wood?" said the doctor, then.

The Yankee turned his head slowly, spat a brown hailstone on to the ice,
and then said--

"Whar did I get that thar piece o' wood, stranger? Wall, I reckon
that's a bit o' Pole--North Pole--as I took off with these here hands
with the carpenter's saw."

"I'll take a piece of it," said the doctor, and turning it over in his
hands, "Ha, hum!" he muttered; "_Pinus silvestris_." Then aloud--"But
how did you get up here, my friend?"

"Wall, I'll tell you," drawled the Yankee. "But I reckon thar's yards
on it; and when I begin, I don't leave off till I've done, that I don't,
you bet--not if you're friz. Won't it do that I'm here?"

"Well, no," said the doctor; "we should like to know how you got here."

"So," said the Yankee sailor, and, drawing his legs up under him, firing
a couple of brown hailstones off right and left, and whittling away at
so much of the North Pole as the doctor had left him, he thus began.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE YANKEE SAILOR'S YARN.

I warn't never meant for no sailor, I warn't; but I come of a great
nation, and when a chap out our way says he'll du a thing, he does it.
I said I'd go to sea, and I went--and thar you are. I said I'd drop
hunting, and take to mining, and thar I was; and that's how it come
about.

You see, we was rather rough out our way, where Hez Lane and me went
with our bit of tent and pickers, shooting-irons, and sech-like, meaning
to make a pile of gold. We went to Washoe, and didn't get on; then we
went to Saint Laramie, and didn't get on there. Last, we went right up
into the mountains, picking our way among the stones, for Hez sez, "Look
here, old hoss, let's get whar no one's been afore. If we get whar the
boys are at work already, they've took the cream, and we gets the skim
milk. Let's you and me get the cream, and let some o' the others take
the skim milk."

"Good for you," I says; and we tramped on day after day, till we got
right up in the heart o' the mountains, where no one hadn't been afore,
and it was so still and quiet, as it made you quite deaf.

It was a strange, wild sort of place, like as if one o' them coons
called giants had driven a wedge into a mountain, and split it, making a
place for a bit of a stream to run at the bottom, and lay bare the cold
we wanted to find.

"This'll do, Dab," says Hez, as we put up our bit of a tent on a
pleasant green shelf in the steep valley place. "This'll do, Dab;
thar's