rnips year in, year out, poor things!'

'Cows!' said Godfrey scornfully; 'of course there aren't any cows, only
Polar bears prowling on the ice. And there are icebergs, great
mountains of ice all blue, and they come crashing together and grinding
up the ships, like a great giant's teeth, Aunt Betty says. And it's
always dark, dark all day for months together.'

'Oh dear!' said Nancy, much awe-struck, 'I shouldn't like to be one of
the people that lives there, Master Godfrey.'

'Nobody does live there but the Polar bears, and there's a sort of red
light comes in the sky that they can see to prowl by, I suppose, and
the stars, I should think they're brighter than even they were last
night; weren't they bright last night, Nancy, just about supper time?'

Nancy couldn't say she had noticed; there had been sausages for supper,
father had killed a pig.

'But if nobody lives there how do they know about it?' she asked.

'Because brave men have gone there to see,' said Godfrey, with the
eager light coming into his eyes. 'Aunt Betty says that country is
full of the graves of brave men who have gone up there and died away in
the dark and the cold.'

'Poor things!' sighed Nancy. 'I daresay now their friends will have
put up nice handsome stones over their graves, won't they?'

'No, there aren't any stones,' said Godfrey; 'Aunt Betty says their
deeds are their monuments.'

Nancy looked as if she thought such monuments rather unsatisfactory.

'Father put up a nice stone with a vase a-top of it to his
great-uncle,' she remarked, 'and the captain's grandfather he's got two
angels crying and a skull at the bottom; it's a nice handsome grave,
that is.'

They had reached the pond by this time, a piece of dark water over-hung
by willows and covered with black ice, which had been broken at one end
for the cattle to drink. Godfrey began at once to invent.

'We'll put the _Victory_ here,' he said, launching his boat into the
dark hole; 'this is the last piece of open water, Nance, and from here
we must just take to the ice, you and I, and leave the crew to take
care of the ship till we get back. Take your rifle, I see there are
Polar bears prowling over there among the icebergs.'

'Where?' asked Nancy, rather alarmed.

'Why there, things with turned-up tails and what you'd p'r'aps take for
yellow bills when first you saw them. I should like their fur for Aunt
Angel. Now we are going to start to find the North-west Pas