out of which stuck about ten inches of the tail of something, the ice
having melted from it; while, on closer examination, we could see,
farther in through the clear, glassy ice, the hind-quarters of some
mighty beast.

"A mammoth--_Elephas Primigenius_!" cried the doctor, excitedly. "We
must have him out."

We stared at one another, while the doctor wabbled round to the other
side of the great mass, where he set up a shout; and, on going to him,
there he was, pointing to what looked like a couple of pegs about seven
feet apart, sticking out of the face of the ice.

"What's them, sir?" says one of the men.

"Tusks!" cried the doctor, delightedly. "My men, this is as good as
discovering the North Pole. If we could get that huge beast out, and
restore his animation, what a triumph. Why, he must have been," he
said, pacing the length of the block, and calculating its height, "at
least--dear me, yes--forty feet long, and twenty feet high."

"What a whopper!" growled Scudds. "Well, I found him."

"We must have him out, my men," said the doctor again, but he said it
dubiously, for it seemed a task beyond us, for fire would not burn, and
there was no means of getting heat to melt the vast mass; so at last we
returned to the camp, and made ourselves snug for the night.

In the morning, the doctor had another inspection of the mammoth, and
left it with a sigh; but in the course of the day we found traces of
dozens of the great beasts, besides the remains of other great creatures
that must have been frozen-in hundreds or thousands of years before; and
the place being so wonderfully interesting, the doctor determined to
stay there for a few days.

The first thing, under the circumstances, was to clear the snow away,
bank it up round us, and set up the tent in the clear place under the
shelter of the big mammoth block.

We all went at it heartily, and as we scraped the snow off, it was to
find the ice beneath as clear as glass.

"Ah!" said the doctor, sitting down and looking on, after feeling the
mammoth's tail, knife in hand, as if longing to cut it off, "it's a
wonderful privilege, my lads, to come up here into a part of the earth
where the foot of man has never trod before!--Eh! what is it?" he cried,
for his nephew suddenly gave a howl of dread, dropped the scraper he had
been using, jumped over the snow heap, and ran off.

"What's he found?" said Scudds, crossing to the place where the young
man had been bu