And his fate was a rough one. There was no outward change in the attitude of the captain or the officers of the brig toward him. Whenever they spoke to him, they did it with as much civility as they showed the rest of us. But Slim was compelled to work on deck all day and stand his regular night watches into the bargain. That meant he got eight hours sleep during twenty-four hours one day and four hours sleep during the next. As the ship was in whaling waters from now on, the crew had little to do except man the boats. But Slim always had plenty to do. While we smoked our pipes and lounged about, he was kept washing paint work, slushing down masts, scraping deck and knocking the rust off the anchors. Any one of a hundred and one little jobs that didn't need doing, Slim did. This continued until the brig squared her yards for the homeward voyage. Slim had more than three months of it. The Lord knows it was enough. When his nagging finally ended, he was a pale, haggard shadow of his former self. It almost killed him. CHAPTER XVII INTO THE ARCTIC From Unalaska, we headed north for the Arctic Ocean. For one day of calm, we lay again off the little Eskimo village of St. Lawrence Bay and again had the natives as our guests. Peter made an elaborate toilet in expectation of seeing once more his little Eskimo sweetheart, but she did not come aboard. A little breeze came walking over the sea and pushed us on northward. On August 15, we sailed through Behring Straits and were at last in the Arctic. The straits are thirty-six miles wide, with East Cape, a rounded, dome-shaped mass of black basalt, on the Asiatic side and on the American side Cape Prince of Wales, a headland of sharper outline, but neither so lofty nor so sheer. In between the two capes and in line with them, lie the two islands of Big and Little Diomede. Through the three narrow channels between the capes and the islands, the tide runs with the swiftness of a river's current. The Eskimos constantly cross from continent to continent in small boats. In still weather the passage can be made in a light kyack with perfect safety. The widest of the three channels is that between Big Diomede and East Cape and is, I should say, not more than fifteen miles across. While we were passing through the straits, we saw a party of Eskimos in a skin boat paddling leisurely across from America to Asia. They no doubt had been on a visit to relatives or friends on the neighboring continent. We were told that in winter when the straits are frozen solidly, the Eskimos frequently walk from one continent to the other. [Illustration: Our Guests Coming Aboard in St. Lawrence Bay]