92 THE WORLD OF ICE.

hopelessly beyond his reach by a comparatively fresh
member of the party.

“Ah! then, it bates the owld country intirely, it
does,” replied O'Riley, wiping the perspiration from
his forehead.

It is needless to say that O’Riley was an Irishman.
We have not mentioned him until now, because up to
this time he had not done anything to distinguish
himself beyond his messmates ; but on this particular
day O’Riley’s star was in the ascendant, and fortune
seemed to have singled him out as an object of her
special attention. He was a short man, and a broad
man, and a particularly rugged man—so to speak.
He was all angles and corners. His hair stuck about
his head in violently rigid and entangled tufts, render-
ing it a matter of wonder how anything in the shape
of a hat could stick on. His brow was a countless
mass of ever-varying wrinkles, which gave to his sly
visage an aspect of humorous anxiety that was highly
diverting—and all the more diverting when you came
to know that the man had not a spark of anxiety in
his composition, though he often said he had. His
dress, like that of most Jack tars, was naturally
rugged, and he contrived to make it more so than
usual.

« An’ it’s hot, too, it is,” he continued, applying his
kerchicf again to his pate. “If it warn't for the ice
we stand on, we'd be melted down, I do belave, like
bits o’ whale blubber.”

“Wot a jolly game football is, ain’t it?” said Davie