"What a damn'd long time you are telling that stupid story, Villiers," at length noticed Cranstoun, wheeling round and regarding the narrator with a look of ill assumed indifference, "I could have told it myself in half the time." "I am afraid you would not tell it so faithfully," replied Lieutenant Villiers, amid the loud laugh which was now raised at Cranstoun's expense. "You see it is so good a thing, I like to make the most of it." Here Cranstoun again turned his back upon the party, and Villiers pursued. "The main body of the expedition had got nearly half way across the river, when suddenly our ears were assailed by moanings, resembling those of some wild beast, mingled with incessant and ungovernable laughter. Checking our course, and turning to behold the cause, we observed, about a hundred yards below us, the sledge of the D'Egvilles, from which the almost convulsive laughter proceeded, and at a considerable distance beyond this again, an object the true character of which we were some time in discovering. "It appeared, on subsequent explanation, that Cranstoun, who had been whispering soft nothings in the ear of Julia D'Egville, (here the captain was observed to prick his ear without materially altering his position) hem! Cranstoun, I say, it appeared had also taken it into his head to give her a specimen of his agility, by an attempt to clear a space between two masses of ice of somewhat too great a breadth for a heavy grenadier, buttoned up to the chin in a ponderous bear skin coat. He succeeded in gaining the opposite piece of ice, but had no sooner reached it, than he fell, entangled in such a manner in his covering that he found it impossible to extricate himself. To add to his disaster, the force of his fall broke off, from the main body, the section of ice on which he rested. Borne down by the current, in spite of his vain struggles to free himself, he was unable even to call for aid, his fingers moreover being so benumbed with cold that he found it impossible to unbutton the straps which confined his mouth. In this emergency he could only utter the strange and unintelligible moan which had reached our ears, and which, mingled with the bursts of laughter from Julia D'Egville, formed a most incongruous melange.