A little about tea

Worked in an expedition on a distant Arctic island (I will not reveal the details, because. All participants are still alive and can wash their neck for disclosure. The island is small, people 15 people, dining room in a large tent. The main group works near the camp, with several people, including me, riding routes across the island. We meet for breakfast and dinner. One of the central figures of the expedition (in addition to the boss, of course) is the mechanic Serega. It depends on the work of the diesel, the heat in the bath, and generally he is responsible for everything that should spin and emit heat and electricity. The mechanic has passed several drifting stations in the Arctic, worked more than once in Antarctica, character has a fun Nordic and calm, like his tractor DT-75. It is very difficult to irritate him, to cause an explosion - it is impossible, so the prolonged position war began completely unexpectedly - it turned out that he and I gently loved carcade tea. This wonderful drink (who tea, who compot) I loved because in its hot form its noble acid with sugar rejuvenated remarkably after heavy routes along the tundra. A similar effect on me was only produced by a thick barley barley, but in such a high latitude in the Arctic it was no longer found. Why the carcade loved the mechanic remained a mystery, apparently it was a simple true love that is inexplicable. The problem was that the carcade in our stocks was little, and Seregha had a priority, because it was not enough. He was the Chief Mechanic, and I was just a geologist. We drank carcade only in the evenings, strictly counting the leaves in someone else’s cup, but it didn’t get more of it... The stockpiles of the noble drink were evaluated by our cook in the week of its consumption by the whole composition. I had to temporarily unite with the mechanic and intimidate everyone else so that the carcade could not even dream. The period increased to 2.5 weeks, but on the backdrop of two months of work, this did not save the situation. Coincidence helped...

At the opposite end of the island was an abandoned polar station, the extensive warehouse of which we sometimes visited. In the 10 years after its closure, no one was there except the white bears. Even the ships did not enter here – far and icy. Therefore, with sufficient persistence, a lot of interesting things could be found. Here Serega once and once found... Bringing to the camp from the polar two barrels, liters each. We open for dinner one - dried onion. Urrra, now everything will taste three times better! Open the second – there is the carcade! No one even had time to kick, Serega immediately embraced the barrel: “My!” He nobly gave me all the supplies of our carcade and honestly made his only from a barrel. The smell of his drink was a little strange, but its color was even thicker than my, which Seregu was very pleased with. The mechanic swallowed the drink almost with cages, the leaves ate everything (as I did). The only thing that bothered him was that there was not the same acid, but everyone understood that for tea, which had been lying in a barrel among the bears for 10 years, it was probably normal. The rest of the people rejoiced for us, as they were already out of the carcade and did not claim either my or the mechanical. Silence and grace settled in the camp in the morning and evening.

Once, weeks after two, Serega approaches and asks, "Listen, and when you walk into the house on a barrel, what color do you have?" Normal, I say ordinary. “And I have dark red, the color of carcade...” Go to the doctor, I say, let him write you something or analyze what he will do... “No, I will not go, what he will be my carcade to analyze!” And did not go.

I was approaching the end of the second month, preparing for the transfer. My carcade was almost over, the mechanic’s excessive consumption of barrel tea led to the fact that he had already touched the bottom of the barrel. A couple of days before the helicopter he solemnly turned the barrel in the evening, rubbed the last teaspoons out of it into a cup and pulled for the teaspoon. “Oh, look, here some leaflet fell,” the voice of our beloved doctor heard. He picked up a small piece of paper that fell from the bottom of the barrel and read out loudly: “Packier number five. Dried shinked beetle.” Seregina’s hand froze over the table with a raised teaspoon. What is it???“!”
How the kitchen tent stood, no one knows yet. The table stood only because his feet were buried in the ground. The people cried and crawled between the chairs, tearing each other’s paper out of their hands and almost every oral “Packier number 5, beetle dried...” For the remaining two days, the bears walked around the camp, because there were regular screams from it, “Packier number five!” and the island began to tremble.
Serega has since not drunk the carcade entirely, although the color of the stream has normalized quite quickly. I love the flowers of the Sudanese rose and drink it.