moved the white stone out of line a little, which was to show that Sunday had passed, and afterwards, when the next day had passed, we did the same with the Monday stone, and so on until the stones were all on a line again, when we knew that it was once more Sunday. Of course we knew when the day was gone, by the sun going around on the north side of the island, throwing the shadow of the cliffs upon us. For noting the days of the month we made a similar arrangement to that which we had made for the days of the week; and thus you see we had now got an almanac among our other things. And now,' said the Dean, 'let us put all this down for fear we forget it.' So away the little fellow ran and gathered a great quantity of small pebbles, and these we arranged on the top of the rock so as to form letters; and the letters that we thus made spelled out 'John Hardy and Richard Dean, cast away in the cold, Tuesday, June 27, 1824.'

"Now, when we came to look ahead, and to speculate upon what was likely to befall us, we saw that we had two months of summer still remaining; and, as midsummer had hardly come yet, we knew that we were likely to have it warmer than before, and we had now no further fears about being able to live through that period. In these two months it was plain that one of two things must happen, — that is, a ship must come along and take us off, or we must be prepared for the dark time that must follow, after the sun should go down for the winter.

"I said one of two things must happen; but then there was a third thing that might happen besides, we might both die; and that seemed likely enough, so we pledged ourselves to stand by each other through every fortune, each helping the other all he could. At any rate, we would not lose hope, and never despair of being saved through the mercy of Providence, somehow or other.

"Having reached this resigned state of mind, we were ready to consider rationally what we had to do. It was clear enough that if we only looked out for a ship to save us, and that chance should in the end fail us, we should be ill prepared for the winter if we were left on the island to encounter its perils. Therefore it was necessary to be ready for the worst, and accordingly, after a little deliberation, we concluded to proceed as follows: "Firstly, we must construct a place to shelter ourselves from the cold and storms. In this we had made some satisfactory progress already.

"Secondly, we must collect all the food we can while there is opportunity.

"Thirdly, we must gather fuel, of which, as had been already proved, there was Andromeda (or fire-plant) and moss and blubber to depend upon. Of this latter the dead narwhal and seal would furnish us a moderate supply; but for the rest we must rely upon our own skill to capture some other animals from the sea; though, as to how this was to be done, we had to own ourselves completely at fault.

"Fourthly, we must in some manner secure for ourselves warmer clothing, otherwise we should certainly freeze; and here we were completely at fault

too.

"Fifthly, we must contrive in some way to make for ourselves a lamp, as we could never live in our cave in darkness; and here was a difficulty apparently even more insurmountable than the others, as much so as appeared the making of a fire in the first instance, for while we had a general idea that we might capture some seals, and get thus a good supply of oil, and that we might also get plenty of fox-skins for clothing, yet neither of us could think of any way to make a lamp.

"When we came thus to bring ourselves to a practical view of the situation, the prospect might have made stouter hearts than ours quake a little; but, as we had seen before, nothing was to be gained by lamentation, so we put a bold front on, firmly resolved to make the best fight we could for life."

"A poor chance for you, I should think," said Fred, "and I don't see how you ever lived through so many troubles," while little Alice declared her conviction that "the poor Dean must have died anyway."

"A very bad prospect, indeed, my dears," continued the Captain, — “very bad, as I can assure you; but as it is a poor rule to read the last page of a book before you read the rest of it, so we will go right on to the end with our story, and then you will find out what became of the Dean, as well as what happened to myself.

"Well, as I was going to say, when Monday came, we set about our work, not exactly in the order which I have named, but as we found most convenient; and as day after day followed each other through the week, and as one week followed after another week, we found ourselves at one time building up the wall in front of the cave, then catching ducks and gathering eggs, then collecting the fire-plant, and then turning moss up on the rocks to dry, and then cutting off the blubber and skins of the dead seal and narwhal. All of these things were carefully secured; and in a sort of cave, much like the one we were preparing for our abode, only larger, we stowed away all the fire-plant and dried moss that we could get. Then we looked about us to see what we should do for a place to put our blubber in, — that is, you know, the fat we got off the dead narwhal and the seal, and also any other blubber that we might get afterwards. When we had cut all the blubber off the seal and narwhal, we found that we had an enormous heap of it,—as much, at least, as five good barrels, — and, since the sun was very warm, there was great danger, not only that it would spoil, but that much of it would melt and run away. Fortunately, very near our hut there was a small glacier hanging on the hillside, coming down a narrow valley from a greater mass of ice which lay above. From the face of this glacier a great many lumps of ice had broken off, and there were also deep banks of snow which the summer's sun had not melted. In the midst of this accumulation of ice and snow we had little difficulty in making, partly by excavating and partly by building up, a sort of cave, large enough to hold twice as much blubber as we had to put into it. Here we deposited our treasure, which was our only reliance for light in case we invented a lamp, and our chief reliance for fire if the winter should come and find us still upon the island.

"After we had thus secured, in this snow-and-ice cave, our stock of blubber, we constructed another much like it near by for our food, and into this we had soon gathered a pretty large stock of ducks and eggs. And now,

when we contemplated all that we had done in this particular, you may be sure our spirits rose very considerably."

"Odd, was n't it?" said Fred, "having a storehouse made of ice and snow. But, Captain Hardy, if you 'll excuse me for interrupting you, what did this glacier that you spoke about look like ? and what was it, anyway ?"

"A glacier is nothing more," replied the Captain, "than a stream of ice made out of snow partly melted and then frozen again, and which, forming, as I have said before, high up on the tops of the hills, runs down a valley and breaks off at its end and melts away. Sometimes it is very large,miles across, and goes all the way down to the sea; and the pieces that break off from it are sometimes very large, and are called icebergs. Sometimes the glaciers are very small, especially on small islands such as ours was. This little glacier I tell you of lay in a narrow valley, as I said before; and, as the cliffs were very high on either side, it was almost always in shadow, and the air was very cold there; so you see how fortunate it was that we thought of fixing upon that place for our storehouses. Then another great advantage to us was, that it was so near our hut,-being within

sight, and only a few steps across some very rough rocks; but among these rocks we contrived to make, by filling in with small stones, a tolerably smooth walk.

"As we caught and put away the ducks in our storehouse, we began at length to preserve their skins. At first we could see no value in them, and threw them away; but we saw at length that, in case we could not catch the foxes, they would make us some sort of clothing, while out of the sealskin which I mentioned before we could make boots, if we only had anything to sew with.

"Thus one difficulty after another continually beset us; but this last one was soon partly overcome, for the Dean, on the very first day of our landing, discovered that he had in his pocket his palm and needle, carrying it always about him when on shipboard, like any other good sailor; but we lacked thread."

"What is a palm and needle, Captain Hardy?" inquired William.

"A palm," answered the Captain, "is a band of leather going around the hand, with a thimble fitted into it where it comes across the root of the thumb. The sailor's needle differs only from the common one in being longer and three-cornered, instead of round. It is used for sewing sails and other coarse work on shipboard. The needle is held between the thumb and forefinger, and is pushed through with the thimble in the palm of the hand, and hence the name.

"To come back to our story (having, as I hope, made the palm and needle question clear to you), let me ask you to remember that I told you, when I landed on the island, I had four things,- that is, 1st, my life; 2d, the clothes on my back; 3d, a jack-knife; and 4th, the mercy of Providence. But now, you see, I had added a fifth article to that list, in the Dean's needle; and I might also say that I had a sixth one, too, in the Dean himself, which I did not dare enumerate in the list at first, as I felt pretty sure that the Dean was going to die, or at least wake up crazy, which would be just as bad for me.

"But you see a sailor's palm and needle could be of very little use unless we had some thread, of which we did not possess a single particle, except the small piece that was in the needle, and by which it was tied to the palm. It was a good while before we obtained anything to make thread of, so we will pass that subject by for the present, and come back to what we had more immediately in hand. This was the preparation of our cave, or rather, as we had better say, hut, that being more nearly what it was.

"The building of our hut, then, was indeed a very difficult task, as the solid wall we had to construct in front was much higher than our heads, and in this wall we had, of course, to leave a door-way and a window, besides a sort of chimney, or outlet, for the smoke from the fireplace, which was opposite to the door.

"We must have been at least two weeks making this wall, for we had not only to construct the wall itself, but when it got so high that we could no longer reach up to the top, we had, in addition, to build steps. We left a window above the door-way, not thinking, of course, to find any glass to

put in it, but leaving it rather as a ventilator than a window. It was very small, not more than a foot square, and was easily shut up at any time, if we should not need it. For a door, we used a piece of the narwhal skin, when it became necessary to close up the orifice. This skin was fastened above the door-way with pegs, which we made of bones, driving them into the cracks between the stones, thus letting the skin fall down over the door-way like a curtain.

"In making the wall we were greatly helped by the bones which I had found down on the beach, as they were much lighter than the stones, and aided in holding the moss in its place, so that we were able to use much more of that material than we otherwise could. When the wall was completed, we were gratified to see how tight it was, and how perfectly we had made it fit the rocks by means of the moss.

"Having completed the wall, our next concern was to arrange the interior; but about this we had no need to be in so great a hurry as with the wall, for we had now a place to shelter us from any storm that might come, and we could hope to make ourselves somewhat comfortable there, even although the inside was not well fitted up; for we had a fireplace, and could do our cooking without going outside. And when we found how perfect was the draft through the outlet, or chimney (such as it was), you may be very sure we were greatly delighted.

“As it fell out, we had secured this shelter in the very nick of time, for in two days afterwards a violent storm arose, a heavy wind with hail and occasional gusts of snow, a strange kind of weather, you will think, for the middle of July. This storm made havoc with the ice on the east side of the island, breaking it up, and driving it out over the sea to the westward, filling the sea up so much in that direction that there was no use, for the present at least, in looking for ships, as none could come anyway near us. The storm made a very wild and fearful spectacle of the sea, as the waves went dashing over the pieces of ice and against the icebergs. When I looked out upon this scene, and listened to the noises made by the waves and the crushing ice, and heard the roaring wind, I wondered more than ever what could possess anybody to go to such a sea in a ship, for it seemed to me that the largest possible gains would not be a sufficient reward for the dangers to be encountered.

"But so it always was and always will be, I suppose. Wherever there is a little money to be made, men will encounter any kind of hazard in order to get it. Thus the risks in going after whales and seals for their blubber, which is very valuable, are great; but then, if the ship makes a good voyage, the profits are very large, and when the sailors receive their 'lay,' that is, their share of the profits on the oil and whalebone which have been taken, it sometimes amounts to quite a handsome sum of money to each, and they consider themselves well rewarded for all their privations and hardships. And it must be owned that the whalers and sealers are a very brave sort of men, especially the whalers who go among the ice; for besides the dangers to the vessel, and the danger always encountered in approach