t me of sporting on the ice. There was head-money
offered for all bears, foxes, seals, musk-oxen, and such like that were
shot and gathered. So I went to the skipper, and he gave me a Henry
rifle, well rusted, and eight cartridges.

"Show me you can use those, McTodd," says he, "and I'll give you more."

I made a big mistake with that rusty old gun. I may be a sportsman, but
before that I'm an engineer, and it seemed to me that Heaven sent metal
into this world to be kept bright and clean. So I took the rifle all to
pieces and made the parts as smooth and sweet as you'd see in a
gun-maker's shop, barring rust-pits, and gave them a nice daubing of oil
against the Arctic weather. Then I put on some thick clothes I had
made, and all the other clothes I could get loaned me, and climbed out
over the rail on to the [v]floe.

The _Gleaner_ lay in a bay some two miles from the shore, and let me
tell you, if you do not know it, that Arctic ice is no skating-rink.
There are great hills, and knolls, and bergs, and valleys spread all
over, and even where it's about level, the underfoot is as hard going as
a newly-metalled road before the steam-roller has passed over it.

The air was clear enough when I left the bark, and though the [v]mercury
was out of use and coiled up snugly in the bulb, it wasn't as cold as
you might think, for just then there was no wind. It's a breeze up in
the Arctic that makes you feel the chill. There was no sun, of course;
there never is sun up there in that dreary winter: but the stars were
burning blue and clear, and every now and then a big [v]catherine wheel
of [v]aurora would show off, for all the world like a firework
exhibition.

My! but it was lonely, though, once you had left the ship behind! There
was just the scrunching of your feet on the frost [v]rime, and not
another sound in the world. Even the ice was frozen too hard to squeak.
And overhead in that purple-black Heaven you never knew Who was looking
down at you. Out there in that cold, bare, black, icy silence, I had
occasion to remember that Neil Angus McTodd had been a sinner in his
time, and it made me shiver when I glanced up toward those blue, cold
stars and the deep purple darkness that lay between and behind them.

It may be that I was thinking less of my hunting than was advisable, for
of a sudden I woke up to the sound of heavy feet padding over the crisp
frost rime. I turned me round sharply enough, but as far as the dim
lig