poured, and being duly tempered to a safe degree of heat, Waring removed
his boots and stockings, and, seated on a couple of decoys, bathed his
feet and ankles for about fifteen minutes.

In the mean time, the portion of the sleeping-room farthest from the
door, was carefully fitted with dry twigs and one of the bird-skin
coverlets, and the lad's stockings were thoroughly dried at the stove
until they felt warm and comfortable. Taking one of the discarded
cotton-flannel shooting-gowns, duly warmed at the fire, La Salle and
Regnar carefully and energetically dried and rubbed Waring's
extremities, now warmed and suffused with blood drawn from the overtaxed
blood-vessels of the head and body, after which his warmed and dried
foot-gear were replaced, and he was tucked away in his berth.

"Does your chest pain you at all, George?" asked his attendant, as he
drew the thick feather covering over the sick boy.

"No; but my throat does a little. It feels much better, though, than it
did."

La Salle thought a moment, then drew from a little cavity in the wall
near the door a small junk of bird-fat, which he melted in the tin cup.
"I will rub your throat with goose-grease. It is a great favorite of the
old women, and will keep the air from your tender skin, if it doesn't
relieve the soreness of the inflamed membranes." So saying, he rubbed in
the warm, soft fat with his hands, covering the skin above the bronchial
tubes and the soft parts of the throat with the penetrating unguent,
then fastening a turn of his list gun-cover around his throat, he
replaced the covering, and taking his cap, went out into the night air,
and seeking the lookout, glanced eagerly out over the waste of ice.

The night was clear and cold, with only an occasional puff of wind from
the westward; but the temperature was falling fast, and the snow-crust
broke under the foot with a sound ominous of biting cold. All around was
ice, and even if the light-houses along that coast were lighted in
winter, it is doubtful if the party were near enough to land to see any
except that of Point Escumenac, which at noon bore north-west and about
fifteen miles away. Since that time, the drift of the pack, at nightfall
evidently making eastward, or rather north-east, had probably increased
the distance to nearly forty miles.

La Salle surveyed the wild scene around him--the pillars hewn from vast
masses of eternal ice by the shock of fearful collision, the slow action