THE WORLD OF ICE. 191

 

land—a woman, and such a woman! Most people
would have pronounced her a man, for she wore pre-
cisely the same dress—fur jumper and long boots—
that was worn by the men of the Dolphin. Her lips
were thick and her nose was blunt; she wore her hair
turned wp, and twisted into a knot on the top of her
head; her hood was thrown back, and inside of this
hood there was a baby—a small and a very fat baby!
It was, so to speak, a conglomerate of dumplings.
Its cheeks were two dumplings, and its arms were
four dumplings—one above each elbow and one below.
Tts hands, also, were two smaller dumplings, with ten
extremely little dumplings at the end of them. This
baby had a nose, of course, but it was so small that it
might as well have had none; and it had a mouth,
too, but that was so capacious that the half of it
would have been more than enough for a baby double
the size. As for its eyes they were large and black
—black as two coals—and devoid of all expression
save that of astonishment.

Such were the pair that stood on the edge of the

 

ice-belt gazing down upon Dumps and Poker. And
no sooner did Dumps and Poker catch sight ot them
than they sprang hastily towards them, wagging their
tails—or, more correctly speaking, their tail and a
quarter. But on a nearer approach those sagacious
animals discovered that the woman and her child were
strangers, whereupon they set up a dismal howl, and
fled towards the ship as fast as they could run.

Now, it so happened that, at this very time, the