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."
"What do you mean?"
John Want shook his head, and looked at Crayford with a dreary smile.
"I don't think I shall have the honor of ****** much more bone soup for you, sir. Do you think yourself you'll last long, sir? I don't, saving your presence. I think about another week or ten days will do for us all. Never mind! _I_ don't grumble."
He poured the bones into the mortar, and began to pound them--under protest. At the same moment a sailor appeared, entering from the inner hut.
"A message from Captain Ebsworth, sir."
"Well?"
"The captain is worse than ever with his freezing pains, sir. He wants to see you immediately."
"I will go at once. Rouse the doctor."
Answering in those terms, Crayford returned to the inner hut, followed by the sailor. John Want shook his head again, and smiled more drearily than ever.
"Rouse the doctor?" he repeated. "Suppose the doctor should be frozen? He hadn't a ha'porth of warmth in him last night, and his voice sounded like a whisper in a speaking-trumpet. Will the bones do now? Yes, the bones will do now. Into the saucepan with you," cried John Want, suiting the action to the word, "and flavor the hot water if you can! When I remember that I was once an apprentice at a pastry-cook's--when I think of the gallons of turtle-soup that this hand has stirred up in a jolly hot kitchen--and when I find myself mixing bones and hot water for soup, and turning into ice as fast as I can; if I wasn't of a cheerful disposition I should feel inclined to grumble. John Want! John Want! whatever had you done with your natural senses when you made up your mind to go to sea?"
A new voice hailed the cook, speaking from one of the bed-places in the side of the hut. It was the voice of Francis Aldersley.
"Who's that croaking over the fire?"
"Croaking?" repeated John Want, with the air of a man who considered himself the object of a gratuitous insult. "Croaking?
You don't find your own voice at all altered for the worse--do you, Mr. Frank? I don't give _him_," John proceeded, speaking confidentially to himself, "more than six hours to last. He's one of your grumblers."
"What are you doing there?" asked Frank.
"I'm ****** bone soup, sir, and wondering why I ever went to sea."
"Well, and why did you go to sea?"
"I'm not certain, Mr. Frank. Sometimes I think it was natural perversity; sometimes I think it was false pride at getting over sea-sickness; sometimes I think it was reading 'Robinson Crusoe,' and books warning of me _not_ to go to sea."
Frank laughed. "You're an odd fellow. What do you mean by false pride at getting over sea-sickness? Did you get over sea-sickness in some new way?"
John Want's dismal face brightened in spite of himself. Frank had recalled to the cook's memory one of the noteworthy passages in the cook's life.