CHRISTMAS DINNER. 
445 
temperature below, to 46° below zero above, was in¬ 
tolerably trying. Every man suffered, and few escaped 
without frost-bitten fingers. 
“ The remembrance of the danger and its horrible 
results almost miraculously averted shocks us all. 
Had we lost our brig, not a man could have survived: 
without shelter, clothing, or food, the thermometer 
almost eighty degrees below the freezing point, and a 
brisk wind stirring, what hope could we have on the 
open ice-field ? 
“ December 25, Christmas, Monday.—All together 
again, the returned and the steadfast, we sat down to 
our Christmas dinner. There was more love than with 
the stalled ox of former times; but of herbs none. We 
forgot our discomforts in the blessings which adhered 
to us still; and when we thought of the long road 
ahead of us, we thought of it hopefully. I pledged 
myself to give them their next Christmas with their 
homes; and each of us drank his ‘absent friends’ with 
ferocious zest over one-eighteenth part of a bottle of 
sillery,—the last of its hamper, and, alas! no longer 
mousseux. 
“ But if this solitary relic of festival days had lost 
its sparkle, we had not. We passed around merrily 
our turkeys roast and boiled, roast-beef, onions, pota¬ 
toes and cucumbers, watermelons, and God knows 
what other cravings of the scurvy-sickened palate, 
with entire exclusion of the fact that each one of these 
was variously represented by pork and beans. Lord 
Peter himself was not more cordial in his dispensa- 
