186 THE WORLD OF ICE.

“You're fishing for compliments, but I’m afraid I
have none to give you. Your first harpoon, you
know, was a little wide of the mark, if I recollect
right, wasn’t it?”

“ Vis, it wos—about as wide as the finst bullet. I
mis-remember exactly who fired it—wos it you, Mee-
tuck 2?”

Meetuck, being deeply engaged with a junk of fat
meat at that moment, expressed all he had to say in a
convulsive gasp without interrupting his supper.

“Try a bit of the bear,” said Fred to Tom Single-
ton; “it’s better than the walrus to my taste.”

“Td rather not,’ answered Tom, with a dubious
shake of the head.

“Tt’s a most unconscionable thine to eat a beast 0°
that sort,” remarked Saunders gravely.

“ Especially one who has been in the habit of living
on raisins and sticking-plaster,” said Bolton with a
grin,

“T have been thinking about that,” said Captain
Guy, who had been for some time listening in silence
to the conversation, “and I cannot help thinking that
lisquimaux must have found a wreck somewhere in
this neighbourhood and carried away her stores, which
Bruin had managed to steal from them.”

“May they not have got some of the stores of the
brig we saw nipped some months ago?” suggested
Singleton.

* Possibly they may.”

“] dinna think that’s likely,” said Saunders, shaking