A LUNCH ON BOARD.
It was in some measure to show my appreciation
of the spirit which prompted these warm-hearted people
that I resolved to signalize our departure with a
lunch to the representatives of King Frederick the
Seventh, at this most northern outpost of Christian
settlement. Accordingly I sent my secretary, Mr.
Knorr, out with some formal-looking invitations, gotten
up in all the dignity of Parisian paper and rose-scented
wax. He came back in a few hours with
three couples. Two of the ladies were from the parsonage;
the other was the wife of the Chief Trader.
Dr. Rudolph, Mr. Hansen, and the missionary, were
their escorts. The master of the Thialfe was already
on board.
Meanwhile our old Swedish cook had gone half crazy, and the steward kept him company. To prepare a lunch for ladies in these high latitudes was not within their conception of the hard-fisted requirements of exploration dignity. They "could not understand it." The steward contrived, however, to stow away in the bunks the seal-skins which encumbered the cabin, and thus got rid of all our Greenland rubbish but the odor. But it was not until the clean white table-cloth, which he produced from some out-of-the-way locker, was covered with the smoking dishes which his ingenuity had contrived, that his face was lit up with any thing approaching the kindly. Being, however, in a general way a mild-mannered man, his ferocious looks did not materially affect the progress of the preparations; and the solemn face with which he predicted, in great confidence, to the cook that "such folly would bring us all to ruin, indeed it would," at length wore a ghastly smile, and finally exhibited decided manifestations of a forgiving dis-
