. Letters from high latitudes : being some account of a voyage in 1856 in the schonner yacht "Foam" to Iceland . tical indeed :then it would fall dead calm, and leave us, hours together,muffled in mist, with no other employment than chess orhopscotch. It was during one of those intervals of quietthat I executed the annexed work of art, which is intendedto represent Sigurdr, in the act of meditating a complicatedgambit for the Doctors benefit. About this period Wilson culminated. Ever since leavingBear Island he had been keeping a carnival of giief in the XL] WILSONS REPORT. 179 pantry, until t
. Letters from high latitudes : being some account of a voyage in 1856 in the schonner yacht "Foam" to Iceland . tical indeed :then it would fall dead calm, and leave us, hours together,muffled in mist, with no other employment than chess orhopscotch. It was during one of those intervals of quietthat I executed the annexed work of art, which is intendedto represent Sigurdr, in the act of meditating a complicatedgambit for the Doctors benefit. About this period Wilson culminated. Ever since leavingBear Island he had been keeping a carnival of giief in the XL] WILSONS REPORT. 179 pantry, 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 ithis 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 circumstances. never disturbed the gravity ol his carriage, and the factof our being destined to go to the bottom before tea-timewould not have caused him to lay out the dinner-table awhit less symmetrically. Still, I own, the style of his servicewas slightly depressing. He laid out my clean shirt of as if it had been a shroud ; and cleaned my bootsas though for a man on his last legs. The fact is, he wasimaginative 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 ot a morning. Coming to the side of my cot i8o LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [XI. with 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 ? Four points, my Lord
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