A WOODEN ARIADNE. 
221 
standing room this part of the coast afforded. With 
considerable difficulty, and after a good hour’s climb, 
we succeeded in dragging the figure-head we had 
brought ashore with us, up a sloping patch of snow, 
which lay in a crevice of the cliff, and thence a little 
higher, to a natural pedestal formed by a broken shaft 
of rock; where—after having tied the tin box round 
her neck, and duly planted the white ensign of St. 
George beside her,—we left the superseded damsel, 
somewhat grimly smiling across the frozen ocean at her 
feet, until some Bacchus of a bear shall come to relieve 
the loneliness of my wooden Ariadne. 
On descending to the water’s edge, we walked 
some little distance along the beach without observing 
anything very remarkable, unless it were the network 
of vertical and horizontal dikes of basalt which shot 
in every direction through the scoriae and conglomerate 
of which the cliff seemed to be composed. Innumerable 
sea-birds sat in the crevices and ledges of the uneven 
surface, or flew about us with such confiding curiosity, 
that by reaching out my hand I could touch their 
wings, as they poised themselves in the air alongside. 
There was one old sober-sides with whom I passed a 
