p-coat of close
hair, so that he can take a siesta on an iceberg without the least
inconvenience. Talking of siestas, by the way, the walrus is sometimes
"caught napping". Occasionally, when the weather is intensely cold, the
hole through which he crawls upon the ice gets frozen over so solidly
that, on waking, he finds it beyond even his enormous power to break it.
In this extremity there is no alternative but to go to sleep again,
and--die! which he does as comfortably as he can. The polar bears,
however, are quick to smell him out, and assembling round his carcass
for a feast, they dispose of him, body and bones, without ceremony.

As it was impossible to drag this unwieldy animal to the ship that
night, for the days had now shortened very considerably, the hunters
hauled it towards the land, and, having reached the secure ice, prepared
to encamp for the night under the lee of a small iceberg.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

A DANGEROUS SLEEP INTERRUPTED--A NIGHT IN A SNOW-HUT, AND AN UNPLEASANT
VISITOR--SNOWED UP.

"Now then," cried Fred, as they drew up on a level portion of the
ice-floe, where the snow on its surface was so hard that the runners of
the sledge scarce made an impression on it, "let us to work, lads, and
get the tarpaulins spread; we shall have to sleep to-night under
star-spangled bed-curtains."

"Troth," said O'Riley, gazing round towards the land, where the distant
cliffs loomed black and heavy in the fading light, and out upon the
floes and hummocks, where the frost smoke from pools of open water on
the horizon circled round the pinnacles of the icebergs,--"troth, it's a
cowld place intirely to go to wan's bed in, but that fat-faced Exqueemaw
seems to be settin' about it quite coolly; so here goes!"

"It would be difficult to set about it otherwise than coolly with the
thermometer thirty-five below zero," remarked Fred, beating his hands
together, and stamping his feet, while the breath issued from his mouth
like dense clouds of steam, and fringed the edges of his hood and the
breast of his jumper with hoar-frost.

"It's quite purty, it is," remarked O'Riley, in reference to this wreath
of hoar-frost, which covered the upper parts of each of them; "it's jist
like the ermine that kings and queens wear, so I'm towld, and it's
chaper a long way."

"I don't know that," said Joseph West. "It has cost us a rough voyage
and a winter in the Arctic regions, if it doesn't cost us more yet, to
put that