half its head away with a
single shot. And then they would draw the carcass up to the huts with
the dog trains, and the women would skin and dress the meat, and
Amatikita and the others would gorge themselves.

At last the long winter wore away. Amatikita dived in through the
entrance of the hut one day and told me that the ice-floe was beginning
to break. The news affected me like the blow of a whip. I went out into
the open and found the sun up. The men were overhauling their skin
canoes. The snow was wet underfoot and seafowl were swooping around. The
floe was still sound where it joined the shore, but two seaward lanes of
blue water showed between the ice, and in one of them a whale was
spouting pale gray mist.

It was high time for me to be off. So the bearskins were fastened by
thongs to the sledges and word was shouted to the dog leader of each
team. The dogs started, and presently away went the teams full tilt, the
sledges leaping and crashing in their wake, with the drivers and a
certain Scotch engineer who was unused to such [v]acrobatics clinging
on top of the packs. My! but yon was a wild ride over the rotten,
cracking, sodden floe, under the fresh, bright sunshine of that Arctic
spring morn!

Presently round the flank of a small ice-berg we came in view of the
_Gleaner_. She was still beset in the ice; but the hands were hard at
work beating the ice from the rigging and cutting a gutter around her in
the floe, so that she might float when the time came. They knocked off
work when we drove up.

"Good-day, Captain Black," I said. "I've been troubling myself over
bearskins, and I'll ask you for seven shillings head money on
twenty-nine."

"You've shot twenty-nine bears? You're lying to me."

"The skins are there, and you can count them for yourself."

His color changed when the Esquimaux passed the skins over the side. And
I clambered aboard the ship along with them.

W. CUTCLIFFE HYNE.

=HELPS TO STUDY=

Tell this story briefly, using your own words. What mistake did
McTodd make in preparing for the hunt? What amused you most? How
did McTodd show his shrewdness, even if he was not a good hunter?
What do you learn about the Arctic region?

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

The Frozen Pirate--W. Clark Russell.
The Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine--Frank R. Stockton.

LOCHINVAR

Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west:--
Through all the w