"You see, ours was a strong-built ship, fitted out on purpose for the North seas, and what we had to do was to go right up as far nor'ard as we could get, and leave depots of preserved meats, and spirits, and blankets, and pemmican, and all sorts of necessaries, at different places where it was likely that the party might reach; and to mark these spots we had to build up cairns of stones, so that they might be seen. Well, we'd got as far as our captain thought it prudent to go, for we were back'ard in the year, in consequence of the ice having been very late before it broke up that year, and hindering us a good deal; and now that we had landed all as was necessary, and built up the last cairn, the captain says to the officers, he says, `We'll go back now, or we shall be shut in for the winter.' "'Twasn't so late in the autumn, and no doubt you were having nice warm weather, but things began looking precious winterly round about us. Great icebergs were floating about, and fogs would hang round them. Snowstorms would come on, with snow with such sharp edges that it would seem a'most to cut your ears off. The shrouds and clews and sheets would be all stiff and covered with ice, while, as to the sails, they were like so much board, and it got to be tough work up aloft. "`Cold this here,' I says to a shipmet. `Pooh,' he says, `this ain't nothing yet.' Nor more it warn't nothing at all; and there we were going along as well as we could, with double lookouts, and plenty of need for them to use their eyes, for we might have been crash on to an iceberg ten times over. Captain used to shake his head and look serious, and enough to make him, with all his responsibility, and all of us looking up to him to take care of us; and last of all we seemed to be right in the thick of it, with the ice-pack all around, and ice and snow, ice and snow everywhere, and us just gently sailing along a narrow open channel of blue water, sometimes going east, sometimes west, just as it happened. Sometimes a little more wind would spring up, and the pack opened a bit, and made fresh channels, so that we got on; then the wind would drop, and the loose ice close round us, so that we hardly moved, and at last one morning when I turns out, we were froze in.