“Who wouldn’t live in Greenland?” thought Sammy, entirely forgetting the long, cold, dark winter.

However, it was summer then.  He went back of his mother’s seal-skin tent.  There he could see a beautiful valley in the shadow of the cliffs.  Moss and grasses thickly carpeted it.  Little brooks went sparkling through it.  There were flowers in bloom, poppies of gold, dandelions and buttercups, saxifrages of purple, white and yellow.  “And trees were there?” asks a reader.  Do you see that shrub just before Sammy?  That is the nearest thing to a tree.  It is pine.  If the fat for cooking the dinner should give out, young Miss Seal may be warmed up by the help of this giant pine.  As a rule, we are inclined to think that Sammy takes his seal same as folks who like “oysters on the shell”—­raw.

“Ky-ey!  Ky-ey!”

“My!” exclaimed Sammy.  “What is that noise?  It must be a dog somewhere—­hurt!”

Sammy started to the rescue.

“Ky-ey!  Ky-ey!”

“It must be a dog,” declared Sammy, and he expected to see one of those large Greenland dogs, wolf-like, with sharp, pointed nose, and ears held up stiff as if to catch every sound of danger in their dangerous travels.

Sammy rushed up a little hill before him, and rushed in such a hurry that he did not think how steep the other side was.  He lost his balance, and over he went, head down, seal-skin boots up, turning over like a cart-wheel.

“Ky-ey!  Ky-ey!  Ah, Sammy!  Ky-ey!  Ky-ey!  Catch him!”

It was that old enemy, Billy Blubber, ky-eying in part, and laughing also as if he would split.  He only expected to get Sammy to the top of the hill and there tell him he was fooled.

“This though is better than a sea-lion hunt,” thought Billy, and he roared again and shook till he threatened to come in pieces like a barrel when the hoops are off.

“I will catch you and pay you,” said Sammy.

“Try it,” defiantly shouted Billy, wearing now his own boots, having dropped his mother’s red casings.

Off went Billy.  Right ahead, was a great gray ledge.  There was a crack in the ledge big enough for a boy’s foot.  Billy was the boy to have his foot caught in it!  He tried to pull it out, but the sudden wrench was not good for his foot, and there he stood yelling—­he was ky-eying now in good earnest.

“I have a great mind,” thought Sammy, “to let you stay there.  I wonder how you would like to stay and have a duck come along and nip off your nose.”

It would have been a nice little nip, for Billy’s nose was quite plump.  It looked like a fat plum stuck on to the side of a pumpkin.

Well, how long should Sammy have kept him there?

“Till the sun went down,” says some one.

The idea!  Why, the sun in summer goes round and round and round, never setting through June and July.  Then the sun begins to dip below the horizon, going lower and lower, till at last it disappears.  For one hundred and twenty-six days Sammy and Billy did not see the sun.  Through that long, dark night, the stars would shine, so white and solemn, down upon the ice and snow everywhere stretching.  Until the last of July would have been a long time for plum-nosed Billy to stand with his foot in that crack.  Suddenly, Sammy heard a noise.  “What is that?” he asked.