“How would you like to go on a seal catching expedition to the Arctic? It ought to be a pretty good health trip for an overworked salesman. The _Polar Bear_ and _Midnight Sun_ sail in a couple of weeks from St. Johns, Newfoundland, to be gone for a month or so and the pay is double that of any operator in the transatlantic service. I have just shipped an operator named Mackey up there and gave him the post on the _Midnight Sun_ so you’ll have company, for they will sail together. If you’ll take it I’ll try to get you a good berth in the meantime.” “To the Arctic,” I ejaculated. “Well, Sammis, this is a voyage I’ll have to sleep over, but it sounds good to me. I’ll let you know in the morning.” There wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind but that I’d take it but I didn’t know exactly what my folks would say about it, for their idea was that they had had enough of my going to sea and they further thought that I ought now to be perfectly satisfied to stay on land for the rest of my natural life. Do you know that when I stepped out of the _Lord’s Court Building_ after having signed up the next day I could feel the stone sidewalk rolling under me like the deck of a ship and that the putrid air of Wall Street smelled as if it had a dash of sea salt in it. That’s how great I felt. Dad would have to get some one else to sell his engines--it was the Arctic for me! [Illustration: WE WERE CATCHING SEALS BY WIRELESS!] On arriving at St. Johns I at once hunted up Captain James of the _Polar Bear_ and handed him my commission. _And such a captain he was!_ He looked a different race of seafaring men from the captains I had seen in the regular Atlantic service. His grizzled hair and beard and clear, keen eyes were gray; that part of his face which showed was about two shades lighter than the color of dried walrus meat and with his silence--except when any of the crew failed in his duties--you would have known, even if you’d met him on Broadway, that his home was somewhere inside the Arctic Circle. He turned me over to his first mate who also looked as if he had a heart of oak and would be equal to any duty he might be called on to perform if it was north of latitude 75 degrees, the latitude at St. Johns. _And, oh, the crew!_ They were cutters of the old school, every one of them. I had no idea that sailors of their kind were to be found anywhere at this time here on earth except in song and story, but there they actually were all about me in the living flesh. There was an air about them that told as plainly as spoken words they had weathered many a polar storm and that now, even at St. Johns, they were way too far south of the bleak, frozen regions to be in their element.