lared foxes by believing them busy on their honourable mission.
In order that the crime of killing the "postmen" may be recognized in
its true light, it is but fair that I should say, that the brutes,
having partaken once of the good cheer on board or around the ships,
seldom seemed satisfied with the mere empty honours of a copper collar,
and returned to be caught over and over again. Strict laws were laid
down for their safety, such as an edict that no fox taken alive in a
trap was to be killed: of course no fox was after this taken alive;
they were all unaccountably dead, unless it was some fortunate wight
whose brush and coat were worthless: in such case he lived either to
drag about a quantity of information in a copper collar for the rest of
his days, or else to die a slow death, as being intended for Lord
Derby's menagerie.

The departure of a postman was a scene of no small merriment: all
hands, from the captain to the cook, were out to chase the fox, who,
half frightened out of its wits, seemed to doubt which way to run;
whilst loud shouts and roars of laughter, breaking the cold, frosty
air, were heard from ship to ship, as the fox-hunters swelled in
numbers from all sides, and those that could not run mounted some
neighbouring hummock of ice, and gave a view halloo, which said far
more for robust health than for tuneful melody.

[Headnote: _DESULTORY OCCUPATIONS._]

During the darker period of the winter, and when the uncertainty of the
weather was such that, from a perfect calm and clear weather, a few
hours would change the scene to a howling tempest and thick drift, in
which, if one had been caught, death must inevitably have followed,
great care was necessary in taking our walks, to prevent being so
overtaken; but, nevertheless, walks of seven or eight miles from the
vessels were, on several occasions, performed, and a severe temperature
faced and mastered with perfect indifference. I remember well on the
13th January seeing mercury, in a solid mass, with a temperature of 40 deg.
below zero, and being one of a good many who had taken three hours hard
walking for mere pleasure.

We joked not a little at the fireside stories at home, of bitter cold
nights, and being frozen to death on some English heath: it seemed to
us so incredible that people should be frost-bitten, because the air
was below freezing point; whilst we should have hailed with delight the
thermometer standing at zero, and indeed looked