on and arouse the curiosity of his
friends.

"D'you see anything curious, Captain?" asked Emma, who chanced to stand
beside him.

"Coorious--eh?" repeated the Captain slowly, without altering his gaze
or adding to his reply.

"Monsieur le Capitaine is lost in consternation," said Nita, with a
smile.

"I think, Miss Horetzki," said Lewis, "that you probably mean
_admiration_."

"How you knows w'at I mean?" demanded Nita, quickly.

"Ha! a very proper and pertinent question," observed Slingsby, in an
audible though under tone.

"I nevair do put _pertinent_ questions, sir," said Nita, turning her
black eyes sharply, though with something of a twinkle in them, on the
mad artist.

Poor Slingsby began to explain, but Nita cut him short by turning to
Lewis and again demanding, "How you knows w'at I mean?"

"The uniform propriety of your thoughts, Mademoiselle," replied Lewis,
with a continental bow, and an air of pretended respect, "induces me to
suppose that your words misinterpret them."

Nita's knowledge of English was such that this remark gave her only a
hazy idea of the youth's meaning; she accepted it, however, as an
apologetic explanation, and ordered him to awaken the Captain and find
out from him what it was that so riveted his attention.

"You hear my orders," said Lewis, laying his hand with a slap on the
Captain's shoulder. "What are you staring at?"

"Move!" murmured the Captain, returning as it were to consciousness with
a long deep sigh, "it don't move an inch."

"_What_ does not move?" said Lawrence, who had been assisting to adjust
the theodolite, and came forward at the moment.

"The ice, to be sure," answered the Captain. "I say, Professor, do 'ee
mean to tell me that the whole of that there Mairdy-glass is movin'?"

"I do," answered the Professor, pausing for a minute in his
arrangements, and looking over his spectacles at the Captain with an
amused expression.

"Then," returned the Captain, with emphasis, "I think you'll find that
you're mistaken."

"Ha! Captain Weeper--"

"Wopper," said the Captain.

"Wopper," repeated the Professor, "you are not the first who has
expressed disbelief in what he cannot see, and you will assuredly not be
the last; but if you will wait I will convince you."

"Very good," replied the Captain, "I'm open to conviction."

"Which means," said Lewis, "that you have nailed your colours to the
mast, and mean to die rather than give in."

"No doubt,"