“Call it Content Isle, then,” suggested Benjy.
“But I am not content with partial success. Come, Butterface, haven’t you got a suggestion to make.”
The negro shook his woolly head. “No,” he said, “I’s ’orrible stoopid. Nebber could get nuffin’ to come out o’ my brain—sep w’en it’s knocked out by accident. You’s hard to please, massa. S’pose you mix de two,—dis’pintment an’ content,—an’ call ’im Half-an’-half Island.”
“Home is in sight now,” said Chingatok, who had taken no interest in the above discussion, as it was carried on in English. “A few days more and we should be there if we only had our kayaks.”
“There’s the name,” exclaimed the Captain eagerly when this was translated, “‘Home-in-sight,’ that will do.”
Rising quickly, he bent a Union Jack to the halyards of his primitive flag-staff, ran it up, and in the name of Queen Victoria took possession of Home-in-sight Island. After having given three hearty British cheers, in which the Eskimos tried to join, with but partial success, they buried the ginger-beer bottle under a heap of stones, a wooden cross was fixed on the top of the cairn, and then the party sat down to supper, while the Captain made a careful note of the latitude and longitude, which he had previously ascertained. This latest addition to Her Majesty’s dominions was put down by him in latitude 85 degrees 32 minutes, or about 288 geographical miles from the North Pole.