mediately touched his hand, as the animal
gambolled round him with delight; for the extreme severity of the
weather began to tell on the poor dogs, and made them draw more lovingly
to their human companions.

"Ho! hallo!" shouted the captain down the hatchway. "A fox-chase! a
fox-chase! Tumble up, all hands!"

The men were sitting at the time in a very dull and silent mood. They
were much cast down, for as it had been cloudy weather for some weeks
past, thick darkness had covered them night and day, so that they could
not tell the one from the other, except by the help of their watches,
which were kept carefully going. Their journals, also, were written up
daily, otherwise they must certainly have got confused in their time
altogether!

In consequence of this darkness the men were confined almost entirely to
the cabin for a time. Those who had scurvy, got worse; those who were
well, became gloomy. Even Pepper, who was a tremendous joker, held his
tongue, and Joe Davis, who was a great singer, became silent. Jim
Crofts was in his bunk "down" with the scurvy, and stout Sam Baker, who
was a capital teller of stories, could not pluck up spirit enough to
open his mouth. "In fact," as Mr Dicey said, "they all had a most
'orrible fit o' the blues!" The captain and officers were in better
health and spirits than the men, though they all fared alike at the same
table, and did the same kind of work, whatever that might chance to be.
The officers, however, were constantly exerting themselves to cheer the
men, and I have no doubt that this very effort of theirs was the means
of doing good to themselves. "He that watereth others shall be
watered," says the Word of God. I take this to mean--he that does good
to others shall get good to himself. So it certainly was with the
officers of the _Hope_.

When the captain's shout reached the cabin Jim Crofts had just said:
"I'll tell 'ee what it is, messmates, if this here state of things goes
on much longer, I'll go out on the floes, walk up to the first polar
bear I meet, and ask him to take his supper off me!"

There was no laugh at this, but Pepper remarked, in a quiet way, that
"he needn't put himself to so much trouble, for he was such a
pale-faced, disagreeable looking object that no bear would eat him
unless it was starving."

"Well, then, I'll offer myself to a starvin' bear--to one that's a'most
dead with hunger," retorted Jim gloomily.

"What's that the cap'en