fleet!' meaning the whale-ships; but he
might just as well have saved himself all that trouble, for 'the fleet'
proved to be only a great group of icebergs; but when I told him so he
would hardly believe it, until he became at last convinced that they
were not moving.

"You must know that these icebergs assume all sorts of shapes, and it
was very natural, since we were always on the lookout for ships, that
our imaginations should be excited and disturbed, and ready to see at
any time what we most wanted to see; nor were we at all peculiar in
this, as many people might tell you who were never cast away in the
cold.

"So it is not surprising that we should cry out very frequently 'A sail,
a sail!' when there was not a sail perhaps within many hundred miles of
us.

"Well, as I was going to say, the Dean and I sat upon the hillside
overlooking the sea, thinking the icebergs were ships, or hoping so at
least, until hope died away, and then it was that we fell to talking.

"'Do you think, Hardy,' asked the Dean, 'that any other ship than ours
ever did come this way or ever will?'

"'I'm afraid not,' said I; and I must have looked very despondent about
it, as in truth I was,--much more so than I would have liked to own.

"I had not considered what the Dean was about, for he was despondent
enough himself, and no doubt wished very hard that I might say something
to cheer him up a bit; but, instead of doing that, I only made him
worse, whereupon he seemed to grow angry, and in a rather snappish way
he inquired of me if I knew what I was.

"'No,' said I, quite taken aback. 'What do you mean?'

"'Mean!' exclaimed the Dean. 'Why, I mean to say,'--and he spoke in a
positive way that was not usual with him,--'I mean to say,' said he,
'that you are a regular Job's comforter, and no mistake.'

"I had not the least idea at that period of my life as to what kind of a
thing a Job's comforter was. I had a vague notion that it was something
to go round the neck, and I protested that I was nothing of the sort.

"'Yes, you are, and you know you are,' went on the Dean,--'a regular
Job's comforter,--croaking all the time, and never seeing any way out of
our troubles at all.'

"'I should like to know,' said I,--and I thought I had him there,--'how
I can see any way out of our troubles when there isn't any!'

"'Well, you can think there is, if there isn't,--can't you?' and the
Dean was ten times more snappish than he was before; and