about, sometimes not seeing a fish or a sail for a week together, and then with the boats out after fish day after day, and other ships doing the same. I wasn't let to go in the boats after the fish; but when they were towing the ship out of the way of the ice, I used to go in them sometimes, and it was a change to see the Priscilla from the outside of her. She didn't look nigh so big then as when I was aboard. It was hard to guess how there was room for all of us inside of her. Now and then we got a sight of land, but mostly it looked much like cloud or smoke. Queen Anne's Cape we saw, and Dark Head.

At times, when the ice was setting round us, we'd make the ship fast to a berg. Sometimes chaps from other ships came aboard us across the ice, and so we got to hear a bit of news. Other times we'd be dodging about in a water-hole, with ice all round, and then we'd make fast to a floe or a berg till we'd got a chance to slip out. Sometimes I've seen a score and more of ships round the Priscilla, and scarce a foot of water in sight except in our water-hole.

Whilst she was kept in quod like that, the carpenter used to overhaul her, and make good the knocking about she'd got among the ice. Chips was a Rotherhithe man-Saunders was his proper name. He'd been getting good shipwright's wages at Nelson Dock, but he was a roaming kind of a chap, and so he'd come carpenter in the Priscilla.

I used to like when Saunders would give me a job. He was the only Rotherhithe man aboard, except uncle; and Saunders would talk to me about the old place. So Saunders was my chief friend aboard, and next to him came the doctor.

In the beginning of August, the ice was closing in so fast that we had to unship the rudder, that it mightn't get a jam; then we shipped it again, and then we unshipped it again, and so we kept on. No end of ice was coming down full sail from the north'ard. We were regularly beset. Six feet and more of ice, pretty nigh as hard as iron, the men had to saw through to make a dock. For days there wasn't a shimmer of water to be seen from the masthead, and it kept on freezing in the dock, though all hands were at work breaking up the bay ice. There we were fair frozen in, from fifty to sixty miles from land. 'Twas different from day to day, the captain said. The bearings of the Devil's Thumb was what he went by. It wasn't a bad name that. Uncommon gloomy the Devil's Thumb looked out there beyond the ice. I mind that I used to wish it would melt the ice, and let us out.

Now and then we used to see a hole or two of water shining like an eye ever so far off, but they soon shut up again, and all about was like a great rough pavement, with bergs sticking up like the sides of a quarry. The ice began to nip so, that they had to get the saws out again, and everything

was kept ready on deck for a cut across the ice, in case it should scrunch the ship up. Of course we were put on short allowance. Three pounds of biscuit for the week was what each man got, but I didn't get that.

The ice went on nipping worse than ever as September wore out. The boats were all kept ready for a start. We'd see the ice tilt up and grind together not far off, and then, of course, we thought 'twas all up with the Priscilla. Once or twice we saw clear water, but we couldn't warp out to it, so the sight of it only made us more miserable somehow.

When November came, the cold was downright awful-more than 40 degrees below zero sometimes, and 32 above is freezing point, you 'll please to remember, young gentlemen. The men had to give up sawing-'twas no good. The ship was frozen in like a dead fish. She gaped at the seams, so that the carpenter had to be for ever calking. There were sails spread over the upper deck, and yet there was frost an inch thick between decks. And then it was getting so dismal-dark, too, and the allowance had gone down to two pounds of bread and two of pork. That was hard lines, for the air of those parts sharpens a fellow's twist like a grindstone. Foxes began to come about, and we shot some, but I shall have plenty to tell you about shooting further on, and so won't begin now. And yet I may as well tell you here, because 'twas then

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it happened, about the first seal-shooting I ever had a hand in. The doctor was going out with his gun on the ice, and he says to me, Come along, Cupples, and we'll see if we can't bring home a dinner. But you must have something to shoot with. I suppose the captain wouldn't lend you his gun?"

"You may be certain sure of that, sir,” says I.

So the doctor goes back to his berth, and brings out an old horse-pistol, and charges it for me, and off we went. About a quarter of a mile from the ship we sighted a lot of seals. There was old Mr Bear with two or three dozen of Mrs Bears, and no end of little bears. The little bears were wrestling-the gamest of them, that is. Those that weren't game went snuggling up to their mothers' sides, for all the world like mollycoddle boys. But here let me write down, young gentlemen, that I don't think boys are mollycoddles because they love their mothers. The pluckiest lads generally love their mothers best; but then, you see, they look after their mothers, instead of wanting their mothers to look after them. Well, the young seals were a-wrestling, and it was fun to see the fuss the old chap made with the one that was the best hand at it. He cuddled it and kissed it, and set-to with it himself, and the fiercer the young 'un fought, the better pleased the old 'un seemed. Well, we stood watching them for a long while-it was downright fun. Some say that

seals are the spriest things, in the way of a lookout, the sea breeds; but I ain't so sure about that. I've grabbed young 'uns, anyhow, sound asleep. Anyhow, the seals I'm talking about let the doctor and me stand and watch their comical antics for ever so long. Then off they went in a floundering kind of scamper. The mothers took up a young 'un each in their mouths. One let hers drop-and didn't she get a pounding from the old bear. He caught her in his teeth, and knocked her about fit to kill her. I shot the shaggy little black beggar with my pistol, and the doctor tumbled over the old bear. He shot the mother, too, and I couldn't help feeling sorry. Instead of scuttling away like the rest, she'd crept up to the old man, crouching and crying as if she was asking him to forgive her.

One day in November the sun seemed to me to set again almost as soon as it came up. "Cupples," says the doctor to me, solemn-like, "we shan't see the sun rise again for many a day-perhaps we shall never see him rise again.”

"But we ain't a-going to be killed at once, are we, sir?" I said to him.

"I hope not, Cupples," says he; "but you won't see the sun again for a long while, however things may turn out."

The notion that we'd got into a world where there was no sun fair dumbfoundered me. I lay awake thinking about it, when I was shivering in my bunk that night. I was shivering for all my