a seal. The reason why I had
not seen it was because the snow had drifted over it in a hard crust,
and through this crust the seal kept open with his nose a small orifice
for breathing, that was not larger round than a silver dollar.

"This discovery made us very glad and very curious,--for, having
concluded what it was, we concluded also that there must be more like
it, and we went in search of them immediately. Our search was soon
rewarded, for these seal-holes were very numerous.

"How to catch a seal was the question which now most occupied our
thoughts. The difficulty was very great, for we had no weapons of any
sort for such a purpose. Once more, however, we fell back upon our
narwhal horn. To this horn we had already become much attached, and, as
if to express our gratitude, we had bestowed upon it several names,--as,
for instance, 'Life-preserver,' 'Crumply Crowbar,' 'The Castaway's
Friend,' and the like of that; but the title which finally stuck to it
was 'Old Crumply,'--not that it was exactly a crumply horn, like the one
that grew on the head of the cow that tossed the dog, that worried the
cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that
Jack built,--for it was not crumply at all in that sense, but, on the
contrary, was as straight as an arrow, and was no further crumply than
crumply means wrinkled and twisted; and, indeed, the old horn looked as
if it might have been once red-hot, and had been twisted several times
around before it had cooled off.

"Besides this 'Old Crumply,' we made another weapon, in quite an
ingenious way, as we thought, though at a great expense of time and
labor. This was called by several names, like the other; but generally I
called it the 'Dean's Delight,' for it was made after the Dean's idea,
and he used to flourish it about at a great rate, and was very proud of
it. It was simply a kind of spear made by lashing together (after
carefully cutting with our knife, and fitting and overlapping) a great
many pieces of bones. The lashing was the same string or thong we had
before used for the duck-traps. It was very strong, though not half so
heavy as 'Old Crumply.'

"But though we had 'Old Crumply,' and the 'Dean's Delight,' we were
apparently just as far off as ever from catching a seal. The 'Delight'
was tipped with hard ivory (a piece of walrus tusk carved into proper
shape with the jack-knife), and 'Crumply' was of the very best kind of
ivory throughout,