aed muttered. "It has demoralized us completely."

"Nothing to do but re-organize," laughed Kit. "Get the painter-line.
Let's drag him off."

That was a heavy job, and took us nigh half an hour. Then there were
the blood-soaked moss and tea-plant shrubs to get up and throw away,
the wall to rebuild, the boat to set up, and the skin to repitch on
the oars. All this time it continued to rain hard, with mingled flakes
of snow. A tough time, we called it. And, after the tent was pitched
again, we had no fire; and could only crouch, wet and shivering, on
the bare ledge. I never felt more uncomfortable: my bones all ached;
my head ached: I was sick. Wade was worse off than myself even.
Throwing himself flat on the rock, he buried his face in his arms, and
lay so for more than an hour. Raed and Kit sat blackguarding each
other to keep up their spirits. Donovan was trying to dry some
pine-splinters to build a fire with by sitting on them. Weymouth was
cutting out blubber from the skinned carcass for the fire, so soon as
the splinters could be dried. Two matches were burned trying to kindle
the pine-shavings. We thought our fire dearly purchased at such a
cost.

"Only four more," remarked Donovan gravely.

"We must not let it go out again," Raed said. "We must sit up, some of
us, in future, to tend it."

Any thing like the dreary gloom of that morning I hope never to
experience again. Sea, sky, and crags seemed all of one color,--lead.
Seven or eight miles to southward, the mountains of the mainland
(Labrador) showed their black bases under the fog-clouds. The great
island to the south-east seemed to have been dipped in ink, so
funereal was its hue.

The rain had frustrated our attempt at salt manufacture. We had to
take our breakfast of fried goose in all the _freshness_ of nature.

Our clothes gradually dried on us.

During the forenoon Kit sallied out on a hunting excursion, and, about
noon, returned with a fine, plump, canvas-backed duck, which we ate
for our dinner.

Toward four o'clock it stopped raining. Donovan and Weymouth improved
the chance to skin the sea-horse we had killed during the night, it
was rather larger than the first one, and had prodigious stiff, wiry
whiskers about its upper lip, some of which we kept for a curiosity.
They were over a foot in length, and as large as a coarse
darning-needle. The tusks, too, were broken out, and laid aside.

During the night it faired; and the morning was sunn