“Again all have taken their places in the boats to bale out the thaw water, the great enemy of their health—and of their solitary pair of boots. He whose turn it is to hunt the seal squats at the edge of a floe before a fissure, which admits a few square feet of water, in which no seal will show himself, because he has scarcely room to turn in it. “To the others, their abode in the boats is a time of manifest weariness and ennui. Happy the man who has any tobacco, happy he who, after smoking his pipe, does not fall into a faint; happy too the man who finds a fragment of a newspaper in some corner or other, even if there should be nothing contained in it but the money-market intelligence, or perhaps directions to be followed in the preparation of pease-sausage. Enviable is he who discovers a hole in his fur coat which he can mend; but happiest of all are those who can sleep day and night. Of these latter some have stowed themselves away under the rowing seats, and above them reposes a second layer of sleepers, but nothing is visible of either party but the soles of their feet. No paradise of bliss! Noon comes: a little tea is made over the train-oil fire, each gets one cup of it and a handful of hard bread-crumbs—a kind of dog’s food which the impartial ‘committee of provisions’ measures out with Argus-eyes. The fourth part of the skin of a seal is thrown into each of the four boats, and the blubber on it is eagerly devoured. Some, for the sake of the fins, the ribs, or the head, become guests of the dogs. Flocks of gulls settle impudently near us, screaming and fighting for every morsel they can reach. Some of us try to catch them with nets, but no sooner are the nets up than the gulls disappear. “The formality of dinner is over, and we have come to such a pass that even the tea excites the nerves of the community, and some Troubadour will then raise his voice with a _bravura_ such as might have been heard on San Marco. The end of the Franklin expedition, and the history of the two skeletons which were found in the boat, is told again for the twentieth time—a story which never fails to produce a harrowing effect, and to rouse the firm and resolute to yet greater efforts and self-command. “The most animated conversation, however, or rather a constant chattering, is going on meantime in the soot-begrimed tent of the cook. A difference of opinion arises about the precise time when the kettle was to be scraped out, or about the curtailing of the allowance in the last distribution of salt, or as to the delinquent who made a wood-fire on a cask of spirit, or who, instead of untying, cut the string of the sledge packing; many flourishes of speech are bandied to and fro, which at any rate speak well for the oratorical gifts of the disputants.