on him would have roused enthusiasm if his
situation had been less critical. Even as it was, an exclamation of
surprise broke from him, for there, not five miles distant, was the
coast of Greenland; desolate, indeed, and ice-bound--he had expected
that--but inexpressibly grand even in its desolation. A mighty tongue
of a great glacier protruded itself into the frozen sea. The tip of
this tongue had been broken off, and the edge presented a gigantic wall
of crystal several hundred feet high, on which the sun glittered in
blinding rays.

This tongue--a mere offshoot of the great glacier itself--filled a
valley full ten miles in length, measuring from its tip in the ocean to
its root on the mountain brow, where the snow-line was seen to cut
sharply against the sky.

For some minutes Red Rooney sat on one of the ice-blocks, gazing with
intense eagerness along the shore, in the hope of discerning smoke or
some other evidence of man's presence. But nothing met his disappointed
gaze save the same uniform, interminable waste of white and grey, with
here and there a few dark frowning patches where the cliffs were too
precipitous to sustain the snow.

Another despairing sigh rose to the man's lips, but these refused to
give it passage. With stern resolve he arose and stumbled hurriedly
forward. The strain, however, proved too great. On reaching the level
ice on the other side of the ridge he fell, apparently for the last
time, and lay perfectly still. Ah! how many must have fallen thus, to
rise no more, since men first began to search out the secrets of that
grand mysterious region!

But Red Rooney was not doomed to be among those who have perished there.
Not far from the spot where he fell, one of the short but muscular and
hairy-robed denizens of that country was busily engaged in removing the
skin from a Polar bear which he had just succeeded in spearing, after a
combat which very nearly cost him his life. During the heat of the
battle the brave little man's foot had slipped, and the desperately
wounded monster, making a rush at the moment, overturned him into a
crevice between two ice-blocks, fortunately the impetus of the rush
caused the animal to shoot into another crevice beyond, and the man,
proving more active than the bear, sprang out of his hole in time to
meet his foe with a spear-thrust so deadly that it killed him on the
spot. Immediately he began to skin the animal, intending to go home
with the skin