or she might, perhaps, have been carried on by
the current into the ocean, and there lost. However it might have
been, they were never to see her again. What a difference a few short
moments had made in their feelings and in their fate! They thought to
have re-entered the hut with glad companions; they returned to it the
sole inhabitants of that desolate region, disconsolate, and utterly
hopeless of ever leaving it. When they could collect their thoughts,
they were anxiously turned to the preservation of their lives, for
which it was necessary to provide some kind of sustenance. The island
abounded with reindeer, and they brought down one with every charge of
their powder. They set about devising means to repair the hut, which,
from the cracks and crevices produced by the weather, let in the
piercingly cold air in various directions. No wood, or even shrub,
grew on that sterile ground. Nothing could be more dreary than the
prospect--a bleak waste without vegetation; the high mountains with
their rock and crags; the everlasting ice and the vast masses of snow.
The very sublimity of the scene was awfully impressed with all the
marks of stern desolation and solitude. As in that cold climate wood
is not liable to decay, they joined the boards of which the hut was
constructed, with the help of their axe, very tolerably, filling up
the crevices with moss, which grows in abundance all over the island.
The poor men, like all of their country, were expert carpenters, for
it is customary with them to build their own houses. No want could
have been more dreadful than that of wood, for without firing, they
could never bear up against the intense cold.

As they strayed along the beach, they found, to their joy, a quantity
of wood which had been carried in by the tide. What they first got in
this way were parts of the wreck of vessels, and afterwards trees,
which had been uprooted by the overflowing of rivers, and borne by the
waves into the ocean; but what proved a treasure to the poor
castaways, were some boards which they discovered on the beach, with a
long iron hook, some nails of five or six inches long, and thick in
proportion, and other pieces of iron fastened in them--the sad
memorials of some shattered vessel. Kind Providence seemed to have
directed their steps where help was to be found. Just at the time when
their provisions had nearly failed, and when they were without the
means of replenishing their store, they perceiv