o, I determined to take as little as
possible, and with a thousand thanks walked back to the drawing-room,
with Herr Agar's "whisperables" on one arm and a couple of seal-skins
on the other, my face burning, and my conscience smiting.

Time pressed, and we bid our kind friends good-bye. Herr Agar fired a
salute of three guns, which we returned with three cheers; and, after
taking a stirrup cup on board the "Peru," started for Whale-Fish
Islands, which we reached at eleven o'clock at night, much pleased with
our excursion.

Every one likes a souvenir of some pleasant by-gone scene or event:
these souvenirs are often odd ones. A messmate of mine used to tell of
Greece, her temples and ruins: "he had had many a pleasant snooze
amongst them!" Another dwelt on the scenes of Montezuma's sorrows, for
it was there he had partaken of most savoury wild fowl,--and yet
another hero knew but of Peru and Pizarro's triumphs, by the markets
producing very good prawns; whilst I must plead guilty to associating
Greenland and the deeds of Scandinavian heroes with Herr Agar's
seal-skin trowsers.

Amidst a last flourish of coals and dust, which left us filled to
repletion,--indeed we were just awash,--we were ordered to take the
ships in tow, and start. This being done, I came to a virtuous
resolution in my own mind, after what I was going through in dragging
my "fat friend," the "Resolute," about, to think twice ere I laughed at
those whom fate had shackled to a mountain of flesh. When I had time to
ask the day and date, it was Sunday, 28th June, 1850, and we had turned
our back on the last trace of civilized man. Vogue-la-galere.

The night was serenely calm. We skirted the Black Land of Lively,
making an average speed of three miles per hour, so that our fearful
load of coal--full three hundred tons--did not diminish the speed
nearly as much as I at first anticipated. Although I could not but feel
from our staggering motion and bad steerage that the poor "Pioneer" was
severely taxed in carrying her own dead weight of about five hundred
tons, and towing a clumsy craft, which fully equalled another seven
hundred tons, all this receiving vitality from two little engines of
thirty-horse power each.

Whilst a sudden and rattling breeze from the south caused us to make
sail and run merrily past the striking clifts of the Waigat and Jacob's
Sound, I will briefly refer to the character of the vessels composing
our squadron, their equipment