"It was a bright and glorious morning about the end of May when we passed Clark's Point bound out. The wind was brisk westerly, and the old man clapped the cloth on her. I found she had the heels I suspected, for we were less than an hour in doing the nine knots to Quick's Hole. Then we squared away up the Vineyard Sound, and when night fell we had doubled Menomoy Point and were at sea. I'm not going to tell you about life aboard that whaler, except to say that most of the hands were green, and that made it pretty steep work for the others. In a month the green hands could go aloft and reef and furl, and they knew where to find the halyards, sheets, and tacks. When it came to a job of splicing or sewing, why, the sailormen had to do it. We had fairly good weather up to the entrance to Davis Strait, where we fell in with a gale. After that our old man got crazy to push to the north, and so away we went. At Upernavik we took aboard four Esquimau guides. One of them was a boy called Toko; and this miserable sawed-off little savage is the fellow that afterward showed us all how to be plucky. He could talk a good deal of English, but he seemed to be a very quiet boy, and seldom said anything till he was spoken to. He actually seemed to be stupid; but we found out in good time that all he needed was to be waked up. "I must get on with this yarn or it'll be as long as Dan Ferns's story of the _Dora A. Baker_. We worked our way well up into Baffin Bay--or maybe it was Smith Sound. I've always had a notion that we were a good deal further north than the old man was willing to admit. Anyhow, it came about that all of a sudden we discovered that it was getting pretty close to the edge of the arctic winter, and that we were in danger of being shut in by the ice. So now the old man began to push her for the south with all the cloth she'd carry. But the second day it came on to blow right dead ahead. Before night it was a howling gale, and to add to the terror of our situation we could hear the terrific grinding and crashing of the ice away off in the darkness all around us. The Esquimaux huddled together in sheltered spots, but refused to leave the deck. The night passed at last, and when morning dawned it showed us a raging, crazy sea, with ice all around the horizon.