egs were like sealskin boas; and their
hands and feet were like sealskin tobacco pouches. And their faces were
like seals' faces, inasmuch as they, too, were covered with sealskin.

"Thank you so much for telling us," said George. "Good evening. (Keep on
howling, Jane!)"

But the dwarfs came a step nearer, muttering and whispering. Then the
muttering stopped--and there was a silence so deep that Jane was afraid
to howl in it. But it was a brown silence, and she had liked the white
silence better.

Then the chief dwarf came quite close and said: "What's that on your
head?"

And George felt it was all up--for he knew it was his father's sealskin
cap.

The dwarf did not wait for an answer. "It's made of one of us," he
screamed, "or else one of the seals, our poor relations. Boy, now your
fate is sealed!"

Looking at the wicked seal-faces all around them, George and Jane felt
that their fate was sealed indeed.

The dwarfs seized the children in their furry arms. George kicked, but
it is no use kicking sealskin, and Jane howled, but the dwarfs were
getting used to that. They climbed up the dragon's side and dumped the
children down on his icy spine, with their backs against the North Pole.
You have no idea how cold it was--the kind of cold that makes you feel
small and prickly inside your clothes, and makes you wish you had twenty
times as many clothes to feel small and prickly inside of.

The sealskin dwarfs tied George and Jane to the North Pole, and, as they
had no ropes, they bound them with snow-wreaths, which are very strong
when they are made in the proper way, and they heaped up the fires very
close and said: "Now the dragon will get warm, and when he gets warm he
will wake, and when he wakes he will be hungry, and when he is hungry he
will begin to eat, and the first thing he will eat will be you."

The little, sharp, many-colored flames sprang up like the stalks of
dream lilies, but no heat came to the children, and they grew colder and
colder.

"We shan't be very nice when the dragon does eat us, that's one
comfort," said George. "We shall be turned into ice long before that."

Suddenly there was a flapping of wings, and the white grouse perched on
the dragon's head and said: "Can I be of any assistance?"

[Illustration: "The dwarfs seized the children." _See page 72._]

Now, by this time the children were so cold, so cold, so very, very
cold, that they had forgotten everything but that, and they c