life. While he was giving directions for the lowering of the hapless youth to the floe, Morton ran down, and secured a compass and a chart of Smith Sound.

"She is filling fast, sir," said he, on regaining the deck.

"Our only resource is the boats," rejoined Captain Webb. "We must thank God that we are so well prepared as the emergency has found us."

The sledges were got upon the floe, and in one of them Charlie Wilson was laid, swathed in blankets and rugs, and carefully watched and tended by the surgeon. The men on the floe were joined by the rest of their officers and shipmates, their commander being the last to leave the deck of the doomed ship, which was rapidly filling with water, and only prevented from settling down by the pressure of the ice.

Comparatively safe as the shipwrecked mariners were in their present position, the situation was a most precarious one. They were exposed to the inclemency of the weather in a higher latitude than had ever been reached by other human beings than themselves, on a floe the diameter of which did not exceed half a mile, and which might be broken up at any moment by collision with one of the masses of ice around them. By such a

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disaster their boats might be destroyed, and their last chance of life taken from them.

"I think it would be possible to reach the shore, sir," observed Markham, as he gazed southward across the ice, which lay motionless and compact in that direction, while towards the north it heaved and rolled, and had a perceptible motion westward.

"We must try, if the floe remains fast, Mr. Markham," rejoined Captain Webb, with a sigh, as he withdrew his eyes from the peaks and glaciers of North Greenland, and turned them seaward; "but I am hopeful that the ice will soon be in motion again, and then our best chance will consist in drifting into Smith Sound."

As he uttered the last word the starboard shrouds of the wrecked vessel parted with a loud crack, and the masts toppled to leeward, and fell with a fearful crash upon the ice, smashing the bulwarks on the port side, and causing a tremulous motion of the floe upon which they were standing. "When the floes separate she will founder," observed Markham.

Captain Webb sighed, but made no remark upon the loss he would sustain by the sinking of the vessel, all such minor considerations being merged in the anxiety inspired by the precarious situation of the unfortunates around him. He glanced at the position of the masts upon the ice,

and then approached the spot where his son was on his knees by the side of our young hero.

"Charlie can speak now, father," said Willie, whose countenance expressed a feeling which the awful situation of himself and shipmates could not abate or alloy.

His father's weather-beaten features expressed the pleasure which the announcement gave him, and he said, as he took Charlie's swollen hand in his own, "I hope you feel better, my boy."

"Thank you, Captain Webb," returned our hero, in a faint and somewhat hoarse tone. "I hope you will forgive me. I know I did wrong in leaving the ship, but I thought Svendson only intended a drive along the coast."

"It is forgiven, Charlie," returned the captain. "This is not a time for remembrance of transgressions, even if you had not been sufficiently punished already. But what has become of Svendson?"

"He was killed and eaten by the starving dogs!" replied our hero, with a shudder at the recollection of that terrible tragedy.

Willie's countenance expressed the horror which he felt on learning the Swede's dreadful end, and Captain Webb sighed as he rejoined, "It is a mercy that they did not devour you also; you must have suffered terribly, my poor lad."