“It’s truth ye’re sayin’,” replied O’Riley, commencing a violent assault on a walrus-steak; “they don’t obey orders at all, at all.  An’ Dumps, the blaggard, is as cross-grained as me grandmother’s owld pig—­”

A general laugh here interrupted the speaker, for O’Riley could seldom institute a disparaging comparison without making emphatic allusion to the pig that once shared with him the hospitalities of his grandmother’s cabin.

“Why, everything you speak of seems to be like that wonderful pig, messmate,” said Peter Grim.

“Ye’re wrong there intirely,” retorted O’Riley.  “I niver seed nothing like it in all me thravels except yerself, and that only in regard to its muzzle, which was black and all kivered over with bristles, it wos.  I’ll throuble you for another steak, messmate; that walrus is great livin’.—­We owe ye thanks for killin’ it, Mister Ellice.”

“You’re fishing for compliments, but I’m afraid I have none to give you.  Your first harpoon, you know, was a little wide of the mark, if I recollect right, wasn’t it?”

“Yis, it wos—­about as wide as the first bullet.  I mis-remember exactly who fired it—­wos it you, Meetuck?”

Meetuck, being deeply engaged with a junk of fat meat at that moment, expressed all he had to say in a convulsive gasp without interrupting his supper.

“Try a bit of the bear,” said Fred to Tom Singleton; “it’s better than the walrus to my taste.”

“I’d rather not,” answered Tom, with a dubious shake of the head.

“It’s a most unconscionable thing to eat a beast o’ that sort,” remarked Saunders gravely.

“Especially one who has been in the habit of living on raisins and sticking-plaster,” said Bolton with a grin.

“I have been thinking about that,” said Captain Guy, who had been for some time listening in silence to the conversation, “and I cannot help thinking that Esquimaux must have found a wreck somewhere in this neighbourhood and carried away her stores, which Bruin had managed to steal from them.”

“May they not have got some of the stores of the brig we saw nipped some months ago?” suggested Singleton.

“Possibly they may.”

“I dinna think that’s likely,” said Saunders, shaking his head.  “Yon brig had been deserted long ago, and her stores must have been consumed, if they were taken out of her at all, before we thought o’ comin’ here.”

For some time the party in the cabin ate in silence.

“We must wait patiently,” resumed the captain, as if he were tired of following up a fruitless train of thought.  “What of your theatricals, Fred? we must get them set a-going as soon as possible.”

The captain spoke animatedly, for he felt that, with the prospect of a long dark winter before them, it was of the greatest importance that the spirits of the men should be kept up.

“I find it difficult to beat up recruits,” answered Fred, laughing; “Peter Grim has flatly refused to act, and O’Riley says he could no more learn a part off by heart than—­”