'Mr. Selby cooks charmingly,' said Marie. 'I shall never forget the delicious dishes of broth you used to make for me.'
'The ship's cargo,' said he, 'consisted of a quantity of articles of potted food with drink enough in stout, brandy, and whiskey to fill the half of London with uproar and murder.'
'We had biscuits as big as bricks,' said Marie. 'I used to make bread and milk with them.'
'Milk!' I ejaculated.
'Preserved milk, sir,' said Selby. 'I found some hundredweights of the stuff.'
'But your fuel?' said I.
'There was about twelve ton of coal in the forepeak when we got on the ice,' he answered. 'I never reckoned upon a long stay, the young lady was to be kept warm, and I was a bit extravagant at the start. Then as the days passed and nothing came along, I began to stint, with the result that I've left about half the stock behind.'
'Did nothing heave in sight?'
'Oh, yes, sir; but never close in. I must have consumed half the cargo of theatrical scenery, and pounds worth of patent fuel and India-rubber in burning flares at night and making smokes by day. I reckon the smoke was taken for something in the volcanic line. For a long time the ice hid us from the sea. The island whose rupture threw us aloft drifted away and gave us a clear view for a bit, but others came cruising along with the stream of the tide, if it was not the wind that brought them, and one moored itself right abreast—grounded, I allow—it stuck so long.