“Serves us right,” said the skipper, pacing up and down the room in a repentant frame of mind, with his thumbs hooked into the arm-holes of his vest.
The doctor said nothing, but breathed hard and smoked vigorously.
While we admit most thoroughly with Mr Rogan that practical jokes are exceedingly bad, and productive frequently of far more evil than fun, we feel it our duty, as a faithful delineator of manners, customs, and character in these regions, to urge in palliation of the offence committed by the young gentlemen at York Fort, that they had really about as few amusements and sources of excitement as fall to the lot of any class of men. They were entirely dependent on their own unaided exertions, during eight or nine months of the year, for amusement or recreation of any kind. Their books were few in number, and soon read through. The desolate wilderness around afforded no incidents to form subjects of conversation further than the events of a day’s shooting, which, being nearly similar every day, soon lost all interest. No newspapers came to tell of the doings of the busy world from which they were shut out, and nothing occurred to vary the dull routine of their life; so that it is not matter for wonder that they were driven to seek for relaxation and excitement occasionally in most outrageous and unnatural ways, and to indulge now and then in the perpetration of a practical joke.
For some time after the rebuke administered by Mr Rogan, silence reigned in Bachelor’s Hall, as the clerks’ house was termed. But at length symptoms of ennui began to be displayed. The doctor yawned, and lay down on his bed to enjoy an American newspaper about twelve months old. Harry Somerville sat down to re-read a volume of Franklin’s travels in the polar regions, which he had perused twice already. Mr Hamilton busied himself in cleaning his fowling-piece; while the skipper conversed with Mr Wilson, who was engaged in his room in adjusting an ivory head to a walking-stick. Mr Wilson was a jack-of-all-trades, who could make shift, one way or other, to do anything. The accountant paced the uncarpeted floor in deep contemplation.
At length he paused, and looked at Harry Somerville for some time.
“What say you to a walk through the woods to North River, Harry?”
“Ready,” cried Harry, tossing down the book with a look of contempt—“ready for anything.”
“Will you come, Hamilton?” added the accountant. Hamilton looked up in surprise.
“You don’t mean, surely, to take so long a walk in the dark, do you? It is snowing, too, very heavily, and I think you said that North River was five miles off, did you not?”
“Of course I mean to walk in the dark,” replied the accountant, “unless you can extemporise an artificial light for the occasion, or prevail on the moon to come out for my special benefit. As to snowing, and a short tramp of five miles, why, the sooner you get to think of such things as trifles the better, if you hope to be fit for anything in this country.”