ikely to, though
neither of us had the remotest idea in the world as to where we were,
any more than that we were on an island somewhere in the northern sea.

"But the fire which we wanted so much to warm ourselves and cook our
food,--what should we do for that? Here was the great question; and
fire, fire, fire, was the one leading idea running through both our
heads;--we thought of fire when we were gathering eggs, we talked of
fire when, later in the day, we sat upon the rocks, resting ourselves,
and we dreamed of fire when we fell asleep again,--not this time,
however, under the eider-down where we had slept before, but on the
green grass of the hillside, in the warm sunshine, under my overcoat,
for we had turned night into day, and were determined to sleep when the
sun was shining on us at the south, and do what work we had to do when
we were in the shade.

"Every method that either of us had ever heard of for making a fire was
remembered and talked over; but there was nothing that appeared to suit
our case. I found a hard flint, and by striking it on the back of my
knife-blade I saw that there was no difficulty in getting any number of
sparks, but we had nothing that would catch the sparks when struck; so
that we did not seem to be any better off than we were before; and, as I
have stated already, we fell asleep again, each in his turn,--'watch and
watch,' as the Dean playfully called it, and as they have it on
shipboard,--without having arrived at any other result than that of
being much discouraged.

"When we had been again refreshed with sleep, we determined to make a
still further exploration of the island; so, after once more eating our
fill of raw eggs, we set out. The Dean, being still weak and his head
still paining him very much from the hurt, remained at the lookout. He
could, however, walk up and down for a few hundred yards without losing
sight of the only part of the sea that was free enough of ice to allow a
ship to approach the island. After a while he came to where I had
discovered the dead seal and narwhal lying on the beach, when upon my
first journey round the island. I had told him about them, as indeed I
had of everything I had seen, and he was curious to try if he could not
catch a fox; but his fortune in that particular was not better than
mine.

"For myself, I had a very profitable journey, as I found a place among
the rocks which might, with some labor in fixing it up, give us shelter.