第45章 LETTER VIII.(8)

But from all such complacent reveries I was soon awakened by the sound of a deep voice,proceeding apparently from the very bottom of the sea,which hailed the ship in the most authoritative manner,and imperiously demanded her name,where she was going,whom she carried,and whence she came:to all which questions,a young lieutenant,standing with his hat off at the gangway,politely responded.Apparently satisfied on these points,our invisible interlocutor then announced his intention of coming on board.All the officers of the ship collected on the poop to receive him.

In a few seconds more,amid the din of the most unearthly music,and surrounded by a bevy of hideous monsters,a white-bearded,spectacled personage-clad in bear-skin,with a cocked hat over his left ear-presented himself in the gangway,and handing to the officers of the watch an enormous board,on which was written "LE PERE ARCTIQUE,"by way of visiting card,proceeded to walk aft,and take the sun's altitude with what,as far as I could make out,seemed to be a plumber's wooden triangle.This preliminary operation having been completed,there then began a regular riot all over the ship.The yards were suddenly manned with red devils,black monkeys,and every kind of grotesque monster,while the whole ship's company,officers and men promiscuously mingled,danced the cancan upon deck.In order that the warmth of the day should not make us forget that we had arrived in his dominions,the Arctic father had stationed certain of his familiars in the tops,who at stated intervals flung down showers of hard peas,as typical of hail,while the powdering of each other's faces with handfuls of flour could not fail to remind everybody on board that we had reached the latitude of snow.At the commencement of this noisy festival Ifound myself standing on the hurricane deck,next to,one of the grave savants attached to the expedition,who seemed to contem-plate the antics that were being played at his feet with that sad smile of indulgence with which Wisdom sometimes deigns to commiserate the gaiety of Folly.Suddenly he disappeared from beside me,and the next that I saw or heard of him--he was hard at work pirouetting on the deck below with a red-tailed demon,and exhibiting in his steps a "verve"and a graceful audacity which at Paris would have certainly obtained for him the honours of expulsion at the hands of the municipal authorities.The entertainment of the day concluded with a discourse delivered out of a wind-sail by the chaplain attached to the person of the Pere Arctique,which was afterwards washed down by a cauldron full of grog,served out in bumpers to the several actors in this unwonted ceremonial.As the Prince had been good enough to invite us to dinner,instead of returning to the schooner I spent the intermediate hour in pacing the quarter-deck with Baron de la Ronciere,--the naval commander entrusted with the charge of the expedition.

Like all the smartest officers in the French navy,he speaks English beautifully,and I shall ever remember with gratitude the cordiality with which he welcomed me on board his ship,and the thoughtful consideration of his arrangements for the little schooner which he had taken in tow.At five o'clock dinner was announced,and I question if so sumptuous a banquet has ever been served up before in that outlandish part of the world,embellished as it was by selections from the best operas played by the corps d'orchestre which had accompanied the Prince from Paris.During the pauses of the music the conversation naturally turned on the strange lands we were about to visit,and the best mode of spifflicating the white bears who were probably already shaking in their snow shoes:but alas!while we were in the very act of exulting in our supremacy over these new domains,the stiffened finger of the Ice king was tracing in frozen characters a "Mene,mene,tekel upharsin"on the plate glass of the cabin windows.During the last half-hour the thermometer had been gradually falling,until it was nearly down to 32degrees;a dense penetrating fog enveloped both the vessels--(the "Saxon"had long since dropped out of sight),flakes of snow began floating slowly down,and a gelid breeze from the north-west told too plainly that we had reached the frontiers of the solid ice,though we were still a good hundred miles distant from the American shore.Although at any other time the terrible climate we had dived into would have been very depressing,under present circumstances I think the change rather tended to raise our spirits,perhaps because the idea of fog and ice in the month of June seemed so completely to uncockneyfy us.At all events there was no doubt now we had got into les mers glaciales,as our French friends called them,and,whatever else might be in store for us,there was sure henceforth to be no lack of novelty and excitement.