anyway, there used to be. The queerest was one with a great hood over its head, just like them the women wear in North Wales; and then there's another that lives under the ice-a lot of 'em together. When we were sealing we had to look sharp after the white bears, for they 're as greedy after seals as the whale is after caplin. They'd march up and walk off with them we'd caught as cool as cucumbers. Altogether we got a fairish lot of skins of one kind and another. It was bitter cold in winter; it flayed your face, and the snowdrift flew in your eyes like white pepper. But we kept good fires, and we'd plenty of wraps, and food, and drink, and we caulked every chink in the cabin with a moss the doctor said the settlers did their huts with, and so we fared pretty well. Sometimes we shot deer and white partridge, and snared spruce partridge, or went out on the ice to see if we could grab a frozen-out seal. We'd pea-soup, salt cod, salt junk, partridges, and moosevenison, and plum-duff for our Christmas dinner; and if it hadn't been for the thought of our mates that were missing, it would have been a good deal jollier than when we were beset off Greenland. As winter wore on, white grouse and ortolans came over, and we'd more sporting. When spring came, we got out our frozen seals, thawed 'em, and skinned them, and boiled their fat down, and then the wild ducks came over again in swarms. We could have shot almost any number of 'em, if we hadn't been afraid of blazing away all our powder. We ate some of them fresh, and salted the rest to keep. They made the place seem alive again with their row. The snow was melting here and there, and the sun was out almost every day. When there ain't a fog, the sky in Labrador, spring-time and summer, is beautiful blue. The doctor was as larky as me. We'd go getting duck-eggs and duck-down and rat killing together, and he'd whistle and sing, and talk of being home again in no time now. He'd made up his mind that if nobody came to the island when the fishing season began, we should make tracks for the mainland, and try to make our way to the nearest settlement, fishing and shooting and trapping as we went. We'd got more used to the country, you see, by that time. But it wasn't to be. When summer came, the doctor couldn't stir. He'd got a ducking, and the cold had turned to fever. His mind wandered, and sometimes it was as much as I could do to keep him from running up on deck in his shirt. I'd to lock the cabin door. I kept on giving him such things as he'd told me to give him when he was sensible, as well as I could, and latterly he'd been quieter-not sensible, you understand, but with all the strength took out of him, you know. One night I went up on deck to quiet one of the dogs that had been howling so as I couldn't bear it. It's a superstition, perhaps, about dogs knowing when any one is going to die, but I couldn't abear to hear that dog, and him that was the only body I'd got to speak to in the wide world lying there so bad. Just as I got down again the sun went down. He noticed it, and says"Cupples, my boy, that'll be up hour, but I shan't be here to see it. Get me my Prayer Book, and read me the prayers for the sick." again in an I did, as well as I could, sobbing all the time-I couldn't help it. Sure enough, just before the sun came up, he died. He gave me a smile and a grip of the hand, and tried to say something, but his head fell back, and his jaw dropped, and he was gone. Soon as ever I'd made sure that he was dead, I rushed up on deck. I should ha' choked if I'd stayed below. Up came the sun, and I felt as if it was making a mock of me, shining so bright, when I was so miserable. Then I went below again and did what I could for my poor friend, and two or three days after I dug a grave and buried him. There was a little wood at the side of the harbour he'd a fancy for-birch and larch and aspen and spruce and silver-fir and maiden-hair and currants, and such wild berries. It sloped down to the water, and just by the edge, where a little river ran into the harbour, there was a little mound with scurvy grass round it. That's where put him in, because he'd been fond of I YARN IV.. TOLD you how I felt after getting back aboard the Priscilla, when I had managed to bury poor Dr Graham; I felt, as I said, like to go mad. 'Twas worse aboard than it was ashore among the bushes where I had left him, with the little stream running into the cove against the ice that was left, and the mosquitoes to bite, which somehow took one off one's misery. I hated the ship and everything in it, so to speak. Still there was nowhere else to go, and it was the best place to come to an end in. I had no other thought but to come to an end with it, as speedy as might be, and this is what I mean by being like as if I should have gone mad. Between one thing and another I had scarcely had any sleep the time I was a-tending of the doctor, except what I got nodding and catching up myself. The two or three days since, I had had enough to do seeing all decent, and such like, and finishing off in the ground. You must mind, too, that the days were getting to be long, and what between the moon and the merry-dancers in the nightthat's to say the Northern Lights-I had had plenty of light for everything. It was more like one long |