keep your head.”
“I was never seasick in me life,” he declared, “and at that, I’ve helped in the cook’s galley on the Anchor Line when she was fair standing on her head. You’ll find me strong and active when I’m once broke into the work. I come of an enduring family, though, to be sure, I’ve abused me constitution somewhat.”
Henry liked to talk about his family, and the work they’d done, and the great age to which they lived, and the brandy puddings his mother made. “Eighteen we was in all, when we sat down at table,” he would often say with his thin, apologetic smile. “Mother and father, and ten living, and four dead, and two stillborn.” Roddy and I used to strain our imagination trying to visualize such a family dinner party.
Everything worked out well for us. The foreman showed so much interest in our plans that we told him everything. He insisted that we should stay on at the winter camp as long as we needed a home base, and use up whatever supplies were left. When he paid us off, he sold us our two horses at a very reasonable figure.