“There it is!” shouted Fred, who, in company with Mivins, first crossed the ridge, and tossed his arms in the air.

The men cheered loudly as they hurried up and one by one emerged into a red glow of sunshine.  It could not be termed warm, for it had no power in that frosty atmosphere, and only a small portion of the sun’s disk was visible.  But his light was on every crag and peak around; and as the men sat down in groups, and, as it were, bathed in the sunshine, winking at the bright gleam of light with half-closed eyes, they declared that it felt warm, and wouldn’t hear anything to the contrary, although Saunders, true to his nature, endeavoured to prove to them that the infinitely small degree of heat imparted by such feeble rays could not by any possibility be felt except in imagination.  But Saunders was outvoted.  Indeed, under the circumstances, he had not a chance of proving his point; for the more warm the dispute became, the greater was the amount of animal heat that was created, to be placed, falsely, to the credit of the sun.

Patience, however, is a virtue which is sure to meet with a reward.  The point which Saunders failed to prove by argument, was pretty well proved to every one (though not admitted) by the agency of John Frost.  That remarkably bitter individual nestled round the men as they sat sunning themselves, and soon compelled them to leap up and apply to other sources for heat.  They danced about vigorously, and again took to leap-frog.  Then they tried their powers at the old familiar games of home.  Hop-step-and-jump raised the animal thermometer considerably, and the standing leap, running leap, and high leap sent it up many degrees.  But a general race brought them almost to a summer temperature, and at the same time, most unexpectedly, secured to them a hare!  This little creature, of which very few had yet been procured, darted in an evil hour out from behind a rock right in front of the men, who, having begun the race for sport, now continued it energetically for profit.  A dozen sticks were hurled at the luckless hare, and one of these felled it to the ground.

After this they returned home in triumph, keeping up all the way an animated dispute as to the amount of heat shed upon them by the sun, and upon that knotty question, “Who killed the hare?”

Neither point was settled when they reached the Dolphin, and, we may add, for the sake of the curious reader, neither point is settled yet.

CHAPTER XXII.

The “Arctic Sun”—­Rats! rats! rats!—­A hunting-party—­Out on the floes—­Hardships.

Among the many schemes that were planned and carried out for lightening the long hours of confinement to their wooden home in the Arctic Regions, was the newspaper started by Fred Ellice, and named, as we have already mentioned, the Arctic Sun.

It was so named because, as Fred stated in his first leading article, it was intended to throw light on many things at a time when there was no other sun to cheer them.  We cannot help regretting that it is not in our power to present a copy of this well-thumbed periodical to our readers; but being of opinion that something is better than nothing, we transcribe the following extract as a specimen of the contributions from the forecastle.  It was entitled—­