e called the
engineer and asked about the coal. He had not been into the bunkers, but
went and returned with his face white, through the black grime, to
report "not four days' consumption." By some cursed accident, he said,
the bunkers had been filled with barrels of salt-pork and flour!

On this, I ordered a light and went below. There had been some fatal
misunderstanding somewhere. The vessel was fitted out as for an arctic
voyage. Everywhere hard-bread, flour, pork, beef, vinegar, sour-krout;
but, clearly enough, not, at the very best, five days of coal!

And I was to get to Brazil with this old pirate transformed into a
provision ship, "at my best discretion."

"Prendergast," said I, "we will take it easy. Were you ever in Bahia?"

"Took flour there in '55, and lay waiting for India-rubber from July to
October. Lost six men by yellow-jack."

Prendergast was from the merchant marine. I had known him since we were
children. "Ethan," said I, "in my best discretion it would be bad to
arrive there before the end of October. Where would you go?"

I cannot say he took the responsibility. He would not take it. You know,
my dear, of course, that it was I who suggested Upernavik. From the days
of the old marbled paper Northern Regions,--through the quarto Ross and
Parry and Back and the nephew Ross and Kane and McClure and McClintock,
you know, my dear, what my one passion has been,--to see those floes
and icebergs for myself. Surely you forgive me, or at least excuse me.
Do not you? Here was this fast steamer under me. I ought not to be in
Bahia before October 25. It was June 1. Of course we went to Upernavik.

I will not say I regret it now. Yet I will say that on that decision,
cautiously made, though it was "on my discretion," all our subsequent
misfortunes hang. The Danes were kind to us,--the Governor especially,
though I had to carry the poor fellow bad news about the Duchies and the
Danish war, which was all fresh then. He got up a dance for us, I
remember, and there I wrote No. 1 to you. I could not of course
help--when we left him--running her up a few degrees to the north, just
to see whether there is or is not that passage between Igloolik and
Prince Rupert's Headland (and by the way there _is_). After we passed
Igloolik, there was such splendid weather, that I just used up a little
coal to drive her along the coast of King William's Land; and there, as
we waited for a little duck-shooting on the edge of a f