Letters from high latitudes : being some account of a voyage, in 1856, in the schooner yacht "Foam", to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen . been keeping a carnival of grief in thepantry, until the cook became almost half-witted by reason ofhis Jeremiads. Yet I must not give you the impression thatthe poor fellow was the least wanting in pluck—far from it requires the highest order of courage to anticipateevery species of disaster every moment of the day, and yetto meet the impending fate like a man—as he did. Was it XI.] KEPOR T. 1S7 his fault, that fate was not equally re
Letters from high latitudes : being some account of a voyage, in 1856, in the schooner yacht "Foam", to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen . been keeping a carnival of grief in thepantry, until the cook became almost half-witted by reason ofhis Jeremiads. Yet I must not give you the impression thatthe poor fellow was the least wanting in pluck—far from it requires the highest order of courage to anticipateevery species of disaster every moment of the day, and yetto meet the impending fate like a man—as he did. Was it XI.] KEPOR T. 1S7 his fault, that fate was not equally ready to meet him % Hisshare of the business was always done : he was ever pre-pared for the worst; but the most critical circumstancesnever disturbed the gravity of his carriage, and the fact ofour being destined to go to the bottom before tea-time—would not have caused him to lay out the dinner-table awhit less symmetrically. Still, I own, the style of his servicew^ slightly depressing. He laid out my clean shirt of amorning as if it had been a shroud ; and cleaned my bootsas though for a man on his last legs. The fact is, he was. imaginative and atrabilious,—contemplating life through amedium of the colour of his own complexion. This was the cheerful kind of report he used invariablyto bring me of a morning. Coming to the side of my cotwith the air of a man announcing the stroke of doomsday,he used to say, or rather toll— Seven oclock, my Lord ! Very well; hows the wind ? Dead ahead, my Lord—dead ! ? How many points is she off her course ? i88 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [XI. Four points, my Lord—full four points ! (Four pointsbeing as much as she could be.) Is it pretty clear % eh ! Wilson % —Cant see your hand, my Lord ! — cant see yourhand ! Much ice in sight ? —Ice all round, my Lord—ice a-all ro-ound!—andso exit, sighing deeply over my trowsers. Yet it was immediately after one of these unpromisingannouncements, that for the first time—matters b
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