We had steamed down against a strong tide, so we were half an hour late for luncheon, and the officers had gone down to the saloon, but it was worth being a little after time to see the way they all leapt up and received me like a queen—making me feel, as I never felt before, the difference between the politeness of the fashionable idlers and the manners of the men who do things.
"Holloa!" they cried.
"Excuse us, won't you? We thought something had happened and perhaps you were not coming," said the commander, and then he put me to sit between himself and Martin.
The strange thing was that I was at home in that company in a moment, and if anybody imagines that I must have been embarrassed because I was the only member of my sex among so many men he does not know the heart of a woman.
They were such big, bronzed manly fellows with the note of health and the sense of space about them—large space—as if they had come out of the heroic youth of the world, that they set my blood a-tingling to look at them.
They were very nice to me too, though I knew that I only stood for the womankind that each had got at home and was soon to go back to, but none the less it was delightful to feel as if I were taking the first fruits of their love for them.
So it came to pass that within a few minutes I, who had been called insipid and was supposed to have no conversation, was chattering away softly and happily, making remarks about the things around me and asking all sorts of questions.
Of course I asked many foolish ones, which made the men laugh very much; but their laughter did not hurt me the least bit in the world, because everybody laughed on that ship, even the sailors who served the dishes, and especially one grizzly old salt, a cockney from Wapping, who for some unexplained reason was called Treacle.
It made me happy to see how they all deferred to Martin, saying: "Isn't that so, Doctor?" or "Don't you agree, Doctor?" and though it was strange and new to hear Martin (my "Mart of Spitzbergen") called "Doctor," it was also very charming.
After luncheon was over, and while coffee was being served, the commander sent Treacle to his cabin for a photograph of all hands which had been taken when they were at the foot of Mount Erebus; and when it came I was called upon to identify one by one, the shaggy, tousled, unkempt, bearded, middle-aged men in the picture with the smart, clean-shaven young officers who sat round me at the table.