Journey resumed—­The hunters meet with bears and have a great fight, in which the dogs are sufferers—­A bear’s dinner—­Mode in which Arctic rocks travel—­The ice-belt.

On the abating of the great storm referred to in the last chapter, the hunters sought to free themselves from their snowy prison, and succeeded in burrowing, so to speak, upwards after severe labour, for the hut was buried in drift which the violence of the gale had rendered extremely compact.

O’Riley was the first to emerge into the upper world.  Having dusted the snow from his garments, and shaken himself like a Newfoundland dog, he made sundry wry faces, and gazed round him with the look of a man that did not know very well what to do with himself.

“It’s a quare place, it is, intirely,” he remarked, with a shake of the head that betokened intense sagacity, while he seated himself on a mound of snow and watched his comrades as they busied themselves in dragging their sleeping-bags and cooking utensils from the cavern they had just quitted.  O’Riley seemed to be in a contemplative mood, for he did not venture any further remark, although he looked unutterable things as he proceeded quietly to fill his little black pipe.

“Ho!  O’Riley, lend a hand, you lazy fellow,” cried Fred; “work first and play afterwards, you skulker.”

“Sure that same is what I’m doin’,” replied O’Riley with a bland smile, which he eclipsed in a cloud of smoke.  “Haven’t I bin workin’ like a naagur for two hours to git out of that hole, and ain’t I playin’ a tune on me pipe now?  But I won’t be cross-grained.  I’ll lind ye a hand av ye behave yerself.  It’s a bad thing to be cross-grained,” he continued, pocketing his pipe and assisting to arrange the sledge; “me owld grandmother always towld me that, and she wos wise, she wos, beyand ordn’r.  More like Salomon nor anything else.”

“She must have directed that remark specially to you, I think,” said Fred—­“(Let Dumps lead, West, he’s tougher than the others)—­did she not, O’Riley?”

“Be no manes.  It wos to the pig she said it.  Most of her conversation (and she had a power of it) wos wid the pig; and many’s the word o’ good advice she gave it, as it sat in its usual place beside the fire fore-nint her.  But it wos all thrown away, it wos, for there wosn’t another pig in all the length o’ Ireland as had sich a will o’ its own; and it had a screech, too, when it wosn’t plaazed, as bate all the steam whistles in the world, it did.  I’ve often moralated on that same, and I’ve noticed that, as it is wid pigs, so it is wid men and women—­some of them at laste—­the more advice ye give them, the less they take.”

“Down, Poker! quiet, good dog!” said West, as he endeavoured to restrain the ardour of the team, which, being fresh and full fed, could scarcely be held in by the united efforts of himself and Meetuck, while their companions lashed their provisions, etc., on the sledge.