position, but finally accepted it upon
condition that at any time during the following summer he should be
allowed to buy the schooner back at the same price he now received for
her.

"Isn't it fine," he whispered to Cabot, after all hands had sought
their bunks, "to think that our venture has turned out so splendidly
after all?"

"Fine is no name for it," rejoined the other. "But I do hope we will
have the chance of meeting Mr. Homolupus once more and of thanking him
for what he has done. We owe so much to him that, man-wolf or no
man-wolf, I consider him a splendid fellow."

In spite of their impatience to start southwards, our lads were still
compelled to spend two weeks longer at Locked Harbour. First the
missionary was obliged to make a visit to his station, and, on his
return, the snow was not in condition for a long sledge journey.
Furious winds had piled it into drifts, with intervening spaces of bare
ground, over which sledge travel would be impossible. So they must
wait until the autumnal storms were over and winter had settled down in
earnest. But, impatient as they were, time no longer hung heavily on
their hands, nor did they now regard their place of abode as a prison.
Its solitude and dreariness had fled before the advent of half a
hundred Eskimo--short, squarely built men, moon-faced women, and
roly-poly children, looking like animated balls of fur, all of whom had
been brought from the mission to form a settlement on the beach. It
was easier to bring them to the Heaven-sent provisions that were to
keep them until spring than it would have been to transport the heavy
barrels of flour and pork to the mission. At the same time, they could
protect the schooner from depredations by other wandering natives.

So they came, bag and baggage, babies, dogs, and all, and at once set
to work constructing snug habitations, in which, with plenty of food
and plenty of seal oil, they could live happily and comfortably during
the long winter months. These structures were neither large nor
elegant. In fact they were only hovels sunk half underground, with low
stone walls, supporting roofs of whale ribs, covered thick with earth.
A little later they would be buried beneath warm, shapeless mounds of
snow. To most of them outside light and air could only be admitted
through the low doorways, but one, more pretentious than the others,
was provided with an old window sash, in which the place of missing
panes was