"Now, then," cried Fred, as they drew up on a level portion of the ice-floe, where the snow on its surface was so hard that the runners of the sledge scarce made an impression on it, "let us to work, lads, and get the tarpaulins spread. We shall have to sleep to-night under star-spangled bed-curtains." "Troth," said O'Riley, gazing round towards the land, where the distant cliffs loomed black and heavy in the fading light, and out upon the floes and hummocks, where the frost-smoke from pools of open water on the horizon circled round the pinnacles of the icebergs--"troth, it's a cowld place intirely to go to wan's bed in, but that fat-faced Exqueemaw seems to be settin' about it quite coolly; so here goes!" "It would be difficult to set about it otherwise than coolly with the thermometer forty-five below zero," remarked Fred, beating his hands together, and stamping his feet, while the breath issued from his mouth like dense clouds of steam, and fringed the edges of his hood and the breast of his jumper with hoar-frost. "It's quite purty, it is," remarked O'Riley, in reference to this wreath of hoar-frost, which covered the upper parts of each of them; "it's jist like the ermine that kings and queens wear, so I'm towld, and it's chaper a long way." "I don't know that," said Joseph West. "It has cost us a rough voyage and a winter in the Arctic Regions, if it doesn't cost us more yet, to put that ermine fringe on our jumpers. I can make nothing of this knot; try what you can do with it, messmate, will you?" "Sorra wan o' me'll try it," cried O'Riley, suddenly leaping up and swinging both arms violently against his shoulders; "I've got two hands, I have, but niver a finger on them--leastwise I feel none, though it _is_ some small degrae o' comfort to see them." "My toes are much in the same condition," said West, stamping vigorously until he brought back the circulation. "Dance, then, wid me," cried the Irishman, suiting his action to the word. "I've a mortial fear o' bein' bit wid the frost--for it's no joke, let me tell you. Didn't I see a whole ship's crew wance that wos wrecked in the Gulf o' St. Lawrence about the beginnin' o' winter, and before they got to a part o' the coast where there was a house belongin' to the fur-traders, ivery man-jack o' them was frost-bit more or less, they wor. Wan lost a thumb, and another the jint of a finger or two, and most o' them had two or three toes off, an' there wos wan poor fellow who lost the front half o' wan fut an' the heel o' the other, an' two inches o' the bone was stickin' out. Sure it's truth I'm tellin' ye, for I seed it wid me own two eyes, I did." The earnest tones in which the last words were spoken convinced his comrades that O'Riley was telling the truth, so having a decided objection to be placed in similar circumstances, they danced and beat each other until they were quite in a glow. "Why, what are you at there, Meetuck?" exclaimed Fred, pausing.