mered over the snow-covered mountains of Greenland, and the human character of the object on the iceberg became clearly determinable.

"I should say that icy perch would make any fellow cool," rejoined Charlie Wilson.

"Man a boat, and bring off that fellow!" shouted

the captain, as the vessel rapidly ran down towards the mass of ice upon which the solitary waif was seated.

"Ay, ay, sir!" cried three or four of the crew, as they hastily prepared to lower one of the boats, which in a few minutes they were sturdily pulling towards the iceberg.

As the boat approached the mass of ice upon which that solitary man had found a precarious resting-place, he was seen descending towards the base, from which, as the boat ran alongside, he slipped into it.

"What ship, mate?" said one of the rowers.

"Alert,' of Dundee," was the reply, as the rescued mariner seated himself in the boat.

"Alert!'" exclaimed two or three voices together. "Has the good ship 'Alert' gone to Davy Jones's locker?”

"Not a plank of her left," replied the stranger, with a shuddering glance towards the scene of the disaster. "She got a terrible nip between two bergs, and the water rushed into her, and filled her."

"But she stood all a-taunt last night," observed one of the rowers.

"You saw our signal, then?" said the shipwrecked mariner. 'Ay, she was held up awhile by the pressure of the bergs; but when they left her, she went down like a stone."

Charlie Wilson, who had watched the rescue of the man, was gazing at the returning boat, when, as it came near the ship, he thought he had seen the stranger before.

"Why, Willie!" he exclaimed, clutching the arm of the captain's son. "Look! Isn't that the

man who spoke to me when-you know who I mean."

"The queer Swedish fellow?" returned Willie. "It does look like him."

"It is!" exclaimed Charlie, as the boat came alongside; and then, as he recollected the remark of Svendson on the occasion of their last meeting, he muttered, "How strange!"

"Why? What is strange?" inquired Willie.

"That he should be picked up amidst the ice of Baffin Bay, and by this ship, of all others," returned Charlie.

"You are getting as mysterious as the Swede," said Willie. "What do you mean?"

"I will tell you," replied Charlie, lowering his voice. "I saw the fellow a few days before we left Dundee, and he said he should see me somewhere up this way."

"Well, he is a queer fellow," observed Willie, as the mysterious seaman stepped upon the deck, and saluted Captain Webb. "But he surely has not got himself wrecked for the chance of falling in with you?"

They listened with interest to the story which was told by Svendson to Captain Webb of the loss of the "Alert," and his own preservation by leaping from the rigging to the iceberg upon which he was found as the ship was going down amidst the roar of the elemental strife.

"Go to the cook for a basin of warm cocoa," said the captain, when the Swede had told his story, which he delivered in plain and simple terms, and without any indications of insanity. "We shall find work for you, if we cannot put you aboard one of the whalers in the Bay."

The dark eyes of Peter Svendson wandered round the ship as Captain Webb turned away from him, and met those of our two lads.

"Ah, Wilson!" said he, without testifying any surprise at meeting our young hero, upon whom he bestowed a friendly nod of recognition; "I told you we should meet somewhere up this way."

"You have a queer fashion of making appointments, friend, and as queer a way of keeping them," observed Morton, who had overheard the remark.

Svendson made no rejoinder, but proceeded to the cooking-place, where a basin of warm cocoa soon restored to his limbs the warmth of which exposure on the iceberg had deprived them.

麵

CHAPTER VIII.

ASHORE IN ELLESMERE LAND.

ERE is the gateway of the Pole!" said Charlie Wilson, when, a few days after the gale, the explorers sailed into Smith Sound, and he saw

with delighted eyes, from the deck of the whaler, the stupendous cliffs of the Greenland coast towering to the height of from twelve to fifteen hundred. feet, and presenting towards the water a perpendicular face of at least half that height.

The scene was marked by the sublimity of frigid sterility and dreariness. On the right rose the frowning cliffs in rude magnificence, from masses of ice heaped along their base by the stormy waves, with enormous icicles still pendant from their lofty edges, and snow glistening, white and crisp, on every ledge and slope. On the left the cliffs were low, and a broad slope above their edges