"`I will,' said I, and I did. I shipped on board a Greenland whaler, the Blazylight, and sailed the next day for the North Pole. We had a fine run to our fishing ground, and soon began to kill our whales at a great rate. It was the sort of sport which just suited me. I never could stand angling for minnows; but whale-fishing is a very different sort of work, I guess. "We had got a full ship, and were thinking of turning south, when we were becalmed near the land, and as the ship could not move, I, with four or five more, started on an expedition to shoot polar bears, which were pretty common thereabouts. We had got a good way from the ship, when a thick fog--not an unfrequent visitor to those parts--came on. I had a pocket-compass with me, and so I wasn't a bit alarmed. However, when we tried to find the old Blazylight again, I must confess we could not. We wandered about till all my companions died from sheer fright and fatigue; and I should have died, too, if I had given in; but I wouldn't do that; so I collected all my shipmates' ammunition, and set to work to kill and pot bears. I lived like a prince, as far as quantity was concerned, but I got rather tired of bear's flesh at last. I rubbed myself over with the grease, and was soon covered from head to foot with a hide of the finest wool, so that I didn't feel the cold a bit. It was cold, however, at times, with a vengeance. Frequently the frost was so severe, that it froze up even the very air, and if I had not melted it every now and then, by firing off my gun, I should have died for want of breath; and often it wasn't possible to move without cutting a way for myself through the atmosphere with my axe. I suspected, as I afterwards found to be the case, that what we had taken, to be land, was in reality an unusually large field of ice, with icebergs imbedded in it, and that we had been carried by some unknown current imperceptibly towards the north for a considerable distance. Now, when we had left the ship, we had kept to the westward. When we wished to return, we had steered east by the pocket-compass I told you of. On, and on, and on, I kept on the same course. What do you think I was doing? Why I was walking round and round the North Pole, and should have kept on walking till now, for nothing would have made me give in--I promise you that wasn't my way--had I not come upon the print of my own footsteps in the snow. This made me aware of my error; so I sat down to consider how it could have happened, and at last the truth flashed on my mind. You see it was a very natural mistake I had made, for the needle of my compass was all the time pointing to the North Pole, just as a capstan-bar does to the capstan, while I was running round at the other end of it. I was rather puzzled to know what to do, for had I walked south, not having the means of ascertaining my longitude, I might, I thought, find myself on the other side of the globe, somewhere, perhaps