u don't want a remind; but if
you do, my wife will send you one."

I replied, "that I wanted no remind for a good dinner."

"No, I dare say not, my boy; but recollect that you come an hour or two
before the dinner-hour, to help me; there's so much fuss with one thing
or another, that I'm left in the lurch; and as for trusting the keys of
the spirit-room to that long-togged rascal of a butler, I'll see him
harpoon'd first; so do you come and help me, Jacob."

This having been promised, he asked Mr Drummond to lend me for an hour
or so, as he wished to take a row up the river. This was also consented
to; we embarked and pulled away for Kew Bridge. Mr Turnbull was as
good a hand at a yarn as old Tom, and many were the adventures he
narrated to me of what had taken place during the vicissitudes of his
life, more especially when he was employed in the Greenland fishery. He
related an accident that morning, which particularly bore upon the
marvellous, although I do not believe that he was at all guilty of
indulging in a traveller's licence.

"Jacob," said he, "I recollect once when I was very near eaten alive by
foxes, and that in a very singular manner. I was then mate of a
Greenland ship. We had been on the fishing ground for three months, and
had twelve fish on board. Finding we were doing well, we fixed our
ice-anchors upon a very large iceberg, drifting up and down with it, and
taking fish as we fell in with them. One morning we had just cast loose
the carcass of a fish which we had cut up, when the man in the crow's
nest, on the look-out for another `fall,' cried out that a large polar
bear and her cub were swimming over to the iceberg, against the side of
which, and about half-a-mile from us, the carcass of a whale was
beating. As we had nothing to do, seven of us immediately started in
chase we had intended to have gone after the foxes, which had gathered
there also in hundreds, to prey upon the dead whale. It was then quite
calm: we soon came up with the bear, who at first was for making off;
but as the cub could not get on over the rough ice as well as the old
one, she at last turned round to bay. We shot the cub to make sure of
her, and it did make sure of the dam not leaving us till either she or
we perished in the conflict. I never shall forget her moaning over the
cub, as it lay bleeding on the ice, while we fired bullet after bullet
into her. At last she turned round, gave a roar and a gnashing s