Читать книгу Three in Norway, by Two of Them - J. A. Lees - Страница 8

The day passed as days at sea do when the weather is all that can be wished, and the treacherous ocean calmly sleeps. The passengers were as sociable as any collection of English people ever are, and we spent the time very pleasantly chatting, smoking, eating enormously, and playing the ordinary sea games of quoits and horse-billiards.

The Skipper was much exercised in spirit because Esau had told him that he believed a certain passenger to be an acquaintance of a former voyage, named, let us say, Jones, and that he was a capital fellow. So the Skipper went and fraternised with Jones, and presently, trusting to the ‘information received,’ remarked, ‘I believe your name is Jones?’ and was a little annoyed when Jones replied, ‘No, it’s not Jones; it’s Blueit, and I never heard the name of Jones as a surname before.’ Then the Skipper arose and remonstrated with his perfidious friend, who with great good temper said, to make it all right, ‘You see that man by the funnel? That is a Yankee going to see the midnight sun; go and talk to him.’ Now the Skipper has been in America a good deal, and likes to talk to the natives of those regions, so he sailed over to the funnel and tackled the Yankee. Presently, with that admirable tact which is his most enviable characteristic, he observed, ‘I understand that you have come all the way from America to see the midnight sun: it is a very extraordinary phenomenon. Imagine a glorious wealth of colour glowing over an eternal sunlit sea, and endowing with a fairy glamour a scene which Sappho might have burned to sing; where night is not, nor sleep, but Odin’s eye looks calmly down, nor ever sinks in rest.’ As he paused for breath the Yankee saw his opportunity, and said, ‘No, I was never in America in my life. I am a Lincolnshire man, and am going over to Arendahl to buy timber. I have seen the midnight sun some dozen times, and I call it an infernal nuisance.’ Here the Skipper hastily left, and came over and abused Esau until he made an enemy of him for life.