the seals. I did not want any of them
until the weather got cold enough to freeze their flesh. I thought of
oil from their blubber, but I had nothing to hold it. When I had
finished my hut I began to hunt about to see if I could find drift-wood,
but I could only find a few pieces in the cove, and gave it up, for I
did not see how I could anyhow keep up a fire through the winter. Then I
bethought me that the penguins could furnish me with feathers, and I set
to work at them with earnest, and in a week had filled my cave two feet
deep with feathers.

"Every day I could feel that it got colder, and at night there was a
sharp frost; so I determined now to set-to at the seals. There were none
of the sort that you get fur from, and there was not much warmth to be
had from the skins, still they would do to block up the entrance to my
den. I killed five or six of them, and found that some of the young ones
were furry enough to make coats of. As I was sitting on the ground by
them next morning, lamenting I had nothing to boil down their blubber
in, an idea struck me. I might use the blubber as candles, sticking
wicks into it. I set to work and stripped the blubber off all the seals,
and cut it in squares of about six inches. Then I got a bit of one of
the fresh skins, bent it up all round, of the right size for the squares
to fit into, fastened it, and spread it on the rocks to dry. The thought
of how I was to make wicks bothered me. I could not spare my clothes. At
last, after trying different things, I found that some of the grass was
very tough. I put a bundle of this in a pool, and let it lay there for a
week; for I was a North of Ireland boy, and knew how they worked flax.
At the end of that time I took it out, let it dry, and then bruised it
between flat stones, and found that it had a tough fibre. I thanked God,
and picked a lot more of it and put it to soak. You may guess I tried
the experiment that night; I made six big wicks and put them in one of
the cakes of blubber and lighted them, and found that they burned
famously and gave out a lot of heat. I killed some more seals; and by
the time the winter set in in earnest I had a stock of meat enough to
last me for months, and two or three hundredweight of cakes of blubber.

"I had made several bowls and plates out of the seals' skins, and had
fashioned myself, in a mighty rough way, some suits of young seal-skins
with a hood that covered all my head and face except just