"While adrift on the floe I did," said Charlie, with another shudder. "Oh, the cold and hunger, and the horrors of the long nights, the awful silence and solitude! But, Captain Webb," he continued, his countenance suddenly becoming animated with an expression of triumph, "I have discovered the North Pole!"

Captain Webb made no response to this surprising communication, but regarded our hero intently and anxiously, fearing that his sufferings might have induced delirium.

Is it land or ice there, Charlie?" Willie inquired, with a dubious air.

"It is a lofty cone, in the midst of mountains and glaciers," replied Charlie. "I have lost all count of time, and cannot tell you how long we were on the ice before we reached it; but Svendson drove due north until we came to a little rocky island, and we saw a barrier of icebergs half a day's journey ahead. Beyond the barrier of ice we found the land, and after two attempts reached the Pole; but Svendson was then dead, and I alone stood on a ledge of the central point of the northern hemisphere, and saw the frozen ocean all around the limits of the circumpolar region."

"You had better not talk any more now, my boy," said Captain Webb. "You must keep quiet, and try to sleep."

He then walked away, and, after communicating to Mr. Grey his fears concerning Charlie, proceeded to observe the weather and the position of the floe. The gale was now abating, but the ship's timbers still creaked and groaned, and the ice around continued to grind and crack as the wind and waves pressed the floes together.

"Willie," said Captain Webb, calling his son to his side, "you must not talk to Charlie until he gets stronger. I am afraid he is light in the

head."

"He has been telling me of a wonderful grotto of ice, and a mysterious ship fast among the bergs," observed Willie gravely.

"Poor lad!" ejaculated his father, with a sigh.

"We shall soon have a change, sir," observed Morton. "The wind is sinking fast, and, by the direction in which yonder stray line is blown, seems to be chopping round to the south-east."

He pointed as he spoke to some loose cordage of the vessel, which the wind extended occasionally to seaward.

The grinding and cracking of the ice gradually ceased, and the floes began to drift slowly westward. The masts of the doomed ship grated against the edge of the floe on which her crew were standing, with their boats and sledges,-there was a snapping and crashing of ropes and spars,—and

then, as the floes between which her water-logged hull had been held separated, she sank at once, and the easternmost floe drifted over the spot where she had disappeared.

Darkness was gathering over the ice-encumbered sea as the floe which yet interposed between the shipwrecked mariners and a watery grave drifted westward with the wind and the current. A tent was made with some canvas which some of them had cut from the top-masts while they rested on the floe, and a fire was kindled on the ice, which, besides serving for culinary purposes, tempered in some degree the frigidity of the atmosphere.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A BOAT VOYAGE.

HE coast was still in sight when daylight returned, and floes of every size covered the sea, separated only by

narrow channels of water. Thus the shipwrecked voyagers drifted on for several days, suffering severely from exposure, and seeing the breadth of water between the floes daily increase.

As soon as he thought the time had arrived when their inactive life and slow progress upon the floes might be advantageously exchanged for the toil and quicker motion of rowing, Captain Webb had the boats launched, and pulled to the westward, where he hoped to fall in with the exploring expedition which had left Portsmouth the preceding summer. If disappointed in this hope he determined to proceed as far as he could, and, if unable to reach Upernavik before the following

winter set in, to land upon the coast, and in some sheltered nook build houses of snow, after the manner of the Esquimaux.

All day the boats pursued a devious course between the floes, with the distant mountains of Greenland gradually sinking into the ice-encumbered sea, and at night they were drawn upon a floe, and covered with awnings, beneath which the shipwrecked mariners reposed.

The horizon was anxiously scanned when day dawned, but no sail was in sight, no trail of smoke was drawn upon the pale blue sky. The morning meal was prepared and eaten, and then they launched the boats again, and pursued a westerly course through the day.

Several days thus passed, and still no ship was seen. Captain Webb then began to fear that the explorers whom he had hoped to anticipate must have passed to the northward, and he had the boats steered for Smith Sound.

The stupendous glaciers and towering snows of Greenland again came into view, and at length the lofty cliffs were seen, with a few sea-birds hovering about them, or skimming the ice-encumbered waters. The north-western point of the land was rounded, and then the current became more rapid, and the masses of ice pursued each other so rapidly, and the channels between them became so much