concluded to try
that first. You see at this point the island was not more than fifteen
miles across, but it seemed to bulge out both ways, and where I was
looked like a sort of neck connecting two big islands. It was an awful
country to traverse, all hill and rock; but after three weeks' tramping
I gave a shout, for in a bay in front of me was a large hut.

"I had had a hard time of it and was pretty well done up. My meat had
lasted me well enough on short rations and I had filled up on cabbages;
but I was often a long time without water, having to depend entirely on
melted snow in the hollows of the rocks. I hurried down to the hut; it
was a rough shed evidently erected for the use of whalers, and round it
were ashes of fires, empty meat-tins, and other signs of the stay of
sailors here. For the next month I lived here. The birds were returning.
There was a stream close at hand, and enough drift-wood on the shores to
enable me to keep up a constant fire. I woke up one morning in November
to see a vessel entering the bay. The crew would scarce believe me when
I told them that I passed the winter on the island alone, and that I had
lived for six months on seal-meat, penguins, and cabbages. I learned
from them that the bay was known as Hillsborough Bay, and the cove where
the whaler entered as Betsy Cove, and that it was a regular rendezvous
of whalers. I fished with them all through the summer, and went home in
the ship, and was soon down again on the books of Godstone & Son."

"Well, that was a go, and no mistake, Joe!" Jim Tucker said. "Fancy
having to live for six months on seal frizzled over a lamp and raw
cabbages! You did not tell us how you did for drink."

"Melted snow," Joe replied. "I used to fix one of the basins of dried
seal-skin a foot or so above the lamp, so that it would be hot enough to
melt the snow without a risk of its burning itself. Then I used to pour
the water from one basin to another for half an hour. Melted snow-water
is poor stuff if you don't do that. I do not know the rights of it, but
I have heard tell that it's 'cause there ain't no air in it, though for
my part I never could see no air in water, except in surf. I had heard
that that was the way they treated condensed water, and anyhow it was a
sort of amusement like, and helped to pass the time."

"Well, it is a capital story to listen to, Joe," Jack said; "but I
should not like to go through it myself. It must have been an awful
ti