ers, and
carried to their respective bunks a large assortment of native articles.
Fred and Tom Singleton, too, were extremely successful, and in a few
hours a sufficient amount of skins were bartered to provide them with
clothing for the winter. The quantity of fresh meat obtained, however,
was not enough to last them a week, for the Esquimaux lived from hand to
mouth, and the crew felt that they must depend on their own exertions in
the hunt for this indispensable article of food, without which they
could not hope to escape the assaults of the sailors' dread enemy,
scurvy.

Meetuck's duties were not light upon this occasion, as you may suppose.

"Arrah, then, _don't_ ye onderstand me?" cried O'Riley in an excited
tone to a particularly obtuse and remarkably fat Esquimaux, who was
about as sharp at a bargain as himself. "Hallo! Meetuck, come here,
do, and tell this pork-faced spalpeen what I'm sayin'. Sure I couldn't
spake it plainer av I was to try."

"I'll never get this fellow to understand," said Fred. "Meetuck, my
boy, come here and explain to him."

"Ho, Meetuck!" shouted Peter Grim, "give this old blockhead a taste o'
your lingo. I never met his match for stupidity."

"I do believe that this rascal wants the 'ole of this ball o' twine for
the tusk of a sea-'oss. Meetuck! w'ere's Meetuck! I say, give us a
'and 'ere like a good fellow," cried Mivins; but Mivins cried in vain,
for at that moment Saunders had violently collared the interpreter, and
dragged him towards an old Esquimaux woman, whose knowledge of Scotch
had not proved sufficient to enable her to understand the
energetically-expressed words of the second mate.

During all this time the stars had been twinkling brightly in the sky,
and the aurora shed a clear light upon the scene, while the air was
still calm and cold; but a cloud or two now began to darken the horizon
to the north-east, and a puff of wind blew occasionally over the icy
plain, and struck with such chilling influence on the frames of the
traffickers that with one consent they closed their business for that
day, and the Esquimaux prepared to return to their snow village, which
was about ten miles to the southward, and which village had been erected
by them only three days previous to their discovery of the ship.

"I'm sorry to find," remarked the captain to those who were standing
near him, "that these poor creatures have stolen a few trifling articles
from below. I don't l