, smiling. "There, we have had a year's more experience,
and have grown used to it. Whenever the weather was clear we have been
out."

"Then you have not come to save us?" said Steve, who had grown very
thoughtful.

"No, my dear boy; you have got to save us," said Captain Young cheerily.
"We would not give up hope, but worked away; and at last we have found
the help we wanted, for our ship can never sail again, even if we could
get her afloat. You came to rescue us like the brave fellows you were,
and here we are ready to be rescued and taken home to dear old England
once again."

Steve's face was comic in its perplexity.

"We seem a nice party to save your great, strong, hearty men," he said.

"Bah!" cried Captain Young. "We've done you good already, and you'll
all soon come round and be able to help us sleigh all our treasures
across the mountains whenever the weather is fine. What a gloriously
snug position you are in here; far more sheltered than we."

Steve exchanged glances with the doctor; and just then, looking very
weak, Mr Lowe tottered into the cabin, the coming of the crew of the
_Ice Blink_ having roused him too.

"You steamed up this fiord, of course?" said Captain Young.

"Yes," replied Steve.

"Then there is only one winter's ice around you, and therefore you ought
to be free by the end of July."

Steve groaned.

"What's the matter, my lad?"

"You don't know that the ice-floes jammed up the mouth of the fiord
after we were in."

"Indeed! Well, boy, nature must unjam it when the ice is in motion
again. Mouths of inlets are always opening and closing here. Let's
wait and see. I want to see Marsham, though, look different from this."

He had his wish, and within a week; for all idea of the _Ice Blink's_
going back was put an end to by a succession of terrible gales. When at
last the weather settled again the moon was growing old, and a trip
right up a valley on the far side of the glacier, where they had never
explored at all, led them toward the mountains whose pass was so choked
with snow that the party were forced to return to the _Hvalross_, where
they were quartered for the next six weeks.

Their coming and the example of the acclimatised men worked wonders, so
that by the end of those six weeks there was hardly a sick man left; and
when daylight and the hardened snow gave them opportunities journey
after journey was made to the _Ice Blink_ for the most valuable of the
ski