Nazinred; "but it does not become men to
_run_ from danger."

So saying he began to move as if in a funeral procession, closely
followed by Cheenbuk, Oolalik, and old Mangivik.

As they reached the head of the staircase something like an explosion
occurred, for the deck was partially burst up by the heat. The three
Eskimos, who did not think their dignity affected by haste, leaped down
the stair in two bounds, but Nazinred did not alter his walk in the
least. Step by step he descended deliberately, and walked in stolid
solemnity to the spot on which the community had assembled as a place of
safety.

They did not speak much after that, for the sight was too thrilling and
too novel to admit of conversation. Shouts and exclamations alone broke
forth at intervals.

The danger to which they had been exposed while on the quarter-deck
became more apparent when a clear bright flame at length shot upwards,
and, catching some of the ropes, ran along and aloft in all directions.

Hitherto the fire had been much smothered by its own smoke and the want
of air below, but now that it had fairly burst its bonds and got
headway, it showed itself in its true character as a fierce and
insatiable devourer of all that came in its way.

Catching hold of the awning over the deck, it swept fore and aft like a
billow, creating such heat that the spectators were forced to retreat to
a still safer distance. From the awning it licked round the masts,
climbed them, caught the ropes and flew up them, sweeping out upon the
yards to their extreme ends, so that, in a few minutes, the ship was
ablaze from hold to truck, and stem to stern.

Then the event which Nazinred had referred to occurred. The flames
reached the powder magazine. It exploded, and the terrified natives
yelled their feelings, while the entire structure went up into the
heavens with a roar to which the loudest thunder could not compare, and
a sheet of intense light that almost blinded them.

The explosion blew out every fork of flame, great and small, and left an
appalling blackness by contrast, while myriads of red-hot fragments fell
in a shower on the ice, and rebounded from it, like evil spirits dancing
around the tremendous wreck that they had caused.

Fortunately the Eskimos were beyond the range of the fiery shower. When
they ventured, with awe-stricken looks, to approach the scene of the
catastrophe, only a yawning cavern in the floe remained to tell of the
st