ux costume, and now bore as
strong a resemblance to polar bears as man could attain to.

Meetuck was the pattern and the chief instrument in effecting this
change. At Uppernavik Captain Guy had been induced to purchase a large
number of fox-skins, deer-skins, seal-skins, and other furs as a
speculation, and had them tightly packed and stowed away in the hold,
little imagining the purpose they were ultimately destined to serve.
Meetuck had come on board in a mongrel sort of worn-out seal-skin dress,
but the instant the cold weather set in he drew from a bundle, which he
had brought with him, a dress made of the furs of the Arctic fox, some
of the skins being white and the others blue. It consisted of a loose
coat somewhat in the form of a shirt, with a large hood to it, and a
short elongation behind like the commencement of a tail. The boots were
made of white bear-skin which, at the end of the foot, were made to
terminate with the claws of the animal, and they were so long that they
came up the thigh under the coat, or "jumper" as the men called it, and
thus served instead of trousers. He also wore fur mittens, with a bag
for the fingers, and a separate little bag for the thumb. The hair on
these garments was long and soft, and worn outside, so that when a man
enveloped himself in them, and put up the hood, which well-nigh
concealed the face, he became very much like a bear, or some such
creature, standing on its hind-legs.

Meetuck was a short, fat, burly little fellow by nature, but when he put
on his winter dress he became such a round, soft, squat, hairy, and
comical-looking creature that no one could look at him without laughing;
and the shout with which he was received on deck the first time he made
his appearance in his new costume was loud and prolonged. But Meetuck
was as good-humoured an Esquimaux as ever speared a walrus or lanced a
polar bear. He joined in the laugh, and cut a caper or two to show that
he entered into the spirit of the joke.

When the ship was set fast, and the thermometer fell pretty low, the men
found that their ordinary dreadnoughts and pea-jackets, etcetera, were
not a sufficient protection against the cold, and it occurred to the
captain that his furs might now be turned to good account. Sailors are
proverbially good needle-men of a rough kind. Meetuck showed them how
to set about their work; each man made his own garments, and in less
than a week they were completed. It is