“‘Deed, then, it must be because there’s not one o’ my own size to hit,” remarked the carpenter with a broad grin.

This was true.  Grim’s colossal proportions were increased so much by his hairy dress that he seemed to have spread out into the dimensions of two large men rolled into one.  But O’Riley was not to be overturned with impunity.  Skulking round behind the crew, who were laughing at Grim’s joke, he came upon the giant in the rear, and seizing the short tail of his jumper, pulled him violently down on the deck.

“Ah, then, give it him, boys!” cried O’Riley, pushing the carpenter flat down, and obliterating his black beard and his whole visage in a mass of snow.  Several of the wilder spirits among the men leaped on the prostrate Grim, and nearly smothered him before he could gather himself up for a struggle; then they fled in all directions while their victim regained his feet, and rushed wildly after them.  At last he caught O’Riley, and grasping him by the two shoulders gave him a heave that was intended and “calc’lated,” as Amos Parr afterwards remarked, “to pitch him over the foretop-sail-yard!” But an Irishman is not easily overcome.  O’Riley suddenly straightened himself and held his arms up over his head, and the violent heave, which, according to Parr, was to have sent him to such an uncomfortable elevation, only pulled the jumper completely off his body, and left him free to laugh in the face of his big friend, and run away.

At this point the captain deemed it prudent to interfere.

“Come, come, my lads!” he cried, “enough o’ this.  That’s not the morning work, is it?  I’m glad to find that your new dresses,” he added with a significant smile, “make you fond of rough work in the snow; there’s plenty of it before us.—­Come down below with me, Meetuck; I wish to talk with you.”

As the captain descended to the cabin the men gave a final cheer, and in ten minutes they were working laboriously at their various duties.

Buzzby and his party were the first ready and off to cut moss.  They drew a sledge after them towards the red-snow valley, which was not more than two miles distant from the ship.  This “mossing,” as it was termed, was by no means a pleasant duty.  Before the winter became severe, the moss could be cut out from the beds of the snow streams with comparative ease; but now the mixed turf of willows, heaths, grasses, and moss was frozen solid, and had to be quarried with crowbars and carried to the ship like so much stone.  However, it was prosecuted vigorously, and a sufficient quantity was soon procured to pack on the deck of the ship, and around its sides, so as to keep out the cold.  At the same time, the operation of discharging the stores was carried on briskly; and Fred, in company with Meetuck, O’Riley, and Joseph West, started with the dog-sledge on a hunting-expedition.