It was the last day of August that the west wind began to blow, and Captain Nickerson was uneasy directly. The Bowhead was just north of Icy Cape, in comparatively shoal water and with much floating ice in the sea. The pack ice was not in sight, but it might loom up at any moment, so steam was got up on the vessel and she poked her way among the floating cakes to windward, working out as fast as possible. The sky was still clear and it did not promise to be much of a blow, but things work together for evil quickly in the Arctic, and it behooves a navigator to be very wary there. The wisdom of the immediate move was shown in this case, for the ship was scarcely well off the shoals and round the cape into the deep water to westward, before a long, slender point of solid ice was noted to the windward. It might be the main pack or not. There was open water to seaward and clear sea between the ice and the land, and Captain Nickerson was puzzled which course to take. If it was but a detached floe, as it well might be, the open course lay to windward of it, away from the land. If, on the other hand, it was part of the main pack, the proper course lay between it and the coast. Captain Nickerson finally decided that the seaward course was the wise one, and soon a widening point of ice separated them from the shoreward stretch of open water. An hour later they were among drifting floes, but still had good water ahead of them toward the southwest. The breeze was gentle, but the sky was hazing up a little, and the sun shone coldly. The next afternoon at eight bells (four o’clock), as the watch was changed, the man on lookout called down to the deck. “Something adrift on the ice off the starboard bow, sir.” “What is it?” asked Mr. Jones, whose watch on deck it was. “Can’t make it out, sir,” replied the lookout; “it might be a seal, then again it might be a man.” There was much interest at once. Several other vessels were cruising in the Arctic, and they had occasionally sighted one at a distance, though there had been chance for a meeting and a “gam” but once. They knew that the other ships were already to the southward on their way out. Perhaps this was a man from one of them, gone adrift on the ice, and having-but one chance in a thousand for rescue. Captain Nickerson was not called, as he had just gone below after a long siege on deck, but Mr. Jones took the responsibility of changing the vessel’s course slightly, and they approached the figure on the ice. It was difficult to make it out. All hands on deck saw it,—a motionless huddle on a cake of ice, driving before the wind in the dreary polar sea. By and by the ship was as near as it could well get, a heavy floe crowding in between it and the open lead in which the cake floated. Still it was difficult to decide just what the figure was, but Mr. Jones finally said: “Humph! Dead seal,” and changed the vessel’s course again.