"Well, boys, gradually that ice came nearer and nearer. It was something dreadful to watch it. We knew that we were driving to leeward pretty fast, and that accounted for the approach of the ice on that side; but think how fast that ice up to windward must have been moving to gain on us the way it did. We were helpless, and when at last we drove against the ice, we could do very little indeed. We struck with a great crash, and our fore-royal and mizzen-topgallant-masts went by the board. We made up our minds that we were bound for Davy Jones's locker, when along came another big sea and forced the ship bodily right up on the ice. The ice to windward gradually closed in, and the next day there we were, shut in hard and tight in a field of broken and jagged ice, and with bergs all around us. "Well, there was nothing for it but to prepare to stay where we were until spring. Then began the terrible business of living through the winter. And it was then that Toko woke up. As our spirits began to go down, his began to rise. The other Esquimaux were contented to sit and wait, but he had pluck. 'Give Toko gun,' he said, 'he get fresh meat.' We gave him a gun, and away he went over the ice and through the blinding snow with the unerring instinct of a savage. The very first day he came back as far as the summit of a hummock half a mile away, and waved his arms. Some of us went to him, and he led us to a polar bear which he had killed single-handed. We dragged the carcass home, and feasted on the juicy steaks. The next day he found a crevice in the ice and killed a seal that had come up. But as the long days moved by on leaden feet we became listless and discouraged. Bill Hedding fell sick and, after lingering three weeks, passed away. We were a dispirited lot after that. But not Toko. He said: 'Not give up. Spring come again. Ice open. Get away in boats. Toko show the way.' But we shook our heads, and did not believe him. He danced strange dances and sang strange songs for us, while the other Esquimaux looked on with grave disapproval. He staid up night after night keeping watch to see that polar bears did not get aboard and attack our scanty provisions. He cooked and hunted for us. He told us the legends of his people, and gave us regular lectures on the habits of arctic animals. More men fell sick, and that tireless boy with the figure of an India-rubber doll and the face of a Chinese idol found time to nurse them, to pat them on the back, and to bid them keep their courage up through all the ghastly gloom of that arctic night. "'Byme-by lights'--he meant the aurora--'go out in sky,' he would say; 'bears go 'way an' birds fly. Den soon daylight come 'long, an' byme-by he sun come up. Den crack! de ice break, an' we get away. Dat be spring.'