loe one day, as
our luck ordered, a party of natives came on board, and we treated them
with hard-tack crumbs and whale-oil. They fell to dancing, and we to
laughing,--they danced more and we laughed more, till the oldest woman
tumbled in her bear-skin bloomers, and came with a smash right on the
little cast-iron frame by the wheel, which screened binnacle and
compass. My dear child, there was such a hullalu and such a mess
together as I remember now. We had to apologize; the doctor set her head
as well as he could. We gave them gingerbread from the cabin, to console
them, and got them off without a fight. But the next morning when I cast
off from the floe, it proved the beggars had stolen the compass card,
needle and all.

My dear Mary, there was not another bit of magnetized iron in the ship.
The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind
for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only
the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which
knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of
more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the
stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' needle was not
quite poetry.

As you shall see, if I ever get through. (Since I began, I have seen the
Consul,--and heard the glorious news from home,--and am to be presented
to the port authorities to-morrow.) It was the most open summer, Mary,
ever known there. If I had not had to be here in October, I would have
driven right through Lancaster Sound, by Baring's Island, and come out
into the Pacific. But here was the honor of the country, and we merely
stole back through the Straits. It was well enough there,--all daylight,
you know. But after we passed Cape Farewell, we worked her into such
fogs, child, as you never saw out of Hyde Park. Did not I long for that
compass-card! We sailed, and we sailed, and we sailed. For thirty-seven
days I did not get an observation, nor speak a ship! October! It was
October before we were warm. At noon we used to sail where we thought it
was lightest. At night I used to keep two men up for a lookout, lash the
wheel, and let her drift like a Dutchman. One way as good as another.
Mary, when I saw the sun at last, enough to get any kind of observation,
we were wellnigh three hundred miles northeast of Iceland! Talk of fogs
to me!

Well, I set her south again, but how long can you know if you are