“It won’t do, Harry,” he said; “the place will be too cold. It is on deck; and when the thermometer gets way down and the gales blow for a month steady, we shall surely freeze to death.” “I suppose so,” said Harry doubtfully; “but it is low amidships here between the bulwarks. If we could only build a double house right around it, the air space between the two would be a great protection,—and it is _so_ handy. Tell you what, there’s some spare boards and stuff down in the main hold. Couldn’t we do it with them?” “Couldn’t make it tight enough,” replied Joe. “The wind would shoot through and get at us. If it was buried deep in snow—but the snow would blow away in the wind.” He pondered a moment, and shook his head. “What’s the matter with ice, then?” answered Harry. “We’ve got all the ice we want, right handy.” Joe sprang to his feet with a laugh. “I believe you’ve got it, this time,” he said. “We’ll make a regular Eskimo igloo all around it with ice blocks, same as we used to read about in the schoolbooks. We’ll chink them with snow and pour water on, and when it freezes we’ll be snug as need be.” They went immediately to work while the weather favored them. From the floes alongside they cut cubical blocks which they hauled aboard with a whip rigged to the main yard. These they piled one above another, about three feet from the galley sides. A second row was then set up a foot outside these, and the space between filled with snow. Thus they had two ice walls with a free air space next the building. Spare spars placed across this served for rafters, and they covered these with ice cakes also. For cement, snow with water poured on was excellent, and at the end of three days their protecting igloo was nearly finished. It filled the space amidships from bulwark to bulwark, and the two architects were very proud of their creation. “When you are in Rome,” said Harry, “you must do as the Romans do,” and in this he had solved the real secret of successful winter life in the Arctic. Through a thousand generations stern necessity has taught certain things to the Eskimos, and the explorers who most nearly follow their methods are the ones who winter in safety and with least loss of life and comfort. Still in imitation of the ice-dwellers of the far north, they made the only entrance to this big igloo through a low tunnel of ice cakes, well chinked and mortared with snow and water, and with a deerskin doorway that dropped curtainwise and could be fastened tight. Had Sir Christopher Wren been viewing the completion of St. Paul’s Cathedral, he could have done so with no greater thrill of pride than did these two beginners in Arctic life their rough ice shelter from the cold to come. “I think that makes it all right,” said Joe, with great satisfaction. “If it doesn’t work we can retreat below, but with a good fire in the galley stove it seems as if we might be comfortable here, even in the coldest weather.”