way in a boat, with others of the crew, who all died, and that he and my father separated near this spot."

"That is a strange story!" said the captain. "It is stranger still that it has never been told before." "Was this man, Peter Svendson, one of the crew?" inquired Charlie.

"I don't remember the name," replied Captain Webb, after tasking his memory for some moments. "I can ascertain the fact when we get back to Dundee; but I should think he was if he says he was. Why should the man speak falsely about the matter?"

"On the other hand," observed Charlie, "why should he not have told the story at the time?"

"There is something in that too," observed the captain, stroking his beard with an air of reflection.

"Willie suggests that he may have been picked up by a foreign ship, and carried to a foreign port," said Charlie. "But a story involving the discovery of the northern limits of Greenland would surely have become public, if the man told it then as he tells it now."

"He has not told you all, it seems," rejoined Captain Webb, "and something may be due to his being, as I fancy, a little bit crazed. The men who returned to Dundee could give only an imperfect account of their wanderings, and some of them had

been delirious, and were never quite right afterwards. The Swede may have suffered in the same manner."

"But they also said that my father and some of the crew went to the westward," observed Charlie. "True," returned the captain. "Svendson's story agrees with theirs, but it was always supposed that none of the other party survived. However, I will some day take an opportunity of questioning him myself on the subject."

This resolve was carried out a few days afterwards, but Svendson proved very uncommunicative, and all that could be elicited from him was, that he was picked up on the west coast of Greenland by a Danish vessel, and carried to Tromsoe, and that he did not visit Dundee again until the period when he made the acquaintance of Charlie Wilson, as related in the first chapter.

CHAPTER XVI.

A JOURNEY ON THE ICE.

S the days grew longer, and the cold less intense, Captain Webb determined to conduct a sledge expedition to the eastward, in order at once to vary the monotony of the long sojourn in harbour, and to ascertain the extent and configuration of the coast in that direction. Two sledges were prepared for this journey, one of which was to be driven by Hans, and the other by Christian. Both were heavily loaded with provisions and other necessaries for a long journey, and a couple of rifles, with a good store of ammunition, was placed upon each.

Charlie Wilson and Willie Webb begged hard for permission to accompany the captain on this expedition, but, as the results of the exploration would depend very much upon the quantity of provisions that could be carried, their request could

not be complied with. Hans was to drive the foremost sledge, with Captain Webb seated behind him, and Christian the other, in which Markham was selected to travel.

The explorers started on a fine morning, the snow-clad mountain peaks of Greenland standing up against the pale blue sky like cones of frosted silver, and the frozen sea extending its far-stretching undulations northward and westward until they blended on the horizon with the grey clouds. Aquatic birds of various species, but all of sobercoloured plumage-black, and white, and greyskimmed along the ice, or wheeled over the cliffs, uttering harsh and discordant cries; but as yet they had not arrived in great numbers, and the amphibious and land animals had received no augmentation.

All the crew assembled on the ice to witness the departure of the sledges, and when Captain Webb had shaken the hands of Willie and Charlie, and Mr. Morton cried, "Success to you, Captain Webb!" the cry was echoed from every mouth. The Esquimaux drivers cracked their long whips, and the dogs barked in a wild canine chorus as they strained against their collars, and the heavily-laden sledges began to move slowly over the rough and undulating surface of the frozen sea.

The ice had been chosen for the route, in pre

ference to the land, on account of its more uniform surface; as, heaved up into ridges and hummocks as it had been by the winds and waves of autumn before it compacted for the winter, it presented much less formidable obstacles to the progress of sledges than the hills and valleys, ravines and precipices, of North Greenland.

The cliffs eastward of the little harbour in which the ship was secured trended northward to a point at which they seemed to sink into the sea; and the chief object of the expedition was to ascertain their direction beyond that point. Towards that dim promontory, therefore, the Esquimaux sledgedrivers directed their course, keeping one before the other at the distance of about half a mile from the coast. The obstacles to a straight course which the ridges and hummocks of ice presented necessitated a devious course, and the weight of the provisions, fuel, &c., on the sledges, rendered their progress slow. The short day was drawing to a close, therefore, when they halted in the shadow of the stupendous cliffs, with the northern point of Greenland still at some distance.

The spot which Captain Webb selected for their bivouac was protected from the nipping wind that swept over the frozen sea by large masses of ice, the remains of the bergs which the storms had driven against the cliffs, and a deep drift of snow. Here,