BURNED AT SEA

In the evenings, as Captain Hawes sat smoking his pipe, he would tell the children of strange lands he had visited in his voyages, and then suggest that they look up these places in their geographies, and this study, which before was a task, took on a new interest for Bob and Betty. China and Greenland now meant so much more.

Telling about Iceland and Greenland, he said that up there in those parts, where almost everything that wasn't snow was ice, certain animals lived which couldn't be found anywhere else, like the big white polar bear, and the walrus.

"Why, we know a polar bear," Betty broke in. Why, of course, he was an old acquaintance. They had often seen him in Central Park.

"Well, now, that's good," said the Captain; "now you'll remember where he came from. I've been up his way more than once."

Often whalers chased the "right" whale away up there; dangerous seas to work in, as icebergs were plenty and the risk of striking them in the fog was great.

But the thing which sailors dreaded most was fire at sea. This seldom happened, but when it did it was bad. Once his ship was burned at night among the icebergs. There was nothing to do but take to the boats and escape to shore, which luckily was near. They lost everything but the clothes they wore, and a small amount of provisions. And there, while they looked on, the ship went up in a sheet of flame, and that was the last of her. The Captain said they felt pretty blue and lonely out there far away from the rest of the world, with no means to get away but the small boats. Fortunately they soon managed to reach an Eskimo village. These Eskimos are the natives who live there always, short people, dressed all in heavy, warm furs, who build themselves snow houses, where in the coldest weather they keep comfortably warm. They live by hunting and fishing. They spear seals from their skin canoes,—"kayaks,"—and fish through holes in the ice. These are the people you hear the explorers tell about when they go on expeditions to the North Pole. Captain Hawes thought they were the strangest people he had ever met. As whalers often put in up in these parts, the Captain and his mates did not have too hard a time, and were picked up by a passing ship and brought home.