Two men were cooking for the general mess. The armourer was cleaning or repairing guns, knives, etc., for some projected expedition, while round the fire sat a noisy group telling yarns and smoking. Near them sat a party of four playing some game of cards; a desperate game apparently, for they looked very solemn and absorbed. The boys were enjoying a game of leap-frog at one end of the room, while several of the bunks were occupied by men, some of whom were asleep, a couple on the sick list, and others reading. There was a man, the cobbler of the crew, mending boots, while at his side sat Snip, sewing away at the seat of a pair of duffel trousers, what he calls armour-plating them; and along the north side was a skittle alley, at which a knot of tars are very much enjoying themselves, if we might judge by the shouts of merriment and hearty smacks upon the back with which they salute each other. Hands behind his back by the stove, with his legs thrust apart like a pair of compasses, stood the skipper, sipping a glass of something steaming hot, while your humble servant had just finished posting up the ship’s journal; for the skipper was a poor hand with the pen, his fingers being all thumbs, and his thumbs like stun’sail booms. Well, now that I have shown you how we amused ourselves, I will proceed with my yarn. Ever since I was quite a nipper I have had a fondness for exploring and roaming about whenever I could get off duty, and this propensity did not desert me amid the snow and ice of the Arctic regions, as you shall hear. I begged the skipper to allow me to make a tour of the island on which we were living; a tour having for its object the making of an accurate map; one, at any rate, more accurate than that at the time laid down in the charts. He met me with a flat and decided “No!” “Why, man, are you mad? The island we are on is as large as the principality of Wales, and to compass it you would have to travel at least four hundred miles, which would probably mean an absence of nine or ten weeks! No, my man, this is not _quite_ a lunatic asylum; not yet, at all events.” It was no use pleading, but his refusal set my back up, as the men twitted me (not to my face, but indirectly), with wanting to be a circumnavigator of the world on my own account. Two of them would waddle round the tables, and, when they met, pretend they had not seen each other for years, and shake hands and embrace in a most enthusiastic manner, to the delight of the crew and my own chagrin. One day, the weather being clear, the skipper brought out his big telescope, and was very busy with it, taking long surveys at a distant island lying due south of the Inlet. He requested me to get the charts of the Spitzbergen group down, which I did.