"I was now more puzzled than ever to know what to do; but I did not give up trying, determined to succeed, one way or another. Presently it occurred to me that almost anything that was hard would answer to sharpen the edge and point of the ivory harpoon-head, and, since I could not get any kind of metal to make a whole harpoon-head out of, I had to try some other plan. As good luck would have it, I now thought of the brass buttons on my coat. Some of these I quickly tore off. Then I hacked my knife with a sharp flint stone until I had made a saw of it, and with this saw I cut a little groove along the tapering point of the ivory harpoon-head; and into this groove, which was about a quarter of an inch deep, I set the buttons, which I had squared with the knife, and then wedged them firmly. I had now only to grind all these bits of brass down even, and to sharpen the whole with a stone, and my work was done. And a most tedious work it had been too. The next thing was to put it to the test, which we quickly did. A seal-hole being soon found, we had not long to wait before the seal came into it, with a little puff, as before; and, as soon as the noise was heard, I let fly with my harpoon, and, striking through the snow-crust, hit the seal fairly in the neck, and drove the harpoon into him.

"Down sank the seal through the hole, taking the harpoon along with him, and spinning out the line which was attached to it at a furious rate. Before the seal was struck, and while I was watching for him, the Dean had quietly tied the end of the line that was not fast to the harpoon around the middle of 'Old Crumply,' and when the seal descended into the sea, 'Old Crumply' was whipped along over the snow until it lodged right across the hole, and there the seal was,—'brought up with a round turn,' as the sailors say.

"And now was anybody ever so rejoiced as we? The Dean fairly shouted with delight, and danced around the hole as if he were crazy, crying 'Bravo, bravo!' and 'Hurrah for Crumply' and 'Hurrah for Old Crumply!' and hurrah for this, and hurrah for that, until he was fairly hoarse. Meanwhile the seal was trying his best to get away. He darted from side to side, and up and down, without any other result than to tire himself out; for the harpoon held firmly in his body, and the line held firmly to 'Old Crumply,' and 'Old Crumply' lay squarely across the hole.

"By and by the seal was forced to come up to breathe; and, since there was no other place for him, he had to return to the hole where he had been struck. But he did not stay more than a second or so, going down as quickly as he had done before. As soon as the line was loosened, however, we drew in the slack, and wound it around 'Old Crumply,' so that the seal did not have so much of it now to play with. Nor did he remain under so long the second time. When he came up again, we got in all the slack of the line that we could, as before.

"It was now clear enough that we should be sure of the seal, if we could only get something to kill him with; and so the quick-witted Dean ran off at once to the hut, and brought a walrus tusk that we had saved. This was driven into the hard snow not far from the hole, and, while the Dean held it there firmly, I got the line made fast around it. As soon as I saw that this was secure, and that the Dean was holding on bravely, I unfastened the line from 'Old Crumply,' and, when the seal came next time, I gave him a heavy thrust with the sharp end of it. But this did not kill him by any means, nor did he give me another chance for some time. Then, however, he was almost dead with bleeding, and fright, and hard struggling to get away, to say nothing of holding his breath so long; but I wanted him too badly to have any mercy on him, so I worked away as hard as I could to get in all the line, so that the seal could not sink down through the hole any more.



"At last I was successful, and the seal was fast in the hole, and with all his struggling he could not get away. With the aid of 'Old Crumply,' I now quickly made an end of him. As soon as he was dead, we drew him out on the ice, and rejoiced over him. Such shouting never was before known, at least in that part of the world. If anybody could have heard and seen us, we should have surely been taken up for insane people, especially the Dean, whose joy knew no bounds.

"Having no sledge, we had to drag the dead seal over the ice and snow, for which purpose we made the line fast through his nose. It was no easy task to get him to the hut; and, when we did at last succeed, we found that the seal was partly frozen, so that we were obliged to draw it inside the hut, and then thaw it, before we could get the skin off, which made the hut very disagreeable. After the skin and blubber were removed, we cut off some of the flesh, and made for ourselves a good hot supper,—first cooking a stew in our soapstone pot, and then frying some steaks on a flat stone; and if anything was before wanting to make us perfectly happy over the capture of so great a prize, we had it now, when we discovered what excellent food it was, and what a quantity there was of it.

"When we had finished butchering the seal, we prepared the skin for making boots; and we put the blubber and flesh away in our storehouses for future use,—the flesh for food, and the blubber for our fire and lamp. Then we slept, and the very next day we set out to catch more seals, without, however, the same success, for we were unfortunate in every attempt; and it was, indeed, almost a week, I think, before we made a second capture. Some time afterward we caught a third, and then a fourth, and by great good fortune on the very same day a fifth; and not long after that we caught another, which made the sixth.

"But it would have been well had we been content with five, without coveting a sixth, as this last had like to have been the ruin of us; for as we were going slowly back to the hut, dragging the seal after us, and all unsuspicious of harm, we were set upon by a great white beast, the like of which we had never seen before, but which we knew must be one of those savage animals called polar bears. He was not coming rapidly, but was rather crawling along cautiously, with mouth wide open, looking very fierce. As soon as we discovered him, we dropped the line with which we were dragging the seal, and ran as fast as our legs would carry us, never stopping until we had reached the hut and crawled into it,—not once having had the courage to look back, for at every step we expected that the bear would be atop of us.

"We had left 'Old Crumply' and 'Dean's Delight' where we captured the seal, intending to go for them the next day; and, having no weapon of any kind, we were in the greatest terror, expecting every moment to hear the bear coming to tear the hut down, and drag us out, and eat us up.

"But, finding that we were not disturbed, we at length fell asleep. Upon awaking the next day, and finding that we had been suffered to go undisturbed thus long, we began to wonder whether we had not been needlessly alarmed, and finally we set to wondering whether we had really seen a bear after all, and at length we grew to feel quite ashamed of ourselves. So we put on a little bravado, like the boy that whistled in the dark to keep his courage up, and went out, cautiously approaching the spot where we had left the seal. Arriving there, we had positive proof enough, if any were wanting, that we had certainly seen a bear. The bones of the seal were all strewn about over the snow, picked as clean as could be. Some foxes were gnawing at them, as we came up; but they all scampered off when they saw us coming.

"Hurrying on, we picked up 'Old Crumply' and 'Dean's Delight,' and then hastened back to the hut, which we reached without any further adventure; but on the day following, upon going out to visit our fox-traps, we came across the bear's tracks, from which it was evident to us that the wild beast was prowling round the island, where he had already obtained one good meal, and was in hopes, no doubt, of getting another; and, as we did not know how soon he might feel disposed to begin upon us, we ran back to the hut with all speed, imagining, as we went along, that every rock and snow-drift that we passed was a bear.

"We had now even greater fears than before that we should be attacked and eaten up by the wild beast. It did not once occur to us that the bear would be much more likely to prefer the contents of our storehouses to ourselves, if he came that way, but we thought only of our own safety; and this was perhaps not unnatural, for boys and men alike are everywhere liable to magnify their own importance, even in the eyes of a bear.

"We had not been in the hut more than a couple of hours, I should say, before we heard the tramp of our enemy. We knew it must be the footsteps of the bear, because it could be nothing else. Our fears were now even greater than ever.

"The bear appeared from the sound of his footsteps, crunching in the snow, to be making directly for us, sniffing the air as he came along, apparently enjoying in advance a supper that he felt quite sure of. He seemed to halt at every step or so, as if greatly relishing the prospect.

"At last he came very near, and we expected at every instant to see his head appear at the window. Resolved to sell our lives as dearly as possible, we grasped our weapons firmly, the Dean his 'Delight' and I 'Old Crumply,' to the end of which I had firmly lashed the jack-knife, after grinding it very sharp on a stone, and giving it a good point. As the knife-blade was quite long, I had strong hopes of giving the bear such a wound, when he appeared at the window, as might be the death of him, or, at any rate, frighten him so badly that he would be glad to run away, and not come back any more.

"Nearer and nearer came the bear, and greater grew our alarm. Our hearts beat violently in our breasts; our faces were pale as death; we held our breath, as if fearful of making the least noise to give the bear encouragement. At length our enemy gave a sudden start. It seemed to us as if he had now made a dash at the window, so we both rose to our feet, with our weapons ready to meet him; but, to our great joy and relief, the sound of his footsteps showed that the beast was retreating, rather than advancing, and was moving more rapidly. A moment afterward we heard the rattle of stones, and now, from fear for ourselves, we passed instantly to fear for our stores; for we knew that it was our stores, and not us, that he was after, and that he must be tearing down one of our principal storehouses. And now, what if he should tear them all down, and eat up all our food and fuel? It was a fearful thought.

"How often do we pass almost insensibly from the greatest terror to the greatest courage! Relieved now from all immediate personal apprehension, we felt at once inspired to protect our property, on the safety of which our lives depended. We ceased at once to feel like standing passively on the defensive, but immediately crawled out of the hut to do something,—exactly what, we did not know. Our thoughts had, indeed, hardly time to take shape in our minds, so quickly had the change come in the situation and in our feelings.

"The bear was plainly in sight as soon as we got outside, tearing down our storehouse; but he appeared not to be thinking of us at all. Without reflecting in the least what I was about, but filled only with alarm at the prospect of losing our food and fuel, I set up a loud shout, in which the Dean joined; and, to our great surprise, the huge beast, that had caused us so much terror, took fright himself, and without looking round, or stopping a moment, he made a great bound, and tore away over the rocks, plunging through the snowdrifts, and rolling down the hill into the valley, where we had dug the turf, in a most ridiculous manner.

"We passed now from a state of terror to a feeling of perfect safety, and in such an unexpected manner, too, that we laughed outright, and we thought that we had been very foolish to be so frightened, and looked upon our enemy as a great coward. So we concluded that an animal who was so easily scared as that would never attack us, and therefore, getting our weapons, we followed after him, hoping to drive him from the island. The jumps that he had made were quite immense, showing clearly the state of his mind.

"Following the tracks of the bear, we came very soon in full view of the beach where the carcass of the narwhal was lying, half buried in ice and snow. The tracks led in that direction, and finally pointed straight to the spot. He had in his flight evidently smelled the old narwhal, and, remembering only that he was hungry, had stopped there; for presently we caught sight of him, tearing away at the narwhal with as much energy as he had before wasted upon our storehouse.

"We had come quite near to the bear before we saw him; and now our spirits underwent another sudden change, and our minds were once more filled with such feelings of respect for the bear, that we turned about immediately, and beat a hasty retreat; and, when once more under the shelter of the hut, prepared again to stand on the defensive.

"All we could now do was to watch the bear closely. So long as the old narwhal lasted, we felt that we were safe enough, even after he had apparently satisfied himself with a good meal, and had gone away, as seemed likely, to sleep. He would certainly, however, come back to the narwhal again when he got hungry; but now, worse than ever, when he did come back, there were two other bears with him, and all three of them were making a meal off the carcass of the dead narwhal. These last two were quite small ones,—the smaller not being larger than a big Newfoundland dog.

"With this discovery all our newly found courage took rapid flight, and we were overtaken with even greater alarm than before. That the narwhal would soon all be gone seemed plain enough, with three bears feeding upon it; and then, when this feeding was over, this first bear, knowing where our storehouse was, and forgetting his fright, and having two bears, and perhaps by that time even more, to help him, we were sure he would soon come back again. It seemed as if a great crisis had now come in our fortunes, and what to do we did not know, and what was to become of us we could not imagine. We were in great trouble."

"I don't wonder," exclaimed William,—"the horrid brutes!"

"I should have been scared to death," cried Fred; while little Alice thought it was too dreadful to think of; but, "The poor bears, how cold and hungry they must have been!" said she.



CHAPTER XV.

Shows, Among Other Curious Matters, That Two Boys Are Better Than One, and That Pluck Is a Good Thing, Especially When Polar Bears Are Around.

The next record we have of the doings of the ancient mariner and his little friends reads thus:—

"You will tell us to-day what you did with the bears,—won't you, Captain Hardy?" inquired William.

"Well," replied the Captain, laughing in his free-and-easy way, like a jolly old sailor as he was, taking his long pipe out of his mouth that he might do it all the better, "I think it was pretty near being what the bears did with us, my hearties! yes, that would be quite as near the mark, I'm thinking."

"No matter, then," said William,—"no matter, Captain Hardy; we ain't particular,—any way you like. I'll put the question t' other way, then,—what did the bears do with you?"

The Captain was in great good-humor to-day, and he kept on laughing till his pipe went out; and, while he laughed, he said, "Why, to be sure, they frightened us!"

"Tit for tat," exclaimed William; "you frightened them,—that's fair."

"That's so," replied the Captain,—"that's so, sure enough; only they wouldn't stay frightened, while we did, you see."

"What! did they find you out?"

"That they did, my lad, just as soon as they had finished the old narwhal. We were sound asleep when they came; and they soon woke us up with the great noise they made close to the hut.

"But stop a bit!" exclaimed the Captain, reflectively; "my story's got ahead of me, or I've got ahead of the story,—one or the other; so I must go back a little,"—and he paused, not with his finger to his nose this time, as usual, but to his forehead, as if feeling in his brain for the end of the "yarn," as he always called the story.

In a moment the old man appeared to have quite satisfied himself about the matter, for he started off as fast as he could go:—

"I didn't tell you anything about the fort we built, nor the time we had provisioning it,—did I?" said he.

"No," answered William, "nothing about a fort."

"Then there's the broken end of the yarn at last," and the old man took his finger from his forehead and stopped feeling for it.

* * * * *

"Well, it was a good long time," continued the Captain, "before the bears finished the old narwhal; but, finding how much they were occupied in that quarter, we went to our storehouses, and brought all our stores away, and stowed them close to the mouth of the hut, thinking that, if they were discovered, we should there be better able to protect them.

"First of all, however, we built up two solid snow-walls, about three feet apart, and as high as our heads, directly on a line with the entrance to our hut, so that when we went outside we walked right between them. Then, behind these walls, we piled all the birds, seal-flesh and eggs that we had for food, and all the blubber (now frozen quite hard) that we had for fuel,—the former on the right-hand side (going out), and the latter on the left. Having done this, we covered the whole over with snow several feet deep; and, as a still further protection against our enemies the bears, we built up a great wall all around in front of the hut where there were no high rocks. Through this wall we left only one small hole to crawl through when we went out; and, when we came inside, we carefully closed it up with some large blocks of snow. But we did not go outside much, being afraid; and at length, when one of the bears was discovered prowling about very near the hut, we drew within our fortification, closed the opening in the wall as tightly as possible, and were prepared for a siege.

"At first we did not sleep much, being all the time fearful of attack; but gaining courage as we found, day after day, that the bears did not come to molest us, we at length fell asleep both together; and it was while we were thus asleep that the bears discovered us. Before either of us awoke, they had actually scaled the wall of our snow-fort, and advanced to where our food and fuel were stowed, close to the mouth of the hut, and were tearing through the snow to get at it.

"We were, naturally enough, much alarmed, not so much on our own immediate account, as on account of our stores, for the bears would, we knew very well, not be likely to trouble us so long as there was anything else to eat; but then they might just as well eat us first, and the stores afterward, as to eat the stores first; for then we must surely starve and freeze, which would be quite as bad.

"Fully sensible of our unhappy condition, and the first feeling of alarm having passed over, we began seriously to speculate upon what we should do; for something had to be done, and that very quickly.

"I looked out through the window, and there were the bears all crowded together in the narrow passage; and one of them had already got among the frozen ducks, which were tumbling in the snow about his feet, and he had one in his mouth, crunching away at it in such a manner as to leave no doubt that he was either very hungry or was in a violent hurry; growling all the while,—'Ung, ung, ung,'—with each crunch he gave, to keep away the other two bears. This bear was much the largest of the three; the smallest one was not, as I said before, larger than a Newfoundland dog,—not larger than Port or Starboard. Thus you see not only what a destructive, but what a selfish, beast he was.

"From alarm we now got to be angry, as we observed the liberties these bears were taking with our food, and the little ceremony they made of eating up, in this wholesale manner, what had cost us so much hard labor to get, and upon which our very lives now depended.

"I seized 'Old Crumply' in very desperation, and asked the Dean if he would follow me. 'What!' exclaimed he, 'you don't mean to attack them?' 'That's just what I am going to do,' said I; 'and, if you can do anything with "The Delight," now's your chance.' 'I'll stand by you,' said the Dean, grasping his weapon; 'better to be killed outright by the bears than to let them starve us to death, and then very likely kill us afterwards.'

"Desperate as was our condition, I could not help being amused by the Dean's way of putting the matter,—'first starved to death, and then killed'; and I think this little speech, turned in that happy way, did a great deal to stiffen up my courage.

"I crawled out through the doorway of the hut (which I have told you was not high enough for us to stand upright in), and, upon coming near the end of it, there was the bear within three feet of me. His head was turned away, and his nose was all buried up in the snow; for he had just swallowed a duck, and was getting a fresh one, so that he did not see me. My heart seemed to be in my mouth,—so close to the dreadful monster,—so ferocious and fearful did he appear as I looked up at him. Had I been alone, I think I should have retreated; but here was the Dean behind me, and I was ashamed to back out, having gone thus far. Summoning all my courage, therefore, I brought forward my spear, grasped it with both hands, and plunged it with all my force into the animal's neck, just behind the lower jaw and below the ear.

"It was a fortunate stroke. I had evidently, by chance, cut some great blood-vessel, for the blood spouted from the wound in a regular stream. The bear dropped his duck very quickly, I can tell you. He was probably never so much astonished in all his life before. I had come upon him so stealthily, and he was so absorbed in what he was about, that he had never once suspected the presence of an enemy, but thought himself, no doubt, a very lucky bear to find such a dinner ready caught for him, and was quite as little concerned about who the owner might be as most people would be if they found a bag of gold.

"But I caused him to sing another tune than to be constantly going 'Ung, ung, ung,' to frighten off the little bears, for he roared with terror, so that you might have heard him half a mile; and, finding that he could not wheel around as quickly as he wanted to, he roared again, louder than before, which sounded so dreadful that I drew back into the hut quite instinctively, and thus lost the opportunity to give him another thrust, which I might very well have done, in the side. When he had got wheeled round, he rolled over the other two bears, and the three together, all roaring in a dreadful way, rolled against the snow-wall of our fort, and broke it down; and now, as soon as they could scramble to their legs again, they hurried away through the snow down into the valley,—the smallest one trying hard to keep up, and whining piteously all the while, as if he were afraid something terrible was coming to catch him; and now, just as we had done before, when we had, with our shouts, frightened the bears away when they had first come to disturb us, we ran after them, little thinking of danger, in the excitement of the moment.

"We found that the bear I had wounded held straight down the valley, as was easily told by the red streak he left behind him on the snow. The other two turned to the right, and ran over in the direction of the old narwhal.

"Following the red streak, we came soon down to the beach; and then climbing over the rough ice which the tide had piled up, we were quickly upon the frozen sea, hurrying on as fast as we could go. Indeed, no feeling of fear ever crossed our minds; for the great quantity of blood that the bear left behind him somehow or other went to convince us, without much reflection, that the bear must be dead, and that we should presently come upon him.

"While hurrying on at this rate, our spirits received as sudden a check as they had on a previous occasion; for we did at length come upon the bear, sure enough, and, forgetting all our courage immediately, we wheeled about in great alarm, and ran back towards the hut as fast as we could go.

"Finding, however, that we were not pursued, we turned about again; and, proceeding more cautiously this time, we came, in a little while, in sight of the bear again, very near where he was before; but now he was clearly by no means a formidable enemy; for he was going along very slowly, and making a crooked track, as if he was drunk. Directly he fell over; and, in a little while afterwards, we went up to him, and found him dead,—having bled to death from the wound I had given him.

"You may easily imagine how rejoiced we were; for now we had an enormous supply of food, and a fine bear-skin besides; so I lost no time in unlashing the knife-blade from the end of 'Old Crumply,' and with this we began to butcher him. It was a very cold and tedious operation; but we got through with it at last, and then, burying all of the flesh in the snow except a small piece that we wanted for supper, we returned to the hut, dragging the skin after us, the Dean whistling, all the way, 'Bonaparte crossing the Alps,' which he had picked up, as he told me, from a Frenchman in Havana.

"While we were coming up the valley towards the hut, in this lively state of mind, the Dean stopped suddenly, and said: 'Suppose, Hardy, the other two bears have taken a notion to come back'; and he was right; for we came presently in sight of one of them, very near the hut, and making directly for it. As soon as he saw us, however, he ran away. So we took a good laugh at his expense, and, thinking the other one must be near him, though not in sight, we proceeded on our way. Fortunately, however, before seeing the bear, we halted long enough to secure the knife-blade again on the end of 'Old Crumply'; and it was well that we did this, for, when we arrived at the broken wall where the bears had made their way out, much to our surprise, we came right upon the other bear, close up to the mouth of the hut, busy swallowing a duck. This was the smallest of the three bears, and he could not have been more than a year or so old. No sooner did he hear us than he, like the other one, became alarmed; but, seeing us in the road by which he had entered, he did not try to escape in that way, nor did he appear to have the least idea that he had only to charge upon us to see how quickly he would clear the passage; for, instead of doing this, he instantly rushed forward, and plunged into our hut, no doubt thinking that would lead to a place of safety.

"I do not exactly know by what motive I was impelled, but I suppose the same that governed me on several other occasions; that is, a general one belonging to almost all human beings, and, indeed, to most animals, that is, to chase whatever runs away, and to run away from whatever chases.

"At any rate, I rushed up to the doorway of the hut, I believe without any idea at all in my head, and without giving much thought about it, and had like to have got into a great scrape; for the bear, having found that the hut gave him no chance of escape, had turned about, and was coming out again. I was wholly unprepared for him, so hasty had I been. I could not run, and therefore, quite mechanically, I hit him in the face with the sharp point of 'Old Crumply,' which sent him back into the hut again, and made him roar in an awful manner, as if he were half killed. I knew I must have hit him on some tender spot,—the eye, it proved to be afterwards, so he was half blind as well as half dead.

"It was very unfortunate that I had not let him go, or killed him outright; for we could now hear him tearing everything to pieces in our hut, trying to find a place of escape. The wall between our sleeping-place and our closet was first knocked over, as he scrambled about; and there was no doubt that our pots and lamps were all broken to pieces. It was like a great roaring bull in a china shop, and we wished many times that he was only out and off; and, if he had only known, our minds upon the subject, a compromise would have been speedily made, and the beast might have gone scot-free on condition of his doing no further mischief.

"The bear was not long in discovering the window. Now, the window being very small, it was evident that, if he attempted it, he would do us a great damage, for he could only pass through by knocking down some part of the wall. No sooner, therefore, had his head appeared in that quarter, than the Dean charged him most gallantly with the 'Delight,' and gave him such a tremendous blow on the nose that he was glad enough to draw his head in again, which he did with a great cry. Then he became quiet for a while, as if meditating what course it was best for him now to pursue.

"Availing myself of this little pause, I exchanged weapons with the Dean, and, fixing the harpoon-head on the end of the 'Delight,' I tied the other end of the line which was fast to it around a large stone that lay across the doorway of the hut. This I did because I thought there might be a possible chance of catching the bear; and that, if we could only get him to run out, I might harpoon him as he passed, and the stone would hold him until we could find some way of despatching him.

"No sooner had these preparations been made than the bear was again in motion; and now he gave a roar that seemed loud enough to have rattled the whole hut down about his ears. This time he had clearly tried the chimney, and had not only scattered the burning moss and fat all about the hut, but had set himself on fire into the bargain; for a great volume of smoke came out through the window, which smelled of burning hair.

"The screams of the bear were now pitiful to hear, and in very desperation he once more tried the window, when the Dean quickly gave him a crack with 'Old Crumply,' which sent him back again.

"Grown now utterly reckless, he bolted right through the door. I was ready for him, standing on the top of the passageway and on the stone to which the harpoon line was made fast. As the bear came under me, I let drive with the harpoon, and stuck him in the back. And then away he dashed like a fiery demon, plunging through the snow, smoking and blazing all over. He had evidently rolled all about in our burning fat and moss, as bits of burning moss were sticking to him, setting his hair all on fire, and no doubt scorching his skin to a degree that must have made a dive into the snow very comfortable indeed.

"As soon as he had run out all the line, the stone under my feet, instead of holding fast, gave way, pitching me after the bear, and turning me quite upside down. I landed head-foremost in a snow-bank. The burning bear went rushing and roaring away, dragging the big stone after him; but not far, however, for he fell over and died directly,—no doubt partly from fright, but chiefly, perhaps, from his wounds and his severe burns.

"Having got rid of the bear, we gave him no further thought for the present, but rushed into the hut to see what mischief he had done there. The smoke was at first so thick that we were almost smothered by it. Our cloth coats and part of our fur bedding were all mixed up with the burning moss upon the floor, and were being rapidly destroyed. As we had feared, the pots and lamps were all broken; and, in short, the inside of the hut was in a most sorry state.

"It was a long time before we fully repaired all the damage the bear had done, and we suffered much inconvenience and discomfort before we replaced our pots, cups, and lamps. When we had, however, at last done all this, we were not sorry that the bears had come to disturb us, but on the other hand were rather rejoiced; for we were now in all respects just as comfortable as ever, and had besides a great warm bear-skin to sleep on, and one more variety of food added to our list, and that, too, in such large quantity that there was no fear of our coming to want very soon."

* * * * *

Seeing that the ancient mariner showed signs of breaking off at this stage of the story, Fred spoke up, and wanted to know more about the bear that had set fire to himself.

"O, it don't much matter about him," replied the Captain. "When we had looked after the hut, and had got the fire put out, and found leisure then to go after the bear, he was dead enough, as I said before; but much of the hair was singed off him as nicely almost, in some places, as if he had been shaved, so that the skin was of little use to us, and we only used the flesh, which we soon grew very fond of; for this bear, as I have said before, was a young one, and his flesh was tender."

"What became of the other bear?" asked William, curious to reach the end of the bear story.

"We never saw anything more of him, nor heard anything more of him either," answered the Captain; "and indeed we were never troubled any more with bears at all in that way, but thereafter lived in peace.

"That is to say, we lived in peace so far as the bears were concerned; but the cold and the darkness were now at their greatest, and the winds blew sometimes with such violence that we were often greatly terrified. Indeed, the storms at one time were so constant and so fearful that we could scarcely stir out of doors. Up to this period the weather had been mostly calm and very favorable to our course of life; but, as the winter began to turn towards the spring, all this was changed.

"Yet we could not but feel thankful for the great privilege of good weather with which Providence had so far blessed us. Had the storms raged in the autumn and early winter as they did now, we should have been quite unable to provide for our wants, and we must have starved. But now our needs were abundantly supplied, and we had little occasion for going abroad unless we wanted to and the weather was favorable. Once only did we experience any serious danger from the weather; and this, like most evils that befall all human beings, was due to our own imprudence.

"There being a bright moon, and the air being nearly calm and not unusually cold, we were tempted to take a long walk; and, attracted by one object after another that was upon the frozen sea over which we were walking,—here an iceberg of peculiar formation or remarkable size, there a snow-drift of singular form,—we found ourselves at last several miles away from our hut.

"When we turned about at length to retrace our steps, we discovered that the northern sky, which we now faced (for we had walked out in a southerly direction), showed stormy symptoms, and very quickly afterward a severe gale of wind broke over the island and the desolate sea, and we found ourselves overwhelmed with drifting snow.

"The sky was for the most part cloudless, and no snow fell from the heavens, but the light snow that lay upon the ice was picked up, as it were, by the wind, and whirled through the air in a manner as beautiful as it was terrible; for the drift coming in streams, with the rushing wind, lashed our faces, torturing us in a terrible manner, chilling us through and through, and almost overpowering us. Then an aurora borealis burst out before us, as if the heavens were on fire,—and from the top of our little island the snow came whirling above our heads in constant streams, that went circling about in a most fantastic way.

"You cannot imagine how grand this storm scene was,—the wind howling around us, the snowdrifts whirling about and spinning over the icy plain, the moon gleaming brightly upon the snow and the icebergs and the island, and every now and then a great blaze of many colors that were reflected on everything about us, would start up from the auroral arch, until the light became almost as great for a few moments as if it were broad day. It was very fearful, and you may be sure that we hastened on to the hut as fast as we could, though we were not in such a great hurry as to be wholly insensible to the magnificence of the scene.

"After we had reached the hut, the Dean repeated some verses which he had picked up somewhere; and when I recite them for you, you will see how appropriate they were to what I have been describing, and how strange seemed to us our situation when we found ourselves in the very place where the poet had imagined the Northwest wind to have a beginning.

"The Nor'west wind is a spirit brave, And he cometh from afar; He is cradled far down in the depths that yawn Beneath the polar star.

"Where no mortal foot hath been, he maketh His track o'er the snowy plain; And listens the tread of phantoms dread, With banner and spear and flame.

"Where the billows are booming on frozen shore, O there right kingly is he! His pinnacled throne the iceberg lone, His empire the boundless sea.

"He rideth aloft on the mountain-tops,— Rare sport doth he meet with there; He spinneth the snow in lightning flow, Till it gleams like a witch's hair."

"O the Nor'west wind is a spirit brave, A conquering hero is he; And his fierce battle song, as he marcheth along, Is the shout of victory."

"O, how beautiful and appropriate!" exclaimed the children.

"But," said William, "how did you get to the island?"

"Without any other accident," replied the Captain, "than with two frozen noses, which were sore for a long time afterwards. But, after it was all over, we would not have missed the sight for anything, it was so grand; yet, had we been caught out on the sea a little farther from the hut, we should never have got back, but both of us must have perished.

"Thus you see how Providence continued to watch over the two poor castaways."



CHAPTER XVI.

Covers a Long Period of Time, and shows, among other Things, how a Race may be lost at Both Ends.

"I must now tell you," continued the Captain, "that, while all these adventures were happening, the winter was passing steadily away; and, from what I have before told you about the Arctic seasons, you will know that when the winter came finally to an end the darkness came to an end too,—that is, to be more particular, first there was a little flush of light at noon, to see which made us very glad, you may be sure; after this, from day to day, the light grew brighter and brighter, until it was almost broad daylight, as it is here just before the sun has risen in the morning; then the sun came up a few days afterward only a little way above the horizon (of course right in the south); and then, next day, it was a little higher, and the next day a little higher still; and then, by and by, it was (as it had been in the summer-time before) circling round and round us, shining all the while; and now our hut was at midnight in the shadow of the cliff; at noon the sun was blazing down upon us, softening the snow, and making our hearts, O, how happy and thankful!—more so than I can tell you.

"I thought that never in all my life had I seen anything so splendid as the sun's bright face when he appeared for the first time after this long dark winter. For you must know we were about one hundred and twenty days without once setting eyes upon the sun at all; and now, when he did rise, after this long interval, what could we do but take off our caps and whirl them round and round our heads, in very joy and gladness? and this I can assure you we did with many a good round cheer.

"The summer now came on steadily, and the temperature became warmer every day. The spring glided into summer, and early in the month of June the snow began to melt in good earnest, and by July great streams were dashing and roaring over the cliffs, and through the gorges, to the sea. Then the sea soon began to show the influence of the summer heat. The ice grew rotten, and, from being white, it got to be quite dark; and we could no longer go out upon it with any safety, except in one particular direction, towards the east, where it was much thicker than in any other place. Then strong winds came, and the rotten ice was broken up, and after that it went drifting here and there to right and left, up and down upon the sea, whichever way the winds were blowing.

"And now once more we kept a sharp lookout for ships, hoping all the time that 'this day will be the day of our deliverance.' But we lived on as we had done before,—every day adding one more disappointment to the list,—for no ship came. Thus watching, waiting, hoping on, we grew restless with anxiety, and were more unhappy than we had ever been in the gloomy winter that had passed away.

"But the summer brought some pleasure to us. As soon as the snow had gone, the grass grew green upon the hillside, and the tiny little plants put out their leaves, and then the tiny little flowers were blooming brightly, and turning up their pleasant faces to the ever-smiling sun.

"And then the birds came back,—the eider-ducks, and the little auks, that I have told you of, and great flocks of geese and gulls, all looking out for places in which to make their nests; and they fairly kept the air alive with the flutter of their wings, and their 'quack, quack, quack,' and their gladsome screams, as they hurried to and fro.

"And then bright yellow butterflies and little bees came fluttering and buzzing about the little flowers, and all was life and happiness and brightness in the air about us; but there was no one there to look at us and see how heavy were our hearts at times,—no one but God.

"But not on our desert island alone was nature full of life and gayety. The seals, as if glad that summer had once more returned, crawled out upon the ice, and lay there on it, where it floated in the water, basking in the sun. There were hundreds and hundreds of them to be seen almost every day; and, besides the seals, the walruses, with their great long hideous-looking tusks and ugly and ungraceful bodies, came up too; and the narwhals, also, with their long ivory horns, and the white whales, were to be seen at almost any time, 'spouting' round about us in the sea. And besides all this life in the sea, and in the air, and on the land, we now and then saw a great white bear prowling about upon the floating ice-fields, seeking seals to feed upon; and, when tired of one ice-field, he would jump into the water, and swim away and crawl up on another.

"Thus you observe that, if we were upon a desert island in the Arctic Sea, it was not so barren as one would think who had never seen anything of such a place.

"It is not worth while for me to tell you how we lived through this second summer. Of course we had a much easier time of it than we had had the summer previous, for there was no hut to build, and we had now leisure to make ourselves more comfortable; and indeed we used our time so well that we accumulated, in good season, everything we needed in the way of food and fuel,—catching the birds and other animals as before, which we stowed away in so many different places that we felt quite sure the bears would not be likely to discover all of them; and then we made fresh suits of fine fur clothes, and fresh fur bedding, and carved new lamps and pots and cups out of soapstone, that we might be safe against all accidents.

"While we were thus working, and watching all the time for ships, without the hoped-for ship ever coming, the summer passed away, the birds flew off once more with the setting sun, the sea froze up all around the island, and we were left again alone,—all, all alone, in the cold and snow and darkness of another winter.

"O how heavy were our hearts now! Bright had been our hopes of rescue; great was our disappointment, and unhappy the prospect before us. For a time we were very despondent; but the darkest hour, you know, is just before the break of day, and we were experiencing now only one more of our many periods of gloom with daybreak following; for when the winter fairly sealed up the sea around us, and covered everything with snow, we felt the same spirit of resignation in our lives that had before carried us through so many trials and difficulties. And in this we were a great support to each other. If our hearts were more than commonly heavy at any time, we tried all we could to disguise it from each other, and tried always to be as cheerful as possible. If we had each always carried a gloomy face about with him, I am sure both of us must have died. Thus you see how important is the spirit of cheerfulness; and, to tell the truth, I haven't much opinion of long-faced people anyway, whether they live on rocky islands or in big houses or in little huts,—whether they are old or young, rich or poor, civilized or savage, Christian or pagan. That's my opinion.

* * * * *

"Well, this winter passed over just as the other had done;—the same routine of work and hunting, the same cold and darkness, the same constant bearing up against our unhappy fortunes. It did not in any particular differ from the other in a manner worthy of mention, except that no bears came this time to disturb us. But there was the same aurora borealis, the same bright starlight and brighter moonlight, the same fierce snows and howling gales. We caught foxes and seals as we had done before, and wanted not for food or fuel. Our health was still always good.

"So you see there is no occasion for our halting over this period. I can tell you nothing new about it. The winter came to an end, as everything must, in time; the sun came back; the summer followed the winter; and this, our third summer on the Rock of Good Hope, passed away like the others, with its bright sunshine, and its pretty butterflies and flowers, and myriads of birds, but still no ship, and still no rescue."

* * * * *

After the Captain had thus spoken, he paused as if to consider whether he had omitted anything, in connection with the long period they had passed on the island, that would make it worth his while to dwell longer upon any portion of his story up to this time. Satisfied always of the deep interest and close attention of his young auditors, he thought only of selecting such points of the narrative as seemed to him likely to convey most pleasure and instruction to the little people, who, ever eager to listen, were yet always curious to have something cleared up which the Captain had hastily passed over, thinking little of it. But still they had the good sense to see (to say nothing of the requirements of politeness) that they were not likely to be much benefited by interrupting the Captain; for if they asked questions in the midst of his story he would, in all probability, be put out, and lose the even thread of his narration. But a question, or perhaps a volley of them, was always sure to come if the Captain made a pause, or as he, in mariner phrase, expressed it, lay "hove to," for a little while.

So it was now. No sooner had the Captain stopped his speech, and got into the reflective mood, than William's tongue was loosened.

"O Captain Hardy!" said he, "don't go on until you have told us something more about those curious little flowers you have been speaking of. It is so odd to think of flowers growing in such a desert place!"

"O, do!" exclaimed little Alice, "O, do, do, Captain Hardy! they must be such pretty little things! But I don't see how they ever get any chance to grow, when it is so cold and dreary. How do they?"

"Pretty they are indeed, my dear," replied the kind-hearted Captain, pleased to have the question asked, as was evident, "and very wonderful. How they managed to grow is more than I can tell, and is just as astonishing to me as to yourselves. The snow, however, in the spring went pretty quickly; and as soon as the earth was free in any place, then we saw the tiniest flowers you ever saw coming up, seemingly right out of the frozen earth, and almost underneath the very snow,—at least within a few inches of it. The Dean and I one day came across one of these little flowers, looking just like a buttercup, only the whole plant was—well, the littlest thing you ever did see. Why, it was so little that little Alice's little thimble, with which she is learning to sew so prettily, would have been quite large enough for a flower-pot to put the whole of it in! and it would have grown there, too,—and glad enough, no doubt. There was a great snow-bank hanging right over it, and there was ice all around it. But still it looked spunky, and happy, and well contented, and seemed quite able to take care of itself.

"As we walked on towards the hut, I noticed that the Dean grew very thoughtful.

"'What's the matter, Dean?' said I; 'what are you thinking about?'

"'About that little flower,' replied the Dean.

"At this I laughed, asking the Dean what there was in the little flower to think about.

"'A great deal,' said he.

"I laughed again, and asked him what it was.

"'Why,' said he, very soberly, 'it is a lesson to us not to get the blues any more. If that poor flower can live and fight its way against such odds, I think we ought to!'

"Now there was more in that observation of the thoughtful little Dean than you would think for; and we talked a great deal about the little flower,—indeed, it came up between us very often; we went back many times to it, and watched it closely. Once there came a snow-storm and buried it up; but next day the snow was all melted, and the leaves came out as green, and the flower as yellow, and the whole plant as plucky, as ever. I should say the flower was about as large round as a very small pea, and it was just as yellow as gold; and the whole wee thing was not taller than a common-sized pin.

"We talked so much about this little flower that we got to making rhymes about it; and, every time we made a new rhyme, we were much delighted, you may be sure. How we wished we had some way to write down what we thought! It would have been much easier, and a great satisfaction. But, for all that, we finally got quite a song of it, which I have not forgotten, even to this time. To be sure we did not know much about making verses, and nothing at all about what they call 'feet' in poetry; yet we got some pretty good rhymes for all, though they might be called a little worm-fency, or like as if they hadn't got their sea-legs on, you know. Now, would you like to hear this little song that the Dean and I made about the little Arctic flower?"

"O yes, yes, dear Captain Hardy!—yes, yes, indeed!" said the children, in such a loud and universal chorus that nobody could have told who "deared" the Captain, or who said "O," or who, "indeed"; but you may be sure they all said "yes!" and so the Captain, being thus encouraged, cleared his throat, and said he would repeat it.

"My impression is," he continued, "that it isn't exactly a song; in fact, I don't know what it is. I should hardly venture on calling it a 'poem,' you see; but still, for all that, we must give it a name, you know, and 'song,' 'poem,' or what not, its right title anyhow is:—

THE ARCTIC FLOWER.

O tiny, tiny Arctic flower Where have you kept yourself so long? Deep buried in a snowy bower? And did the winter treat you wrong? You little, smiling, gladsome thing! You pretty, pretty flower of spring! You little, little, wee, wee thing! So bright, so cheery in the sun, So everything that every one Would wish a flower to bring. You tiny, tiny little thing! I'm so afraid the frosts will nip Your little feet, you tenderling, You crazy, crazy little thing! What e'er possessed you to come up And nestle there beside the snow, As if you'd warm it with a glow Of golden light from your bright face, On which there is no single trace Of anything like sorrow? Cheery, cheery, always cheery, Always cheery, never weary, E'en with frozen sod close bound, E'en with snow all piled around, E'en with the frosts upon the ground, Your little tender roots to chill! O, what a royal little will You have, you little gladsome thing, You pretty, pretty flower of spring, You little, little weesome mite, You tiny, tiny little sprite! E'en now the snows are at your feet, And piled a hundred times your height, Close, close beside your face so sweet! And yet you smile, you pretty thing, You pretty, pretty flower of spring, You little, little, wee, wee thing! And do not seem to care a bit, And look as happy, every whit, As any other flower of spring. And what a lesson, too, you bring To all of us, you little thing! You show us how to persevere, You show us how a happy cheer May always on the face appear, If God we trust and God we fear; For God is every, every where, And this the flower doth declare,— The tiny, tiny little flower, The weesome, weesome little flower, The little, smiling, gladsome thing, The pretty, pretty flower of spring, The little, little, wee, wee thing.

"There, now you have it!" exclaimed the Captain, drawing a very long breath, and looking around, no doubt to see the impression he had produced,—"there you have it, my dears!"

The children all expressed themselves highly delighted with this effort of the Captain's in the poetical way, and they all declared if that wasn't a song they "would like to see one."

Thus greatly flattered by the pleasure the children received from his recitation of what had become old to him, and deeply rooted in his memory, the Captain resumed once more the thread of his narrative, or, rather, "once more picked up the broken yarn, and spun away," as he would have more graphically expressed it.

* * * * *

"Well, well," continued the Captain, "you see our little flower died after a while, and all the other little flowers died; and this brought us to the end of our third summer on the island and into the third winter.

"This winter passed away as the previous ones had done, and we felt still greater resignation.

"'Here we are forever,' said the Dean, 'and that we must make up our minds to. It is God's will, and we must bow before it and be reconciled.'

"'I fear, Dean, that is so,' I answered, solemnly.

"This was in the month of February, and the sunlight was coming back, and, to see if we could not catch a glimpse of the god of day, we had gone out together, wading through the snow.

"The Dean felt it when he said 'we must be reconciled'; but he had hardly spoken when our attention was quickly called away from such reflections (and from the sun too) by seeing something dark upon the frozen sea, not far away from us. It was moving.

"We were not long in doubt as to what it was, for we had seen too many polar bears to be cheated this time,—a bear, without any doubt at all.

"He was running very fast, and was making directly towards the island. He soon ran behind a large iceberg, and for a little while was out of sight; but he appeared again soon afterwards, and held on in the same course. Then we lost him once more among rough ice, and then again he came in view. He appeared so dark at first, that less-experienced persons might have been uncertain about what it was; for although the polar bear is usually called the white bear, yet in truth he has a yellowish hue, and is quite dark, at least in comparison with the pure white snow.

"'It's another bear, I do believe!' exclaimed the Dean, and at once we made for the hut. But the bear was running much faster than we were, and was moreover coming in right towards the place for which we were bound. So we grew much alarmed, and quickened our speed, not however without difficulty; for the snow was, in places, very deep.

"By and by the bear, which proved to be a very large one, caught sight of us; and, as you know already that the polar bear is rather a cowardly beast than otherwise, you will not be much surprised to learn that, when he saw us, he altered his course, and turned off from the island as fast as he could go. Seeing him do this (as you may be sure to our great delight), we halted to watch him; and now we perceived, for the first time, that the animal was pursued. By what we could not imagine, but, clearly enough, by something; for in the distance, and from the quarter whence the bear had come, there was plainly to be seen, winding among the bergs and rough masses of ice, something dark following on the very track which the bear had taken, sometimes lost to sight and sometimes in full view, and growing larger every moment, just as the bear had done.

"Nearer and nearer came this object, and our wonder increased. Presently we heard a cry.

"'Hark!' said the Dean.

"The cry was repeated.

"'A dog!' exclaimed the Dean.

"'A dog!' said I, in answer, for I heard it distinctly.

"'Hark!' said the Dean again, for there was another sound.

"'A man,' said I.

"'A man!' repeated the Dean, excitedly.

"And a man it was.

"Dogs and men! what could they be doing there? was the question that ran through both our minds at once.

"But dogs and a man (not men) there were, and whatever they might be doing there, or whence they might have come, it was certain that dogs and a man made the dark spot which we saw upon the white sea; and it was, moreover, clear that they were pursuing the bear which had passed us and was now pretty far away.

"Nearer and nearer came the dogs and man, and the sounds became more and more distinct; the dogs were upon the bear's tracks, the man was upon a sledge to which the dogs were fastened. At length they came so near that the dogs could be easily counted. They were seven, and all of different colors, and were fastened with long lines to the sledge, so that they were a great way in front of it, and they were running all abreast. They were straining and pressing into their collars, all the while crying impatiently, as they bounded over the snow at a rapid gallop. The man was encouraging them along all he could with a long whip, which he threw out with a lively snap, exclaiming, 'Ka-ka! ka-ka!' over and over again; and then, 'Nen-ook, nen-ook, nen-ook!'—many times repeated; for he was now so near that we could distinguish every word he said.

"It was a wild chase, and the Dean and I became much excited over it, running all the time to get nearer to the passing sledge and man and dogs.

"Very soon we should have met, but suddenly the bear came in full view of the dogs, evidently for the first time. Up to this moment the dogs had only been following the track.

"The dogs, now leaving the track, gave a wild, concerted howl, and dashed off after the bear in a straight line. Man, sledge, dogs, and all passed us quickly by,—the man shouting more excitedly than ever to his dogs, sometimes calling them by name, as it seemed to us, and sometimes crying 'Nen-ook, nen-ook!' and sometimes, 'Ka-ka! ka-ka!' and so away they went, rushing like the wind,—the whole scene more strange than strangest dream,—the dogs and man like spectral things, so quickly had they come and so unexpectedly; or, at the least, the dogs seemed like howling wolves, and the man a wild man of the frozen ocean, clothed in wild beasts' skins.



"We called to the man to stop; we shouted, 'Come here, come here!' and then again, 'Come back, come back!' as loud as we could shout, waving our caps, and throwing up our arms, and running in a frantic way; but not the slightest notice would he take of us, not one instant would he stop, but upon his course and purpose he kept right on, pushing after the running bear, without appearing to give us even a single thought. We could not doubt that he had seen us, we were so near to him.

"On went the bear, on after him went the dogs and sledge and man. More impatient grew the dogs, louder called the man to his excited team, and the Dean and I ran after, shouting still, as we had done in the beginning. We came soon upon the sledge track, and followed it at our greatest speed.

"At length the cries of the dogs grew indistinct, and then died away at last entirely, and the man's voice was no longer heard; and that which had come so suddenly soon became but a dark moving speck upon the great white frozen sea, as it had first appeared; but after it we still followed on.

"Then the moving speck faded out of sight, and everything around was still and cold and solemn and desolate as before. Yet still we ran and ran.

"I said as desolate as before. But O, it was a thousand times more desolate now than ever,—as the night is darker for the lightning flash that has died away, or a cloudy noon is colder for a single ray of sunshine that has broken through the vapors.

"Yet on and on we ran and ran, until we could run no more.

"And then we laid us down upon the snow and wept, and bemoaned our hard, hard fate; but no word was spoken. The disappointment was too great for words; and, after a short rest in the chilly air upon the frozen sea, we wandered slowly back to our poor hut; and after many weary hours we reached it, not so much alive as dead,—for through miles and miles of heavy snow we had run after the sledge, and through these same miles we had trudged back again, with the cruel disappointment rankling in our hearts, and with no hope to buoy us up.

"Strange—was it not?—that at no period of our life upon the desert island were we so unhappy as we were that day,—never so utterly cast down, never so broken-spirited, never looking on the future with such hopelessness.

"And in this state of mind we crawled beneath our furs, feeling too lonely and forsaken to have a thought to cook a meal, and so very, very weary with the labor we had done, in running and wading through the heavy snow, that we did not care for food; and in deep sleep we buried up the heaviest sorrow that we had ever known,—the grievous sorrow of a dead, dead hope,—the hope of rescue that had come and gone from us, as the cloud-shadow flies across the summer field."



CHAPTER XVII.

A very Peculiar Person appears and disappears, and the Castaways are filled alternately with Hope and Fear.

"How long we slept I have not the least idea. It may have been a whole day, or it may have been two days. It was not a twenty years' sleep, (how we wished it was!) like that of Rip Van Winkle, yet it was a very long sleep; and, indeed, neither of us cared how long it lasted, we were so heartbroken about what seemed to be the greatest misfortune that had yet happened to us. If we woke up at any time, we went to sleep again as quickly as possible, not caring at all to come back any sooner than was necessary to the contemplation of our miserable situation,—never reflecting for a moment that the situation had not been changed in the least by the unknown man who had appeared and disappeared in such a mysterious way. But the sight of him had brought our thoughts freshly back to the world from which we had been cut off,—a world with human beings in it like ourselves; and it was not unnatural, therefore, that we should be made miserable by the event. And so we slept on and on, and thus we drowned everything but our dreams, which are everywhere very apt to be most bright and cheering in the most gloomy and despondent times. Such, at least, was the case with me; and if I could have kept dreaming and dreaming on forever, about pleasant things to eat, and pleasant people talking to me, I should have been quite well satisfied.

"Thus you see what a great number of ups and downs we had,—sometimes being cheerful and fully resigned, then again buried in the very depths of despair. Sometimes we felt real pleasure in the life to which we had become so well accustomed; and it seemed to us, as we chatted together in our warm and well-lighted hut, that, since every necessary want was well supplied, and we were entirely free from care, we should be well satisfied to continue in that situation all our lives. We had, in truth, few troubles and few anxieties. Food, fuel, and clothing we possessed in abundance, and no fears crossed our minds that they would ever fail us.

"But this satisfactory state of mind, so natural at times, was apt to be broken up by a very slight occurrence,—unusual fatigue, a restless sleep, a severe storm confining us to the hut for many days together, or by the disappointment we so often experienced when an object which we had confidently believed to be a ship proved to be but an iceberg. Nor was this more unnatural than that we should at times be perfectly happy and well contented. Thus are we all made, and thus are we all, at times, inconsistent; being often unhappy when there is no assignable cause, and often experiencing the sense of great happiness, under circumstances apparently the most distressing.

"You will see, therefore, that there is but one way for any of us to preserve an even temper and uniform disposition; that is, I mean, always to be cheerful, never despondent, ever hopeful; and this can only be attained by always feeling the real presence of God with us; when we meet with disappointment, to say in our hearts, 'Well, it was not the will of God,' or, if we meet with what seems great good fortune, 'It is the will of God that we do some good work, and therefore he has thus blessed us.' Thus only can we be truly happy. With this feeling there is always consolation in distress. It begets charity, and love, and confidence, and gentleness; it makes the heart light and the face cheerful, and the life like a sunbeam gladdening where it goes. That's what the love of God does.

"These thoughts are suggested to me by the experiences that the Dean and I were having at the time I speak of. How much more happy we should have been, had we felt always as I have last described! we should then never have been cast down, but should have been always hopeful,—never wishing to sleep on and on, and thus drown sorrow. We should not have felt as we did now when the strange man had come from the frozen sea and disappeared again.

"Well, to come back to the story, we were not allowed to sleep as long as we wanted to. Our sleep was indeed brought to an end very suddenly. I was first startled by a great noise, and then, springing up, much alarmed, I aroused the Dean, who was a sounder sleeper even than myself.

"'What's the matter?' cried he.

"'Didn't you hear a noise?' I asked.

"'No!' answered the Dean; 'nothing more, at least, than a church-bell, and that was in my sleep,'—which was clear enough.

"Presently I heard the noise again, and this time it seemed to proceed from something not far off. It was now the Dean's turn to be amazed.

"'Did you hear?' I asked again.

"'Yes,' said the Dean, holding his breath to listen.

"Again the strange sound was repeated.

"'Is it the wind?'

"'How can it be? the wind does not make a noise like that!'

"'Can it be a bear?'

"'No! it cannot be a bear!'

"'A fox? perhaps it is a fox!'

"'No, listen! there it is again.'

"The sound was louder now, and nearer to the hut. Again and again it was repeated,—nearer now and more constant; then a footfall on the crusted snow.

"'It is a man! the bear-hunter has come back again!' spoke the Dean, throwing up his hands.

"Again the noise was heard; again the footfall creaked upon the snow.

"'The bear-hunter, it must be!' cried the Dean, again.

"'O, I pray that it is so!' I added, earnestly.

"Again the voice was heard. I answered it. The answer was returned, and with the answer came a heavier and more rapid creaking of the footfalls on the snow.

"We rushed from the hut into the open air without another moment's loss of time, and without saying another word; and there, not ten yards away, stood the very man who had passed us on the sledge,—the bear-hunter of the frozen sea.

"And a strange-looking creature he was, to be sure. There was not the least sign of alarm or fear about him; but, on the contrary, he was looking mightily pleased, and was talking very fast in a language of which the Dean and I could neither of us understand a single word. When he was not talking he was laughing, and his enormous mouth was stretched almost from ear to ear. 'Yeh, yeh!' he went, and I went that way too, by way of answer, which seemed greatly to delight him. He was dressed all over in furs, and looked very wild; but, as he kept yeh-yeh-ing all the time, we were not afraid. As he came up to us, we greeted him very cordially; but he could no more understand what we said than we could understand him. He talked very much, and gesticulated a great deal, pointing very often in one particular direction with his right hand. Then he cried, 'Mick-ee, mick-ee!' and pointed to the beach below, towards which we followed him. There we found a sledge and seven dogs; and now we understood very certainly, if we had any doubts before, that this was the man and these were the dogs that had passed us, following the bear.

"The man tried his best to explain to us the whole affair, talking very rapidly; but we could not gather from what he said more than our eyes told us already, for on the sledge we soon discovered a large bear-skin, all bloody and folded up, and some large pieces of bear's meat. The dogs were tied some distance from the sledge, and were securely fastened by their traces to a heavy stone, which I was very glad of, for the wolfish-looking beasts were snarling at each other, and fighting, and howling at us continually,—seeming all the while to wish themselves loose, that they might fly upon us, and tear us to pieces.

"If we could not understand the hunter's words, we made out by his signs, after a while, that he had seen us when he passed in pursuit of the bear. After overtaking and capturing the animal, he turned about upon his track to look for us, and, finding our footmarks at last, he had followed us to the hut, calling loudly, as he neared us, to attract our attention, for he could not find us easily,—our hut was so buried up in snow.

"After being fully satisfied with the inspection of the dogs and sledge, and what there was upon it, we all three went up to the hut.

"It would be difficult to describe our visitor. I have said that he was wholly dressed in furs. His pantaloons were made of bear-skins reaching to the knees, where they met the boots, which were made of the same materials. His underclothing was made of birds' skins, like our own, and he wore a coat of fox-skins, with a heavy hood covering up the head completely. On his hands he wore mittens made of seal-skins, with warm dog-skin for an inside lining, and his stockings were of the same. So you see no part of him was exposed but his face, which was quite dark, or, rather, copper-colored (something darker than a North American Indian), and it was very broad and very round. The nose was very small and very flat, and the eyes were small and narrow. His hair was jet black, long and tangled, and was cut straight across the forehead. He had but little beard,—only a few black, wiry-looking bristles growing on his upper lip and on the tip of his chin. You would hardly suppose that such a creature could be anything but savage and repulsive; yet this he did not seem to be at all; on the contrary he appeared like the most amiable fellow that ever was seen.

"He sat down before the fire on one of the big stones we used for stools, and the Dean and I sat one on either side of him; and I can never tell you how strange it seemed to be sitting there with another human being besides ourselves, after all that time spent without ever seeing anybody but each other. It was like a dream. We could hardly realize that it was true, as there we sat, staring at the strange man in wonder and astonishment.

"And all this time we were speculating about him,—where he came from, where he was going to, what relation did he hold to the world from which we had come in the Blackbird, could he tell us where we were, would he take us from the island, would he rescue us from this dreary life.

"O, how much we would have given for a few words from him that we could understand! How rejoiced we would have been to have these questions answered! Answering them, however, he might be even then, for anything we knew to the contrary; for he scarcely left off talking a single instant, but away he rattled as lively as a magpie and just as intelligibly. We could make nothing at all out of what he said, any more than I could of the hieroglyphics I have since seen on the stones of Egypt, until he put his hand to his mouth, at the same time throwing his head back a little, and repeating, several times, 'Me drinkum, Me drinkum.'

"This very much surprised us, as we knew that he was asking for water, which having been given him, he then said, 'Me eatum', signifying that he was hungry. We lost no time, therefore, in preparing him a hearty meal of ducks and bear's meat, which he appeared to think very fine. Then he had a great deal to tell us about something that he called 'Oomeaksuak', the meaning of which we could not make out; but, as he pointed in a particular direction, we thought he meant the place where he lived. We could not understand from him what his name was; so, as we had to speak of him to each other constantly, we called him at once 'Eatum,' as that was the word he used most. He amused us very much with his frequent repetition of it, and with the enormous quantities of food he took into his stomach after he did repeat it; for he only had to say, 'Me eatum' to get as much food as he wanted. It soon got to be quite a joke with us, and when he said, 'Me eatum' we all three fell, not only to feeding, but to laughing besides.

"Finding himself in such good quarters, Eatum manifested no disposition to leave them; but, after he had taken a sound sleep, he had a great deal to say about 'mickee', as before; and since he made a great many motions, as if using a whip (pointing all the while towards the beach), we concluded that he must mean something about his dogs, which we found to be true, for 'mickee' in his language means dog, as we afterwards discovered. As soon as we had settled this, we all went out of the hut again, and went down and brought the bear's meat and skin on the sledge up to the hut, and then we fastened the dogs near by. After being fed, they all lay down and went to sleep on the snow. These dogs were very large and strong animals; and the seven could draw a very heavy load,—I should think that the whole seven could draw as much as a small horse.

"Eatum seemed to have been quite exhausted with long hunting when he came to us, and he did very little but eat and sleep for several days. His nose had been a little touched by the frost, but he scorched some oil, and rubbed it on as we would ointment, and cured it very quickly.

"After he had eaten and slept to his entire satisfaction, he appeared to grow more lively, and showed a great deal of curiosity about our hut and furniture, and hunting implements, being highly pleased with every new thing he saw. It was very surprising to see how nearly like his own many of our things were,—our lamp and pot and cups, for instance, and also our clothing. Our harpoon (the 'Dean's Delight') was almost exactly a match for his.

"It was a great drawback to our satisfaction that we could not understand him or he us, but little by little we got over part of this difficulty; for, upon discovering that he used one particular word very often, I guessed that he must be asking a question. The word was 'Kina'; so once when he used it he was pointing to our lamp, and I said 'lamp' at a venture, whereupon, after repeating it several times, he appeared to be much gratified, and then said, 'Kolipsut', and this I repeated after him, which pleased him again. Then I knew that 'Kina?' meant 'What is it?' or 'What's this?' so after that we kina-ed everything, and got on finely. We, of course, learned more rapidly than Eatum, picking up a great many words from him; and, having both of us good memories, we got to be able to make him understand us a little in the course of time; and as fast as we learned we taught him, and he got to know some of our language, in which we encouraged him. 'Me speakum much bad,' he would say sometimes, which was very true; but so long as we understood him it made little matter.

"And now it was that we got to find out how he had picked up the few words such as me drinkum, me eatum, and so on, that he had used at first; for he gave us to know that we were not a long way from where ships came every year, and that some of his people saw the ships when they passed, and sometimes went aboard of them. 'Ship' was what he meant by 'Oomeaksuak', which word he had at first used so often. He had frequently been aboard of an Oomeaksuak, he said.

"Now this was great news for us, and we began at once to devise means of escape from the island. We made Eatum understand as much of what we wanted as possible. All this time I must not neglect to mention, however, that Eatum was of the greatest service to us; for when the weather was good he would fasten his dogs to the sledge, and all three of us would go out together on the sea to hunt,—Eatum driving. It was very lively sport; and sometimes, when the ice was very smooth and the snow hard, we went very fast, almost as fast as a horse would run, even with the three of us upon the sledge. The sledge, by the way, I must tell you, was made out of bits of bones, all cunningly lashed together with seal-skin thongs. Once we were caught in a severe gale a good way from home, and had to make a little house to shelter ourselves from it out of snow; and in this, with our furs on, we managed to sleep quite comfortably, and remained there about twenty-four hours before the weather would permit us to go on again.

"While in the snow hut we had a lamp to give us light and warmth; and this lamp (which was Eatum's) was made like ours, and Eatum made a spark, and started a flame, and kept it burning just as we had done,—the tinder being the down of the willow blossom (which he carried wrapped up in several layers of seal-skin), with moss for wick and the blubber for fuel. The pot in which he melted snow for water, and cooked our supper, was made, like ours, of soapstone.

"When the storm broke, we left the snow hut, and set out for the island; catching two seals by the way, and in the very same manner, too, that the Dean and I had done long before we ever knew there was such a person as Eatum in the world. We were much disappointed at not discovering any bears, and so were the dogs.

"But not many days afterward, the weather being fine, we went out upon the sea a great way, and were rejoiced to come across a bear's track, which Eatum said was very fresh. No sooner had the dogs seen it than away they started upon it; and over the ice and snow—rough and smooth, right upon the track—they ran as fast as they could go.

"The bear had been sleeping behind an iceberg, and we had come upon him so suddenly that he had not time even to get out of sight, and we saw him almost as soon as we had discovered the track. 'Nen-ook, nen-ook!' cried Eatum, pointing towards the bear; and there he was, sure enough, running as fast as he could. But, no matter how fast he ran, we went still faster; and it could not have been an hour before we overtook him. Then Eatum leaned forward and untied his dogs, letting them run ahead while the sledge stopped. In a few minutes the dogs had brought the bear to bay,—surrounding the huge wild beast, and flying at his sides, and tormenting him in a very fierce manner. But I always observed that they took good care to keep away from his head, for if he should get a chance at one of them, and hit him with his huge paws, he would mash him flat enough, or knock him all into little bits.

"While the dogs were worrying the bear we got out our weapons,—the Dean his 'Delight,' I 'Old Crumply,' and Eatum a spear made of a narwhal horn, and looking, for all the world, just like 'Old Crumply's' twin brother. Then we rushed up to the bear, Eatum leading; and fierce though the animal looked, and awfully as he roared, we closed right in upon him, and quickly made an end of him. Then we drove off the dogs, and tied them to a hummock of ice, while we butchered the dead animal and secured the skin and what meat we wanted, after which we allowed the dogs to gorge themselves. Being now too full to haul, we had to let them lie down and sleep, while we built a snow hut, and, crawling into it, got a good rest. Then we returned to the island, mighty well satisfied with ourselves.

"After this we fell again into conversation about the Oomeaksuaks, or ships, as I have explained before; and, having learned more and more of the language which Eatum spoke, we got to comprehend him better, so we fixed clearly in our minds where the place was that the ships came to, and were fully satisfied that Eatum told the truth about it. We now offered to give him everything we had if he would take us there, and stay with us until the ships should come along and take us off his hands. About this we had several conversations; but just when we thought the treaty was complete, and Eatum was going to carry out the plan we had fixed upon, this singular savage disappeared very suddenly,—dogs, sledge, and all,—without saying a single word to us about it.

"When we made the discovery that he was gone, we were filled with astonishment and dismay. We hoped, at first, that he had gone off hunting; but, finding that he did not return, we tried to follow the tracks of his sledge, but the wind had drifted snow over them, and we could not.

"We now made up our minds that Eatum was nothing more than a treacherous savage; and we were afraid that he would come back with more savages and murder us, in order that he might get the furs and other things that we had; so for a while we were much alarmed, and were more heartbroken I believe, than ever before, for our hopes of rescue had been raised very high by hearing of Eatum's people and the ships. The suddenness with which all our expectations were thus dashed to the ground quite overcame us, and we passed the next five days very miserably, hardly stirring out of the hut during all that time. But at length we saw the folly of giving way to despair.

"One thing we quickly determined upon, and that was to leave the island, one way or another; for now we were so afraid of the savages coming to murder us, that we would suffer any risk and hardship rather than remain there longer. So once more we began to devise means for our safety.

"It was no longer what we should do for food and fuel, or clothing, but how we should escape. The ships we had given up long ago, and with the ships had vanished every hope of rescue. But now a wild man had come to us out of the ice-desert, and had told us that ships came in the summer not far from where we were, and through this intelligence we had obtained a glimpse of home and our native country, as it were; and this too at the very time when we had become most reconciled to our condition, and had made up our minds to live as best we could on the Rock of Good Hope for the remainder of our days.

"But now our minds were wholly changed. 'We are worse off than ever,' said the Dean, 'for this little hope the savage gave us, and the fear, besides, that he has put into us,'—which was true enough.