ting a hole; and when
the ice grows weak, will be time enough for you to worry. Take another
ruffle to your night-cap, Tom, and you youngsters had better get to bed,
and prepare to take to the ice at six o'clock, after a cup of hot coffee
and a lunch of sandwiches. Here's luck all round, gentlemen."

The toasts were drank by the three elderly men, and re-echoed by the
younger ones, who chose not to avail themselves of the proffered
stimulant, and then all sought repose in their allotted quarters.
Fifteen minutes later the house was in utter darkness and silence,
through which the varied breathings of sixteen adults and children would
have given ample opportunities for comparison to any waking auditor, had
such there been; but no one kept awake, and to all intents and purposes
"silence reigned supreme."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.

BUILDING THE ICE-HOUSES.--MATTHEW COLLINS'S GHOST.

At daybreak the gunners arose, and without disturbing the members of the
family, took some strong, hot coffee, prepared by the indefatigable
Creamer, and ate a breakfast, or rather lunch, of cold meats and bread
and butter, after which all proceeded to don their shooting costume,
which, being unlike that worn in any other sport, is worthy of
description here.

In ice-shooting, every color but pure white is totally inadmissible; for
the faintest shade of any other color shows black and prominent against
the spotless background of glittering ice-field and snow-covered cliffs.
Risk and his partner wore over their ordinary clothing long frocks of
white flannel, with white "havelocks" over their seal-skin caps, and
their gray, homespun pants were covered to the knee by seal-skin
Esquimaux boots--the best of all water-proof walking-gear for cold
weather. Risk carried the single ducking-piece before mentioned, but
Davies had a Blissett breech-loading double-barrel. They had chosen
their location to the north of the island, near a channel usually
opening early in the season, but now covered with ice that would have
borne the weight of an elephant. With much banter as to who should count
first blood, the party separated at the door; the younger Davies and
Creamer, with Kennedy and La Salle, plunging into the drifted fields to
the eastward, and in Indian file, trampling a track to be daily used
henceforward, until the snows should disappear forever. The two former
relied on over-frocks of strong cotton, and a kind of white night-caps,