ty to fear
an infringement of their dignity. The etiquette of the quarter-deck was
thrown on one side for the good of the common cause; and on every side,
whether at the capstan, at the track-line, hauling, heaving, or
cutting, the officer worked as hard as the seamen,--each was proud of
the other, and discipline suffered nought, indeed improved: for here
Jack had both precept and example.

If we had our labours, it is not to be wondered at that we had also our
leisure and amusements, usually at night,--a polar night robed in
light,--then, indeed, boys fresh from school never tossed care more to
the winds than did the majority of us. Games, which men in any other
class of society would vote childish, were entered into with a zest
which neither gray hairs nor stout bodies in any degree had damped.
Shouts of laughter! roars of "Not fair, not fair! run again!" "Well
done, well done!" from individuals leaping and clapping their hands
with excitement, arose from many a merry ring, in which "rounders,"
with a cruelly hard ball, was being played. In other directions the
fiddle and clarionet were hard at work, keeping pace with heels which
seemed likely never to cease dancing, evincing more activity than
grace. Here a sober few were heaving quoits, there a knot of Solomons
talked of the past, and argued as to the future, whilst in the distance
the sentimental ones strolled about, thinking no doubt of some one's
goodness and beauty, in honour of whom, like true knights, they had
come thus far to win bright honour from the "Giant of the North."

Sometimes a bear would come in sight, and then his risk of being shot
was not small, for twenty keen hands were out after the skin: it had
been promised as a _gage d'amour_ by one to his betrothed; to a sister
by another; a third intended to open the purse-strings of a
hard-hearted parent by such a proof of regard; and not a few were to go
to the First Lord with it, in exchange for a piece of parchment, if he
would not object to the arrangement.

[Headnote: _LIEUT. HALKETT'S BOAT._]

Every day our sportsmen brought home a fair proportion of loons and
little auks, the latter bird flying in immense flocks to all the
neighbouring pools of water, and to kill ten or twelve of them at a
shot when settled to feed, was not considered as derogatory to the
character of a Nimrod, where the question was a purely gastronomic one.
I found in my shooting excursions an India-rubber boat, constructed