'Did you kill it and eat it?'
'Oh dear no, Lotty. We found out a trick worth two o' that.
'We hauled up the boat after capturing that saddle-back, not that she was much use, but she would do as a kind of bedroom you know, although she wouldn't float. She would keep the cold wind off us, and it is warmer sleeping on planks than on snow.
'Well, Lotty, we hadn't much to eat the first day, and slept but badly after it. The second day we had less, and then we began to starve—ay, and would have starved, too, but for an idea that Nat Pringle got hold of. For the saddle-back had gone. "I have it, mates," he said. Then he got straight up and walked to the boat, and back he comes with a big net and a long rope. We lay and watched after sunset, for it was early in the Greenland year, and by-and-by up comes the seal, and Nat lays hold on it quick, and in two minutes it was dressed in the net, as you might dress a doll, nothing out 'cept the head, the flippers, and the tail. That was a weary night, but joy came in the morning. "I'm off," says the seal, turning head on to the water. "Oh, are ye?" says Nat. "Well, good-day, and pleasant voyage to you."
'Away goes the seal, but the long rope was fastened by one end to the net behind its shoulder, and Nat kept firm hold of the other. "Hallo!" says the seal to himself after he had swam about thirty yards, "I'm fast, it seems. Well," he says, "I may as well have my breakfast anyhow."
'So he dives like an eel, and up he comes with a fine big cod in the jaws of him, and Nat and another hand bent on to that rope, and before you could have said marling-spike they had landed seal and cod all complete.
'The saddler put down the cod, looking a kind of discomfited like. "Oh, ye can go back again, my birkie," says Nat, "and have your own breakfast. This will last us for the day."
'And sure enough we killed and cooked the cod, and the seal had fair enough play, for he was left to fill himself in the sea till we had picked the last bone. And every day we did the same, all the time we lay on that berg. And it wasn't cod every day either; oh no, as often as not 'twas salmon, or hal'but, or young sturgeon.
'But all the while that iceberg was getting smaller and beautifully less, but at long last a merciful Providence sent a steamer our way, and so you see—— Easy pulling, boys! Way enough. There we are!—Jump on shore, Ben, and hand up the little lady.'
The seal was a baby one, and as lovely as a young lamb, and looked for all the world like a pretty infant swathed up to the eyes in soft white flannel. Only, no baby in all the wide world ever had such large and melting eyes.