liged to encamp.

We talked a good deal about it as we sat round our lamp in our usual ice
cottage; and I dreamed all night that a strange ship had appeared, and
that we were to go on board in the morning.

When the morning did really come, I eagerly looked out for the first
rays of light falling on the object I had seen. It was now more clear
than ever. I first pointed it out to Andrew.

"Well, if that is not a real ship, those are very extraordinary marks at
the foot of the cliff," he observed. "Peter, I believe you are right.
It is a ship, and it may prove the means of our preservation."

Without waiting for any meal, although Andrew insisted on the boat being
dragged with us, we advanced towards the supposed ship. David certainly
did not believe she was one. "If that's a ship," he remarked. "I don't
see how the natives would have spared her. They would have been
swarming about her like bees, and would have pulled her all to pieces
long before this."

"I still say she's a ship, and that we shall see before long," I
answered.

It is extraordinary how the imagination helps out the vision in a case
of this sort. I believed that there was a ship, so I saw her; another
man did not believe that there was a ship there, so could not perceive
her.

We travelled on for three hours before all doubts were set at rest by
the appearance of a large ship, thrown, as I said, on her beam-ends, but
with her masts and rigging still standing. An overhanging cliff
projected to the south of her, and within it was the cavern in which she
lay, so that she could only be seen from the point from which we had
advanced towards her.

This providential circumstance instantly raised our spirits, and we
could not help giving a loud shout of joy, as we hurried on to get on
board her. Even should we find no provisions, we could not fail of
obtaining numberless things which would prove of the greatest value to
us.

As we got near her, her condition at once told that she had been lost
amongst the ice; and probably thrown up on to a floe by another striking
her, she had drifted afterwards into her present position. For some
minutes we stood round her, examining her with a feeling approaching to
awe. She looked so shattered and weather-worn, and of a build so
unusual, that I fancied she might have been there frozen up for
centuries.

At last Terence climbed up her sides, followed by all of us. Her decks
were uninjured, and were