hand a chunk of blubber from the
narwhal, out of which we squeezed some drops of oil, and soaked in them
some fibres of the moss.

"Another piece of tinder and another piece of moss were placed as they
had been before; another spark was struck, another blaze was blown, and
when this came, the Dean was holding in it his fibres of oil-soaked
moss, and we soon had a lighted torch. 'Hurrah, hurrah!' we might well
shout now, for the thing was done. 'Praised be Heaven! we have got a
fire at last!'

"Then we added fresh moss to the flaming torch, which was scarcely
larger than a match, and then a few more drops of oil were added, and so
on, oil and moss, and moss and oil, little by little, gently, gently all
the time, until we had secured at length a good and solid flame.

"Then we laid the burning moss upon a flat stone, and then, as before,
moss and oil, and oil and moss, were added, each time in larger and
larger quantities,--no longer gently, gently, but with a careless hand,
and in less, perhaps, than half an hour we had a great, smoking,
fluttering blaze; and then we threw on some of the driest leaves and
twigs of the Andromeda, and some dead willow-stems and dry grass, and
then we had a roaring, sputtering, red-hot fire.

"And how we danced, and skipped, and shouted round the fire, like happy
children round some new-found toy!

"The next thing was, of course, to turn the fire to some account. On two
sides of the blaze we placed large square stones, and over these we put
another that was thin and flat; and then we skinned the duck which the
Dean had caught, and cut the rich flesh into little pieces and placed
them on the flat stone above the blaze; and then, to keep the smoke and
ashes from the cooking food, we put another light, thin stone upon the
flesh, and then we watched and waited for the coming meal. To help the
fire along, and make it burn more quickly, we threw into it some little
chunks of blubber, and then, in a little while, the duck was cooked.

"O what a royal meal we had!--we half-famished, shipwrecked boys,--the
first hot food we had tasted during all these long, weary, dreary days;
and, not satisfied with the duck, we next broiled some eggs upon the
heated stone, and ate and ate away until we were as full as we could
hold.

"All this had consumed many hours, and all the time we had been so much
excited that we found ourselves quite exhausted when the meal was over,
and we could do no more work th