"Troth," said O'Riley, gazing round towards the land, where the distant
cliffs loomed black and heavy in the fading light, and out upon the
floes and hummocks, where the frost-smoke from pools of open water on
the horizon circled round the pinnacles of the icebergs--"troth, it's a
cowld place intirely to go to wan's bed in, but that fat-faced Exqueemaw
seems to be settin' about it quite coolly; so here goes!"

"It would be difficult to set about it otherwise than coolly with the
thermometer forty-five below zero," remarked Fred, beating his hands
together, and stamping his feet, while the breath issued from his mouth
like dense clouds of steam, and fringed the edges of his hood and the
breast of his jumper with hoar-frost.

"It's quite purty, it is," remarked O'Riley, in reference to this wreath
of hoar-frost, which covered the upper parts of each of them; "it's jist
like the ermine that kings and queens wear, so I'm towld, and it's
chaper a long way."

"I don't know that," said Joseph West. "It has cost us a rough voyage
and a winter in the Arctic Regions, if it doesn't cost us more yet, to
put that ermine fringe on our jumpers. I can make nothing of this knot;
try what you can do with it, messmate, will you?"

"Sorra wan o' me'll try it," cried O'Riley, suddenly leaping up and
swinging both arms violently against his shoulders; "I've got two hands,
I have, but niver a finger on them--leastwise I feel none, though it
_is_ some small degrae o' comfort to see them."

"My toes are much in the same condition," said West, stamping vigorously