He was ever prepared for the worst; but
the most critical circumstances never disturbed the
gravity of his carriage, and the fact of our being destined
to go to the bottom before tea-time would not have caused
him to lay out the dinner-table a whit less symmetrically.
Still, I own, the style of his service was slightly
depressing. He laid out my clean shirt of a morning as
if it had been a shroud; and cleaned my boots as though
for a man ON HIS LAST LEGS. The fact is, he was imaginative
and atrabilious, - contemplating life through a medium of
the colour of his own complexion.
This was the cheerful kind of report he used invariably
to bring me of a morning. Coming to the side of my cot
with the air of a man announcing the stroke of doomsday,
he used to say, or rather, TOLL -
"Seven o'clock, my Lord!"
"Very well; how's the wind?"
"Dead ahead, my Lord - DEAD!"
"How many points is she off her course?"
"Four points, my Lord - full four points!" (Four points
being as much as she could be.)
"Is it pretty clear? eh! Wilson?"
" - Can't see your hand, my Lord! - can't see your hand!"
"Much ice in sight?"
" - Ice all round, my Lord - ice a-all ro-ound!" - and so
exit, sighing deeply over my trousers.
Yet it was immediately after one of these unpromising
announcements, that for the first time matters began to
look a little brighter. The preceding four-and-twenty
hours we had remained enveloped in a cold and dismal fog.
But on coming on deck, I found the sky had already begun
to clear; and although there was ice as far as the eye
could see on either side of us, in front a narrow passage
showed itself across a patch of loose ice into what seemed
a freer sea beyond. The only consideration was - whether
we could be certain of finding our way out again, should
it turn out that the open water we saw was only a basin
without any exit in any other direction. The chance was
too tempting to throw away; so the little schooner
gallantly pushed her way through the intervening neck of
ice where the floes seemed to be least huddled up together,
and in half an hour afterwards found herself running up
along the edge of the starboard ice, almost in a due
northerly direction. And here I must take occasion to
say that, during the whole of this rather anxious time,
my master - Mr. Wyse - conducted himself in a most admirable
manner. Vigilant, cool, and attentive, he handled the
vessel most skilfully, and never seemed to lose his
presence of mind in any emergency. It is true the silk
tartan still coruscated on Sabbaths, but its brilliant
hues were quite a relief to the colourless scenes which
surrounded us, and the dangling chain now only served to
remind me of what firm dependence I could place upon its
wearer.
