“I got into Baffin’s Bay and made a good fishing of it the first year, but was beset in the ice, and compelled to spend two winters in these regions.  The third year we were liberated, and had almost got fairly on our homeward voyage when a storm blew us to the north and carried us up here.  Then our good brig was nipped and went to the bottom, and all the crew were lost except myself and one man.  We succeeded in leaping from one piece of loose ice to another until we reached the solid floe and gained the land, where we were kindly received by the Esquimaux.  But poor Wilson did not survive long.  His constitution had never been robust, and he died of consumption a week after we landed.  The Esquimaux buried him after their own fashion, and, as I afterwards found, had buried a plate and a spoon along with him.  These, with several other articles, had been washed ashore from the wreck.  Since then I have been living the life of an Esquimau, awaiting an opportunity of escape either by a ship making its appearance or a tribe of natives travelling south.  I soon picked up their language, and was living in comparative comfort, when, during a sharp fight I chanced to have with a Polar bear, I fell and broke my leg.  I have lain here for many months, and have suffered much, Fred; but, thank God, I am now almost well, and can walk a little, though not yet without pain.”

“Dear father,” said Fred, “how terribly you must have felt the want of kind hands to nurse you during those dreary months, and how lonely you must have been!”

“Nay, boy, not quite so lonely as you think.  I have learned the truth of these words, ’I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee’—­’Call upon Me in the time of trouble, and I will deliver thee.’  This, Fred, has been my chief comfort during the long hours of sickness.”

Captain Ellice drew forth a soiled pocket Bible from his breast as he spoke.

“It was your beloved mother’s, Fred, and is the only thing I brought with me from the wreck; but it was the only thing in the brig I would not have exchanged for anything else on earth.  Blessed Bible!  It tells of Him whose goodness I once, in my ignorance, thought I knew, but whose love I have since been taught ‘passeth knowledge.’  It has been a glorious sun to me, which has never set in all the course of this long Arctic night.  It has been a companion in my solitude, a comfort in my sorrows, and even now is an increase to my joy; for it tells me that if I commit my way unto the Lord, he will bring it to pass, and already I see the beginning of the end fulfilled.”

Fred’s eyes filled with tears as his father spoke; but he remained silent, for he knew that of late he had begun to neglect God’s blessed Word, and his conscience smote him.

It were impossible here to enter minutely into the details of all that Captain Ellice related to Fred during the next few days, while they remained together in the Esquimau village.  To tell of the dangers, the adventures, and the hair-breadth escapes that the crew of the Pole Star went through before the vessel finally went down, would require a whole volume.  We must pass it all over, and also the account of the few days that followed, during which sundry walruses were captured, and return to the Dolphin, to which Captain Ellice had been conveyed on the sledge, carefully wrapped up in deer-skins, and tended by Fred.