fire. One does not need the experience of being cast away upon an iceberg to understand the comfort of a fire. I had a mind to be prodigal, and threw a good deal of coals into the furnace, and presently had a noble blaze. The heat was exquisite. I pulled a little bench, after the pattern of those on which the men sat in the cabin, to the fire, and, with outstretched legs and arms, thawed out of me the frost that had lain taut in my flesh ever since the wreck of the 'Laughing Mary.' When I was thoroughly warm and comforted I took the lanthorn and went aft to the steward's room, and brought thence a cheese, a ham, some biscuit, and one of the jars of spirits, all which I carried to the cook-room and placed the whole of them in the oven. I was extremely hungry and thirsty, and the warmth and cheerfulness of the fire set me yearning for a hot meal. But how was I to make me a bowl without fresh water? I went on deck and scratched up some snow, but the salt in it gave it a sickly taste, and I was not only certain it would spoil and make disgusting whatever I mixed it with or cooked in it, but it stood as a drink to disorder my stomach and bring on an illness. So, thought I to myself, there must be fresh water about-casks enough in the hold, I dare say; but the hold was not to be entered and explored without labour and difficulty, and I was weary and famished, and in no temper for hard work.

In all ships it is the custom to carry one or more casks called scuttlebutts on deck, into which fresh water is pumped for the use of the crew. I stepped along looking earnestly at the several shapes of guns, coils of rigging, hatchways, and the like, upon which the snow lay thick and solid, sometimes preserving the mould of the object it covered, sometimes distorting and exaggerating it into an unrecognisable outline, but perceived nothing that answered to the shape of a cask. At last I came to the well in the head, passed the forecastle deck, and on looking down spied among other shapes three bulged and bulky forms. I seemed by instinct to know that these were the scuttlebutts and went for the chopper, with which I returned and got into this hollow, that was four or five feet deep. The snow had the hardness of iron; it took me a quarter of an hour of severe labour to make sure of the character of the bulky thing I wrought at, and then it proved to be a cask. Whatever might be its contents it was not empty, but I was pretty nigh spent by the time I had knocked off the iron bands and beaten out staves enough to enable me to get at the frozen body within. There was three-quarters of a cask full. It was sparkling clear ice, and chipping off a piece and sucking it, I found it to be very sweet fresh water. Thus was my labour rewarded.

I cut off as much as, when dissolved, would make a couple of gallons, but stayed a minute to regain my breath and take a view of this well or hollow before going aft. It was formed of the great open head-timbers of the schooner curving up to the stem, and by the forecastle deck ending like a cuddy front. I scraped at this pont and removed enough snow to exhibit a portion of a window. It was by this window I supposed that the forecastle was lighted. Out of this well forked the bowsprit, with the spritsail yard braced fore and aft. The whole fabric close to looked more like glass than at a distance, owing to the million crystalline sparkles of the ice-like snow that coated the structure from the vane at the masthead to the keel.

Well, I clambered on to the forecastle deck and returned to the cook-room with my piece of ice, struck as I went along by the sudden comfortable quality of life the gushing of the black smoke out of the chimney put into the ship, and how, indeed, it seemed to soften as if by magic the savage wildness and haggard austerity and gale-swept loneliness of the white rocks and peaks. It was extremely disagreeable and disconcerting to me to have to pass the ghastly occupants of the cabin every time I went in and out; and I made up my mind to get them on deck when I felt equal to the work, and cover them up there. The slanting posture of the one was a sort of fierce rebuke; the sleeping attitude of the other was a dark and sullen enjoinment of silence. I never passed them without a quick beat of the heart and shortened breathing; and the more I looked at them the keener became the superstitious alarm they excited.

The fire burned brightly, and its ruddy glow was sweet as human companionship. I put the ice into a saucepan and set it upon the fire, and then pulling the cheese and ham out of the oven found them warm and thawed. On smelling to the mouth of the jar I discovered its contents to be brandy.1 Only about an inch deep of it was melted. I poured this into a pannikin and took a sup, and a finer drop of spirits I never swallowed in all my life; its elegant perfume proved it amazingly choice and old. I fetched a lemon and some sugar and speedily prepared a small smoking bowl of punch. The ham cut readily; I fried a couple of stout rashers, and fell to the heartiest and most delicious repast I ever sat down to. At any time there is something fragrant and appetising in the smell of fried ham; conceive then the relish that the appetite of a starved, half-frozen, shipwrecked man

I can give the reader no better idea of the cold of the latitudes in which this schooner had lain than by speaking of the brandy as being frozen. This may have happened through its having lost twenty or thirty per cent. of its strength.-P. R.

would find in it! The cheese was extremely good, and was as sound as if it had been made a week ago. Indeed, the preservative virtues of the cold struck me with astonishment. Here was I making a fine meal off stores which in all probability had lain in this ship fifty years, and they ate as choicely as like food of a similar quality ashore. Possibly some of these days science may devise a means for keeping the stores of a ship frozen, which would be as great a blessing as could befall the mariner, and a sure remedy for the scurvy, for then as much fresh meat might be carried as salt, besides other articles of a perishing kind.

(To be continued.)

161

Mr. Dangle's Dilemma.

CHAPTER I.

I HAVE always been of opinion that it is a very great advantage for a young man to have the society of respectable young ladies. For this is not only good and pleasant in itself, but it also helps to protect the young man from many dangers. To take one example, how many imprudent marriages are made simply through lack of choice. The impatient bachelor has no circle of lady acquaintances, and so falls an easy victim to the blandishment of the first girl who strikes his fancy, however much his sober judgment might disapprove the choice. There is my friend Lippencott, for instance. There is not a better solicitor in the City, nor one whose future is, within certain limits, more assured. Well, Lippencott has married a waitress in a vegetarian restaurant. She was certainly very pretty. I will admit-for no man ought to be

ashamed to confess such weaknesses-that I was almost fascinated by her myself. For though I detest those unsavoury and tasteless messes in which vegetarians delight, there was a time when I lunched regularly at the Currant Bush Restaurant. I always seated myself at her tables, though they were invariably the most crowded in the rooms. But I was saved from committing myself further, not only by a natural cautiousness of disposition, but also through knowing a great many girls who, if not quite so pretty, were well-bred and refined and not altogether portionless. But Lippencott, as I have said, was ensnared. I dined with him at his new villa at Streatham shortly after his marriage. His wife looked perfectly charming at the head of his table, but I observed with deep regret that she put ice into her claret. I am sorry for Lippencott, for he is a most prosperous business man and, notwithstanding a tendency to undue levity of disposition, an excellent fellow. And thus far he bears his misfortune with commendable patience. And it arose entirely from his not mixing in ladies' society. For myself, I had been, as I have already indicated, much more fortunate. For living in lodgings soon disgusted me, and not much more than two months after my arrival in London I became the inmate of a family where there was young musical society,' as the advertisement phrased it. And since then I have always had such company. I think I have handed round more cups of tea, turned over more music, and paid more compliments to indifferent

VOL. LXIII. NO. CCL.

M

performers than any man I know. Well, I am sure that this has had a refining and elevating effect on my character. It is this kind of social intercourse which

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros,

as the Latin poet says. To be sure, in this, as in everything else, there are some drawbacks and dangers. For example, I hadn't lived more than two years with this family I have just alluded to, when I found I was supposed to be paying particular attentions to one of the daughters-the eldest. She was certainly a very nice young lady, far superior to her younger sisters, and seemed, if I may say so without undue vanity, to appreciate my good qualities. In fact, I am afraid I did not altogether deserve the high opinion she had evidently formed of me. But then I saw it would never do. She was two years older than myself and had plenty of freckles, but no expectations. The end of it was that I ceased to live with the family where the 'young musical society' was, and took up my abode at the very superior boarding-house in Sydney Square, where I am still living. I was sorry to quit Lucilla-that was her name—and sorry to have to leave her so abruptly. For I thought it most prudent to lose a month's board and to go away when both Lucilla and her mother were absent on a short visit to the country. However, I suffered a good deal too; I missed Lucilla's appreciation. At first I wasn't much appreciated in the superior boarding-house; there were many other young men there, and they were in possession of the field. But soon I began to feel more at home, and as the other gentlemen went out a good deal in the evening or stopped in the smoking-room-where their conversation was the reverse of elevating-I had not many rivals in the drawing-room, where the ladies took tea or coffee at nine o'clock. My skill in turning over music was soon remarked, and when by request, several times repeated, I sang my first song, I felt that I had made a very favourable impression. In particular I soon became very intimate with two ladies of very dark complexion who were, I thought, much superior to the rest in intelligence and appreciativeness. Their name was Lilienthal—Rachel and Rebecca Lilienthal-and they had a brother called Mordecai, who was somehow connected with finance. But one day, in the course of conversation, I gave them my opinion of the character. of Shylock, on which subject I had read something in the magazines. I do not at all know why, but they both became seriously offended, and before there was time for us to make up the quarrel they left London and had taken a house at Frankfort. But though the life at this superior boarding-house was on the whole very