Even The Never-Failing
Resource Of Long Yarns, Which Eke Out Many A Watch, Seemed To Have
Failed Us Now;
For we had been so long together that we had heard
each other's stories told over and over again, till
We had them
by heart; each one knew the whole history of each of the others,
and we were fairly and literally talked out. Singing and joking,
we were in no humor for, and, in fact, any sound of mirth or laughter
would have struck strangely upon our ears, and would not have been
tolerated, any more than whistling, or a wind instrument. The last
resort, that of speculating upon the future, seemed now to fail us,
for our discouraging situation, and the danger we were really in,
(as we expected every day to find ourselves drifted back among the
ice) "clapped a stopper" upon all that. From saying - "when we get
home" - we began insensibly to alter it to - "if we get home" - and at
last the subject was dropped by a tacit consent.
In this state of things, a new light was struck out, and a new
field opened, by a change in the watch. One of our watch was
laid up for two or three days by a bad hand, (for in cold weather
the least cut or bruise ripens into a sore,) and his place was
supplied by the carpenter. This was a windfall, and there was
quite a contest, who should have the carpenter to walk with him.
As "Chips" was a man of some little education, and he and I had
had a good deal of intercourse with each other, he fell in with
me in my walk.
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