ley, commencing a violent assault
on a walrus-steak; "they don't obey orders at all, at all. An' Dumps,
the blaggard, is as cross-grained as me grandmother's owld pig--"

A general laugh here interrupted the speaker, for O'Riley could seldom
institute a disparaging comparison without making emphatic allusion to
the pig that once shared with him the hospitalities of his grandmother's
cabin.

"Why, everything you speak of seems to be like that wonderful pig,
messmate," said Peter Grim.

"Ye're wrong there intirely," retorted O'Riley. "I niver seed nothing
like it in all me thravels except yerself, and that only in regard to
its muzzle, which was black and all kivered over with bristles, it wos.
I'll throuble you for another steak, messmate; that walrus is great
livin'.--We owe ye thanks for killin' it, Mister Ellice."

"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?"

"Yis, it wos--about as wide as the first bullet. I mis-remember exactly
who fired it--wos it you, Meetuck?"

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 Singleton; "it's better than
the walrus to my taste."

"I'd rather not," answered Tom, with a dubious shake of the head.

"It's a most unconscionable thing to eat a beast o' 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.

"I 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 Esquimaux 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."

"I dinna think that's likely," said Saunders, shaking his head. "Yon
brig had been deserted long ago, and her stores must have been consumed,
if they were taken out of her at all, before we thought o' comin' here."

For some time the party in the cabin ate in silence.

"We must wait patiently," resumed the captain, as if he were tired of
following up a fruitless train of thought. "What