LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
343 
oe very different from snow, as it threatened to suffocate him 
by a dense cloud of whitish dust, which appeared to envelop 
the whole of his form, whilst at the same time the substance 
itself was of that soft yielding nature, that when placing himself 
in a sitting posture, it completely covered the lower part of his 
body. Nevertheless Poowutyook found himself very comfortable, 
and the contents of his trowsers disappeared one by one; he had 
just drawn from his magazine the ill-fated moiety of the hare, 
which according to every mathematical rule, as it was put in 
the first, must necessarily come out the last, when on a sudden 
a most alarming noise struck his ears, arising from the vociferous 
exclamations of the steward, who, on returning to his berth, 
discovered the inroad which had been made upon his stores, and 
uttered the most direful imprecations on the head of the auda¬ 
cious thief, Poowutyook still continued to abstract the meat 
from the occipultal bones of the hare, for he had an equal compre¬ 
hension of the meaning of the steward’s exclamations as of the 
Tetagrammaton of the Jewish Cabala. Suspicion as to the real 
thief however soon fell upon the right person, and the most 
active search was made for him—not one of the crew had seen 
anything of him, it was certain that he had not made his appear¬ 
ance on deck, and therefore it was evident that he had stowed 
himself away in some secret place, but where that place was to 
be looked for, puzzled the whole of the crew. In the mean 
time Capt Ross had been apprised of his serious loss; the visions 
of the jugged hare had been floating for some time before his 
busy imagination, and now they were suddenly to vanish, and 
not a wreck to be left behind, except what was to be found in 
the flour tub, which might consist of certain bones, which Poo¬ 
wutyook had not found himself able to masticate. 
Various and divers were the places that were visited in the 
ship with the expectation of finding out the criminal, but not 
a trace of him was to be discovered ; when Capt. Ross, preced¬ 
ing the steward and some of the petty officers, entered the berth 
of the former, and casting their eyes towards the corner, where 
the flour tub stood, beheld to their utter astonishment, a strange 
unaccountable figure rising gradually from the midst of it, l'ke 
