ht and
made off, clear away, with six harpoons fast in its hide."

"Busby's tellin' ye gammon," roared Tom Green, who rode on the second
sledge in rear of that on which Davie Summers sat. "What is't all
about?"

"About gammon, of coorse," retorted Davie. "Keep yer mouth shut for
fear your teeth freeze."

"Can't ye lead us a better road?" shouted Saunders, who rode on the
third sledge; "my bones are rattlin' about inside o' me like a bag o'
ninepins."

"Give the dogs a cut, old fellow," said Buzzby, with a chuckle and a
motion of his arm to the Esquimau who drove his sledge.

The Esquimau did not understand the words, but he quite understood the
sly chuckle and the motion of the arm, so he sent the lash of the heavy
whip with a loud crack over the backs of the team.

"Hold on for life!" cried Davie, as the dogs sprang forward with a
bound.

The part they were about to pass over was exceedingly rough and broken,
and Buzzby resolved to give his shipmates a shake. The pace was
tremendous. The powerful dogs drew their loads after them with
successive bounds, which caused a succession of crashes, as the sledges
sprang from lump to lump of ice, and the men's teeth snapped in a truly
savage manner.

"B-a-ck ye-r t-to-p-sails, will ye?" shouted Amos Parr.

But the delighted Esquimau leader, who entered quite into the joke, had
no intention whatever of backing his top-sails; he administered another
crack to the team, which yelled madly, and, bounding over a wide chasm
in the ice, came down with a crash, which snapped the line of the
leading dog and set it free. Here Buzzby caused the driver to pull up.

"Stop, ye varmint. Come to an anchor," said he. "Is that a way to drive
the poor dogs?"

"Ye might have stopped him sooner, I think," cried the second mate in
wrath.

"Hai!" shouted the band of Esquimaux, pointing to a hummock of ice a few
hundred yards in advance of the spot on which they stood.

Instantly all were silent, and gazing intently ahead at a dark object
that burst upwards through the ice.

"A walrus!" whispered Buzzby.

"So it is," answered Amos Parr.

"I've my doobts on that point," remarked Saunders.

Before the doubts of the second mate could be resolved, the Esquimaux
uttered another exclamation, and pointed to another dark object a
quarter of a mile to the right. It was soon found that there were
several of these ocean elephants sporting about in the neighbourhood,
and bursting up the youn