d fishing of it the first year,
but was beset in the ice and compelled to spend two winters in these
regions. The third year we were liberated, and had almost got fairly on
our homeward voyage, when a storm blew us to the north, and carried us
up here. Then our good brig was nipped and went to the bottom, and all
the crew were lost except myself and one man. We succeeded in leaping
from one piece of loose ice to another until we reached the solid floe
and gained the land, where we were kindly received by the Esquimaux.
But poor Wilson did not survive long. His constitution had never been
robust, and he died of consumption a week after we landed. The
Esquimaux buried him after their own fashion, and, as I afterwards
found, had buried a plate and a spoon along with him. These, with
several other articles, had been washed ashore from the wreck. Since
then I have been living the life of an Esquimaux, awaiting an
opportunity of escape, either by a ship making its appearance or a tribe
of natives travelling south. I soon picked up their language, and was
living in comparative comfort when, during a sharp fight I chanced to
have with a Polar bear, I fell and broke my leg. I have lain here for
many months and have suffered much, Fred; but, thank God, I am now
almost well, and can walk a little, though not yet without pain."

"Dear Father," said Fred, "_how_ terribly you must have felt the want of
kind hands to nurse you during those dreary months, and how lonely you
must have been!"

It were impossible here to enter minutely into the details of all that
Captain Ellice related to Fred during the next few days, while they
remained together in the Esquimaux village. To tell of the dangers, the
adventures, and the hairbreadth escapes that the crew of the _Pole Star_
went through before the vessel finally went down would require a whole
volume. We must pass it all over, and also the account of the few days
that followed, during which sundry walrus were captured, and return to
the _Dolphin_, to which Captain Ellice had been conveyed on the sledge,
carefully wrapped up in deer-skins and tended by Fred.

A party of the Esquimaux accompanied them, and as a number of the
natives from the other village had returned with Saunders and his men to
the ship, the scene she presented, when all parties were united, was
exceedingly curious and animated.

The Esquimaux soon built quite a little town of snow-huts all round the
_Dolphi