r, though it seemed far enough to Tommy, when he proposed
turning back and getting something to eat. As they turned they lost
the North Star, and when they looked for it again they could not tell
which it was. Johnny thought it was one, Tommy was sure it was
another. So they tried first one and then the other, and finally gave
themselves up as lost. They went supperless to bed that night or
rather that time, and Tommy never wished himself in bed at home so
much, or said his prayers harder, or prayed for the poor more
earnestly. They were soon up again and were working along through the
ice-peaks, growing hungrier and hungrier, when, going over a rise of
ice, they saw not far off a little black dot on the snow which they
thought might be bear or seal. With gun in hand they crept along
slowly and watchfully, and soon they got close enough to see that
there was a little man, an Eskimo, armed with a spear and bow and
arrows and with four or five dogs and a rough little sled, something
like Johnny's sled, but with runners made of frozen salmon. At first
he appeared rather afraid of them, but they soon made signs to him
that they were friends and were lost and very hungry. With a grin
which showed his white teeth he pointed to his runners, and borrowing
Tommy's knife, he clipped a piece off of them for each of them and
handed it back with the knife; Tommy knew that he ought not to eat
with his knife, but he was so hungry that he thought it would be
overlooked. Having breakfasted on frozen runner, they were fortunate
enough to make the Eskimo understand that they wanted to find a polar
bear. He made signs to them to follow him and he would guide them
where they would find one. "Can you shoot?" he asked, making a sign
with his bow and arrow.

"Can we shoot!" laughed both Tommy and Johnny. "Watch us. See that big
green piece of ice there?" They pointed at an ice-peak near by. "Well,
watch us!" And first Johnny and then Tommy blazed away at it, and the
way the icicles came clattering down satisfied them. They wished all
that trip that the ice-peak had been a bear. So they followed him, and
a great guide he was. He showed them how to avoid the rough places in
the ice-fields, and, in fact, seemed quite as much at home in that
waste of ice and snow as Johnny was back in town.

He always kept near the coast, he said, as he could find both bear and
seal there. They had reached a very rough place, when, as they were
going along, he s