Also, there was a warm, sourish, milky-looking drink, heady only when taken in enormous doses.

After guzzling I swear gallons of it, I got singing drunk, which is the way of sea-cunies the world over.

Encouraged by my success, the others persisted, and soon we were all a-roaring, little reeking of the fresh snow gale piping up outside, and little worrying that we were cast away in an uncharted, God-forgotten land.

Old Johannes Maartens laughed and trumpeted and slapped his thighs with the best of us.

Hendrik Hamel, a cold-blooded, chilly-poised dark brunette of a Dutchman with beady black eyes, was as rarely devilish as the rest of us, and shelled out silver like any drunken sailor for the purchase of more of the milky brew.