupful of scalding tea, which moved him to remark that, according to his friend Kite Roberson, tea and coffee were the next best things to observations of the sun for determining latitude.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
CHRISTMAS ON THE TANANA
“Look here,” said Phil, referring to the mate’s last surprising statement, “wasn’t your friend Mr. Roberson in the habit of drawing the long bow?”
“No,” replied Jalap Coombs, in surprise at the question; “he couldn’t abide ’em.”
“Couldn’t abide what?”
“Bows, nor yet arrers, since when he were a kid some boys put up a game on him that they called William Tell, which allers did seem to me the foolishest game, seeing that his name warn’t William, but Kite, and he warn’t expected to tell anything, only just to stand with a punkin on his head for them to shoot their bow-arrers at. Waal, the very fust one missed the punkin and plunked poor Kite in the stummick, after which he didn’t have no use for a long bow nor a short bow, nor yet a bow of any kind.”
“I don’t blame him,” laughed Serge. “But we would very much like to know how he determined latitude by tea and coffee.”
“Easy enough,” was the reply. “You see, tea is drunk mostly in cold latitoods similar to this, and coffee in warm. The higher the latitood, the hotter and stronger the tea, and the less you hear of coffee. At forty-five or thereabouts they’s drunk about alike, while south of that coffee grows blacker and more common, while tea takes a back seat till you get to the line, where it’s mighty little used. Then as you go south of that the same thing begins all over again; but there’s not many would notice sich things, and fewer as would put ’em to practical use like old Kite done.”