should get on board them. A large quantity of stores and provisions were still left on the ice, which it was supposed we should not require. Week after week, however, passed by, the ice remained firm, and no whaler appeared to take us off. Captain Blowhard began to look very grave. I observed to him that I thought we might make ourselves very comfortable where we were till another season. “You do not know what an arctic winter is, my lad,” he answered. “But it is not that. It is bad enough to lose one’s ship, but I am thinking of those at home who will be mourning us as dead. It is the thought of their grief which makes me sad.” Our good old captain always thought of others more than of himself. I might spin a very long yarn about all the things that happened to us, but I have not time. The cold of an arctic winter soon began with all its rigour. We had built huts with stones and earth, and parts of the wreck which we had dragged over the ice, but we were very much cramped, and when the cold began in earnest it penetrated into the interior, and we could not keep ourselves warm even with our thick clothing in bed. As soon, however, as the snow fell, the captain ordered ice-huts to be built, the snow serving as mortar. Large slabs of ice were cut out and built up as if they had been blocks of stone, and with them eight huts were formed of the shape of bee-hives. Each hut held from three to five people comfortably. A long passage led to it, with three different slabs, which served as doors; a slab of clear ice was placed on the top to serve as a window. The bed-places were built of snow, covered over thickly with the twigs of a low shrub which grew on the hill side. This, the captain told us, was exactly the fashion of the Esquimaux huts. We had brought several casks of whale’s blubber, and this served us for fuel, and gave us light and warmth; without it we could not have existed. We had a number of shallow metal washhand basins, these were filled with oil, and along one half of the edge of each a row of wicks, made of moss, was arranged; on the opposite side a piece of blubber was hung up, which, as it gradually melted, replenished the basin with oil. This was in imitation of the lamps used by the Esquimaux. One amply warmed each hut. By thus taking a lesson from those we were accustomed to call ignorant savages, we were enabled to exist, and retain our health, when otherwise we must have perished. Our only fear was that the blubber would not hold out till we could make our escape. Our first huts had been built close under the cliff; but, for the convenience of obtaining ice, we had placed those we now occupied at some distance, close to the water, or, rather, where the water would have been had it not been frozen. Our boats, and a good many of our stores, had been left under the cape. One night—now that the winter had begun the night occupied the greater part of the twenty-four hours—we were aroused by a tremendous rushing, thundering sound.