“Latitude and season!” he shrieked, livid with rage—­“latitude and season!  Why, you junk-rigged, flat-bottomed, meadow lugger, don’t you know any better than that?  Didn’t yer little baby brother ever tell ye that southern latitudes is colder than northern, and that July is the middle o’ winter here?  Go below, you son of a scullion, or I’ll break your bones!”

“Oh! very well,” I replied; “I’m not going to stay on deck and listen to such low language as that, I warn you.  Have it your own way.”

The words had no sooner left my lips, than a piercing cold wind caused me to cast my eye upon the thermometer.  In the new regime of science the mercury was descending rapidly; but in a moment the instrument was obscured by a blinding fall of snow.  Towering icebergs rose from the water on every side, hanging their jagged masses hundreds of feet above the masthead, and shutting us completely in.  The ship twisted and writhed; her decks bulged upward, and every timber groaned and cracked like the report of a pistol.  The Camel was frozen fast.  The jerk of her sudden stopping snapped the bullock’s chain, and sent both that animal and the Dutchman over the bows, to accomplish their warfare on the ice.

Elbowing my way forward to go below, as I had threatened, I saw the crew tumble to the deck on either hand like ten-pins.  They were frozen stiff.  Passing the captain, I asked him sneeringly how he liked the weather under the new regime.  He replied with a vacant stare.  The chill had penetrated to the brain, and affected his mind.  He murmured: 

“In this delightful spot, happy in the world’s esteem, and surrounded by all that makes existence dear, they passed the remainder of their lives.  The End.”

His jaw dropped.  The captain of the Camel was dead.

THE MAN OVERBOARD

I

The good ship Nupple-duck was drifting rapidly upon a sunken coral reef, which seemed to extend a reasonless number of leagues to the right and left without a break, and I was reading Macaulay’s “Naseby Fight” to the man at the wheel.  Everything was, in fact, going on as nicely as heart could wish, when Captain Abersouth, standing on the companion-stair, poked his head above deck and asked where we were.  Pausing in my reading, I informed him that we had got as far as the disastrous repulse of Prince Rupert’s cavalry, adding that if he would have the goodness to hold his jaw we should be making it awkward for the wounded in about three minutes, and he might bear a hand at the pockets of the slain.  Just then the ship struck heavily, and went down!

Calling another ship, I stepped aboard, and gave directions to be taken to No. 900 Tottenham Court Road, where I had an aunt; then, walking aft to the man at the wheel, asked him if he would like to hear me read “Naseby Fight.”  He thought he would:  he would like to hear that, and then I might pass on to something else—­Kinglake’s “Crimean War,” the proceedings at the trial of Warren Hastings, or some such trifle, just to wile away the time till eight bells.