The Scotsman looked up at the rebuke as though a thunderbolt had hit him.
"Verra weel, mon; verra weel," he muttered; "but ye're unco melancholy the nicht, unco melancholy." And then he fell to the silence of consumption, eating prodigiously of all that was set before him; but in high dudgeon, as a man rebuked unworthily. Of the others, the doctor alone talked, chatting fluently of many European cities, and proving himself no mean raconteur. I listened in the hope of getting some idea of what was intended in my case; also, if that could be, of the situation of this strange place in which I found myself; for as yet I knew not if it were to the North of America; or, indeed, in what part of the Arctic Sea it might be. To my satisfaction the captain made no attempt to conceal the information from me. The first occasion of his speaking during dinner was in answer to a remark of mine that I found the room very pleasantly warm.
"Yes," he said, "you must feel the change, although you will feel it more when we get winter here. You know where you are, of course."
I said unsuspectingly that I had not the faintest idea, when he cast a quick glance at the doctor, and the latter slapped me on the back quite joyously.
"Bravo!" he cried. "That prevents our putting one unpleasant question to you, anyway. I knew that your innuendo in the cabin was all make-believe."
"Of course it was," added the captain; "but the knowledge of it saves our bustling you. However, this isn't the time for talk of that sort. I may tell you, since you do not know, that you are on the west coast of Greenland, and that there is a Danish settlement not fifty miles from you—although we don't leave cards on our neighbours."
He called for champagne then, and gave a toast—"The new recruit!" I did not raise my glass with the others, which he saw, and became stern.
"Well," said he, "I won't have you hurried, and you're my guest until I put the straight question to you. When that happens you won't think twice about the answer, for we can be very nasty, I assure you. Now try a cigar. These are good. They came from the collection of Lord Remingham, who was on his way to America a few weeks ago."
"And met with an unfortunate accident," said the doctor, with mock seriousness, which was taken up by the Scotsman, who remarked in his best drawl—"May his soul ken rest!" and they all shouted with infamous laughter, but I listened with a morbid interest when the doctor continued—
"It's astonishing how good the quality of the tobacco and the champagne is on board the ocean-going steamers; now this Bolinger '84 was the special pride of the skipper of the Catalania, which unhappily sank in the Atlantic through the sheer impudence of the man who commanded her. As he liked it so much, I broke a bottle over his head before we sent him to the devil, with five hundred others."