e Dean said to me, 'Hardy, can't we catch some of these
little birds,--auks you call them?' 'How?' said I. 'I don't know,' said
he; so we were just as well off as we had been before. But this set us
to thinking again; and the birds being very tame, and flying low, it
occurred to us that we might make a net, and fasten it to the end of our
narwhal horn, which we had thus far only used while making our hut.
Luckily for us, the Dean--who, I need hardly say, was a very clever boy
in every sense--had learned from one of the sailors the art of
net-making; and out of some of the narwhal sinew he contrived, in two
days, to construct quite a good-sized net. And now the difficulty was to
stretch it; but by this time our inventive faculties had been pretty
well sharpened, and we were not long in finding that we could make a
perfect hoop by lashing together three seal ribs which we picked up on
the beach; and, having fastened this hoop securely to the narwhal horn,
we sallied forth to the north side of the island, where the auks were
most abundant.

[Illustration: Changing the Diet again.]

"Hiding ourselves away among the rocks, we waited until a flock of the
birds flew over us. They flew very low,--not more than five feet above
our heads. When they were least expecting it, I threw up the net, and
three of them flew bang into it. They were so much stunned by the blow,
that only one of them could flutter out before I had drawn in the net;
and the Dean was quick enough to seize the remaining two before they
could escape. This, being the first experiment, gave us great
encouragement, as it was more successful than we had ventured to hope.
We went on with the work, without pausing, for several hours, looking
upon it as great sport, as indeed it was; and since it was the first
thing we had done on the island that seemed like sport, the day was
always remembered by us with delight.

"So now you see we had begun to mingle a little pleasure with our life;
and this was a very important matter, for you know the old saying, 'All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.'"

CHAPTER XIII.

The Ancient Mariner takes the Little People on a Little
Voyage; and the Little People become convinced that an
Arctic Winter, an Aurora Borealis, and an Ancient
Mariner, are very Wonderful Things.

A lively breeze was blowing over the little village of Rockdale, and in
a lively way the tall trees were bending down their heads, and swinging
to a