omen and goods, and last of all came
Captain Vane's two English-made sledges, heavily-laden with the goods
and provisions of the explorers. These latter sledges, although made in
England, had been constructed on the principle of the native sledge,
namely, with the parts fastened by means of walrus-sinew lashings
instead of nails, which last would have snapped like glass in the winter
frosts of the Polar regions, besides being incapable of standing the
twistings and shocks of ice-travel.

All the dogs being fresh, and the floor of the lanes not too rough, the
strangely-assorted party trotted merrily along, causing the echoes among
the great ice-blocks, spires, and obelisks, to ring to the music of
their chatting, and the cracks of their powerful whips. Suddenly, a
shout at the front, and an abrupt pull up, brought the whole column to a
halt. The Captain's dogs had broken into a gallop. On turning suddenly
round a spur of a glacier about as big as Saint Paul's Cathedral, they
went swish into a shallow pond which had been formed on the ice. It was
not deep, but there was sufficient water in it to send a deluge of spray
over the travellers.

A burst of laughter greeted the incident as they sprang off the sledge,
and waded to the dry ice a few yards ahead.

"No damage done," exclaimed the Captain, as he assisted the dogs to haul
the sledge out of the water.

"No damage!" repeated Benjy, with a rueful look, "why, I'm soaked from
top to toe!"

"Yes, you've got the worst of it," said Leo, with a laugh; "that comes
of being forward, Benjy. You would insist on sitting in front."

"Well, it is some comfort," retorted Benjy, squeezing the water from his
garments, "that _Alf_ is as wet as myself, for that gives us an
opportunity of sympathising with each other. Eh, _Alf_? Does Buzzby
offer no consolatory remarks for such an occasion as this?"

"O yes," replied Alf; "in his beautiful poem on Melancholy, sixth canto,
Buzzby says:--

"`When trouble, like a curtain spread,
Obscures the clouded brain,
And worries on the weary head
Descend like soaking rain--
Lift up th'umbrella of the heart,
Stride manfully along;
Defy depression's dreary dart,
And shout in gleeful song.'"

"Come, Alf, clap on to this tow-rope, an' stop your nonsense," said
Captain Vane, who was not in a poetical frame of mind just then.

"Dat is mos' boosiful potry!" exclaimed Butterface, with an immense
display of eyes and teeth,