sea.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

START AFRESH--SUPERSTITIOUS NOTIONS--THE WHIRLPOOL--THE INTERIOR--
FISHING IN THE OLD WAY ON NEW GROUND, AND WHAT CAME OF IT--A COLD BATH--
THE RESCUE--SAVED--DEEPER AND DEEPER INTO THE WILDERNESS.

As if to make amends for its late outrageous conduct, the weather, after
the night of the great storm, continued unbrokenly serene for many days,
enabling our travellers to make rapid progress towards their
destination: It would be both tiresome and unnecessary to follow them
step by step throughout their journey, as the part of it which we have
already described was, in many respects, typical of the whole voyage
along the east coast of Hudson's Bay. Sometimes, indeed, a few
incidents of an unusual character did occur. Once they were very nearly
being crushed between masses of ice; twice the larger canoe struck on a
hummock, and had to be landed and repaired; and frequently mishaps of a
slighter nature befell them. Their beds, too, varied occasionally. At
one time they laid them down to rest on the sand of the sea-shore; at
another, on the soft turf and springy moss of the woods. Sometimes they
were compelled to content themselves with a couch of pebbles, few of
which were smaller than a man's fist; and, not unfrequently, they had to
make the best they could of a flat rock, whose unyielding surface seemed
to put the idea of anything like rest to flight, causing the thin men of
the party to growl and the fat ones to chuckle. Bryan was one of the
well-favoured, being round and fleshy; while his poor little friend La
Roche possessed a framework of bones that were so sparingly covered with
softer substance, as to render it a matter of wonder how he and the
stones could compromise the matter at all, and called forth from his
friend frequent impertinent allusions to "thridpapers, bags o' bones,
idges o' knives, half fathoms o' pump water," and such like curious
substances. But whatever the bed, it invariably turned out that the
whole party slept soundly from the time they lay down till the time of
rising, which was usually at the break of day.

Owing to the little Indian canoe having been wrecked on the sand-bank,
Frank and his men had to embark in the smaller of the large canoes; a
change which was in some respects a disadvantage to the party, as Frank
could not now so readily dash away in pursuit of game. However, this
did not much matter, as, in a few days afterwards, they arrived at the