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Page 17
Chapter 7.
The first sound that broke the silence came from the inner
apartment. An officer lifted the canvas screen in the hut of the
_Sea-mew_ and entered the main room. Cold and privation had badly
thinned the ranks. The commander of the ship--Captain
Ebsworth--was dangerously ill. The first lieutenant was dead. An
officer of the _Wanderer_ filled their places for the time, with
Captain Helding's permission. The officer so employed
was--Lieutenant Crayford.
He approached the man at the fireside, and awakened him.
"Jump up, Bateson! It's your turn to be relieved."
The relief appeared, rising from a heap of old sails at the back
of the hut. Bateson vanished, yawning, to his bed. Lieutenant
Crayford walked backward and forward briskly, trying what
exercise would do toward warming his blood.
The pestle and mortar on the cask attracted his attention. He
stopped and looked up at the man in the hammock.
"I must rouse the cook," he said to himself, with a smile. "That
fellow little thinks how useful he is in keeping up my spirits.
The most inveterate croaker and grumbler in the world--and yet,
according to his own account, the only cheerful man in the whole
ship's company. John Want! John Want! Rouse up, there!"
A head rose slowly out of the bedclothes, covered with a red
night-cap. A melancholy nose rested itself on the edge of the
hammock. A voice, worthy of the nose, expressed its opinion of
the Arctic climate, in these words:
"Lord! Lord! here's all my breath on my blanket. Icicles, if you
please, sir, all round my mouth and all over my blanket. Every
time I have snored, I've frozen something. When a man gets the
cold into him to that extent that he ices his own bed, it can't
last much longer. Never mind! _I_ don't grumble."
Crayford tapped the saucepan of bones impatiently. John Want
lowered himself to the floor--grumbling all the way--by a rope
attached to the rafters at his bed head. Instead of approaching
his superior officer and his saucepan, he hobbled, shivering, to
the fire-place, and held his chin as close as he possibly could
over the fire. Crayford looked after him.
"Halloo! what are you doing there?"
"Thawing my beard, sir."
"Come here directly, and set to work on these bones."
John Want remained immovably attached to the fire-place, holding
something else over the fire. Crayford began to lose his temper.
"What the devil are you about now?"
"Thawing my watch, sir. It's been under my pillow all night, and
the cold has stopped it. Cheerful, wholesome, bracing sort of
climate to live in; isn't it, sir? Never mind! _I_ don't
grumble."
"No, we all know that. Look here! Are these bones pounded small
enough?"
John Want suddenly approached the lieutenant, and looked at him
with an appearance of the deepest interest.
"You'll excuse me, sir," he said; "how very hollow your voice
sounds this morning!"
"Never mind my voice. The bones! the bones!"
"Yes, sir--the bones. They'll take a trifle more pounding. I'll
do my best with them, sir, for your sake."
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