124 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VIII. 



blow pretty hard, and at midnight it had freshened to half a 

 gale ; but by dint of standing well away to the eastward we 

 had succeeded in reaching comparatively open water, and I 

 had gone to bed in great hopes that at all events the breeze 

 would brush off the fog, and enable us to see our way a 

 little more clearly the next morning. 



At five o'clock a.m. the officer of the watch jumped down 

 into my cabin, and awoke me with the news — "That the 

 Frenchman was a-saying summat on his 'black board ! " 

 Feeling by the motion that a very heavy sea must have been 

 knocked up during the night, I began to be afraid that 

 something must have gone wrong with the towing-gear, or 

 that a hawser might have become entangled in the corvette's 

 screw — which was the catastrophe of which I had always 

 been most apprehensive ; so slipping on a pair of fur boots, 

 which I carefully kept by the bedside in case of an emer- 

 gency, and throwing a cloak over — 



" Le simple appareil 

 D'une beaute qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil," 



I caught hold of a telescope, and tumbled up on deck. 

 Anything more bitter and disagreeable than the icy blast, 

 which caught me round the waist as I emerged from the 

 companion I never remember. With both hands occupied 

 in levelling the telescope, I could not keep the wind from 

 blowing the loose wrap quite off my shoulders, and except 

 for the name of the thing, I might just as well have been 

 standing in my shirt. Indeed, I was so irresistibly struck 

 with my own resemblance to a coloured print I remember 

 in youthful days, — representing that celebrated character 

 " Puss in Boots," with a purple robe of honour streaming, 

 far behind him on the wind, to express the velocity of his 

 magical progress — that I laughed aloud while I shivered in 

 the blast. What with the spray and mist, moreover, it was 

 a good ten minutes before I could make out the writing, 

 and when at last I did spell out the letters, their meaning 

 was not very inspiriting: u Nons retournons a Reykjavik /" 



