JACK BOBSTAY SPINNING YARN. 79

“Did you ever see a Greenlander?” asked Rick.

“© yes, I have seen ’em shooting seals and sea lions ‘round among
blocks of ice.”

“Did you use to go a-whalin’ much?” asked Siah.

“Whalin’? I have seen more whales than you ever dreamed of,

boy,” said Jack with an expression almost like contempt.

“JT don’t know as I eber dreamed ob any,” said Siah in a subdued
way.

“You have forgotten your dreams, maybe;” replied Joe, dis-
posing of dreams and dreamers with a wave of his hand.
“How far north did you ever go?” asked Rick. “Did you
say you got on top of the North Pole?”

Joe disliked to own that he had not achieved anything possible or
impossible. He now merely said that he must have gone “pretty
near it,” for he remarked with impressive dignity, “I went chuck into
the jaws of the ice and snow. I have been in one or two explorin’
expeditions.”

“ You have?” said Rick in tones of positive admiration.

“ Sartin!” declared Joe with great dignity, thoroughly aware of
the important place he occupied in their regard. “It is a tough
position “to be: in; sometimes awful skittish! You see it is pretty
uncomfortable to be sailin’ in a vessel where masts, rigging, shrouds
and sails may be covered with ice. The spray freezes as it falls, and a
vessel looks at last as if she was turnin’ into a big icicle. I was in one
ship that went after Sir John Franklin.”

“What, the man that never came back?” inquired Ralph.

“Yes, in one of them ships,.for though not so thick as sandpeeps on
a summer beach, still there were more than one of ’em, upward of
twenty going in eleven years. You know Sir John Franklin went off in
1845, with two vessels, the Erebus and Terror, to find that humbug-