’Twill make the widow’s heart to sing
Tho the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in Krocker Land.’”
To let the provision annex pass as it lumbered by, while tall drivers of the Eskimo plied long whips whose lashes stung the air with rapid reports, and the straining rams tugged and bolted, we had been compelled to huddle to one side of the road. This outbreak of Hopkins and the Professor’s soliloquy were amazing to our guard at first, but as soon as they half comprehended Hopkins’ pleasure and his musical voice sang Burns’ apostrophe they became mightily amused, and they beamed on the American with unstinted confidence.
Goritz, who knew some Eskimo from his experience in Greenland, attempted to talk to them, but their answers were unintelligible; neither, I think did they understand him, and it is also certain that they did not converse among themselves in the Semitic phrase peculiar to the little men. There was very little talk of any kind amongst them or us, and after the ebullition when we ran into the wine cart, we relapsed into a resigned silence, enjoying most a study of our guard. Nothing had been taken from us, no search made of our packs, and our guns still remained apparently unnoticed in our hands. The “little doctors” as Hopkins called them had indeed looked at them curiously, and I felt certain they would on their return find out their uses as also the uses of our instruments, the aneroid, thermometers, chronometers, clinometer, artificial horizon, all of which we had regained from their hiding place below the pine tree from whose crown we had so unexpectedly descended.
On, on, on, we tramped; the trees became smaller, more distant, and an open ground appeared before us. In another instant it was succeeded by an even denser growth of younger and greener pine trees; the road turned sharply; it crossed the thick screen; another turn and, like a vision, the central valley of Krocker Land unrolled before us, an endless park, seamed by silver rivers, clothed in emerald meads, tenanted by incalculable flocks, and marbled in its lighting, by an incessant drift of clouds that threw over it a penumbral shade.
