'what are you shoving for?' thinking it was one of his shipmates, but getting no answer he turned round and saw that it was the ice coming through the ship's side. It is needless to say how smartly he cleared out, and gave up possession to the intruder.

At Cape York, lat. 76°, the expedition made the acquaintance of a merry tribe of Esquimaux, who came running down to the floe edge, shouting and capering, and giving us a boisterous welcome. Thence, sailing up Lancaster Sound we came to Beechey Island, and prepared to take up our winter quarters there. There Sir John Franklin had wintered in the 'Erebus' and 'Terror' in 1845-6, and there they had buried three men, whose tombstones recorded their names. We subsequently opened one of the graves, and an arm that I felt was as perfect and rounded as the arm of a living

man.

We arrived in the middle of August in this black, barren land, which was mostly without a particle of perceptible vegetation, but where to my surprise I saw a couple of butterflies soon after I landed. The brief summer soon drew to a close, and one night a gale of

wind sprang up which drove the ice in with irresistible force, swept us from our anchorage, and threw us on our beam ends upon the beach. Two of our outer planks were started, and we prepared to abandon the ship, but by the following night the ice became stationary. During the winter the ship gradually came upright, and as the tide rose and froze, we became embedded in a solid iceberg.

Early in November the sun disappeared, and never rose again above the horizon for ninety days,—a long night, with howling storms, such as I never wish to see again; but

'Be the day weary, or be the day long,

At length it ringeth to even-song.'

And so this long night, like all things, came to an end at last, and on the day it was calculated that we should again see the sun we all went to the top of a high cliff to look out for him; and when we saw the rim of his old red face appear above the horizon, and then go down again, we gave a shout and waved our caps to him, and felt like prisoners about to be released. Day by day he remained longer in view; each day we felt more of his cheering power, and the darkness lessened, until

he began to go round and round, and never set at all; but wretched objects, pale as ghosts, we were when first we looked on one another by daylight. Our lowest temperature during the winter was 58° below zero, or 90° of frost.

CHAPTER IX.

IN the spring the bears came round, and in one of our encounters with them one of our Esquimaux dogs got his side ripped up, and which our assistant surgeon stitched together. The operation was watched with great interest by the other dogs, and they seemed quite delighted when their wounded comrade trotted off with them all right again. Some weeks afterwards, as the assistant surgeon was sitting in his cabin, one of the dogs came and tugged away at the curtain which was drawn across the door. He drove the dog off, but as it came again he called it in, upon which the dog lay down and showed him his side, which was badly cut also, and as plainly as possible asked him to sew it up as his companion's had been. He laid perfectly quiet while it was being done, then jumped about, licked the doctor's hand, and thanked him as unmistakably as if he had been able to speak, for what had been done for him.

If you were to tie a joint of meat to a line,

and sink it to the bottom of a deep well, you would think it would be secure against all the dogs that ever barked. So we thought, until our dogs showed us how much we had underrated their abilities. We used to keep a hole open in the ice near the ship for the purpose of soaking our salt meat, and which was made fast to the end of several fathoms of stout line when lowered down the hole; but repeatedly, on coming to haul it up we found that the meat had disappeared. What prowling sea-robbers did the deed our naturalists were undecided upon, and the mystery remained unsolved until one morning early, a man going on deck saw all the dogs clustered round the icehole, and, watching them, was initiated into the whole proceeding. One dog only had a hand

or rather a paw-in it, the rest being merely interested onlookers. This dog, putting his head down the hole, took a grip of the line with his teeth, and hauled up a length; on this he put his paw, reached his head down again, pulled up another length, and so, by the process known as 'hand over hand,' proceeded until the prize was landed. After this we believed in Esquimaux dogs.