about?'

"`Sure an' it's my poor feet, save yer honour, that are hurting of me,
they feels the frost terrible!'

"The first mate naturally thought Master Paddy was trying to play off
one of his capers on him--for it wouldn't be the first time he tried the
game on; so this answer got up his temper, making him shout back an
answer to the Irishman that would tell him he wasn't going to catch him
napping.

"`Nonsense, man,' he calls out--`frost? Why, you are dreaming! The
thermometer is up to over sixty degrees, and it's warm enough almost for
the tropics.'

"The hands, of course, thought too that Pat was only joking in his usual
way and endeavouring to make fun of Mr Stanchion; and they waited to
hear what would come next from the Irishman, knowing that he was not
easily shut up when once he had made up his mind for anything. However,
they soon could tell from the tone of voice in which Pat spoke again
that he wasn't joking this time, or else he was acting very well in
carrying out his joke on the mate; for as we were laughing about his
`poor feet,' which was a slang term in those days, Paddy calls out again
in reply to the mate:--

"`Faix,' says he, `it's ne'er a lie I'm telling, yer honour. Be jabers!
my feet feel as if they were in the ice now, and frost-bitten all over!'

"Another officer in Mr Stanchion's place would, as likely as not, have
consigned poor Pat to a warmer locality in order to warm his limbs
there; but Mr Stanchion, as I've said, was a man of a different stamp,
and a reflective one, too; and the words of the Irishman made him think
of something he had read once of a frost-bitten limb having been
discovered by a well-known meteorologist to be an unfailing weather-
token of the approach of cold. Instead, therefore, of angrily telling
Pat to hold his tongue and look-out as he ought, Mr Stanchion went
forward and joined him; we on deck, of course, being on the look-out at
once.

"Presently, we could see the chief officer and the Irishman on the
forecastle, peering out together over the ship's bows as if looking for
something.

"`I'm certain, sir,' I heard Pat say earnestly, `we're near ice whenever
my feet feels the cold, yer honour; and there, be jabers, there's the
ice-blink, as they calls it in the Arctic seas, and we're amongst the
icebergs, as sure as you live!'

"At the same moment, the atmosphere lightened up with a whitish blue
light--somewhat like pale moonshine--and Mr Stanchion s