In the great white land

Had any one seen that strange figure, shuffling slowly to and fro on the snow-clad Polar ice on this bitterly cold morning late in winter, he might have been excused for asking...

When the _Walrus_, in the shortening days of autumn, had steamed slowly into Incognita Bay, she had to force her way through the pancake ice with which the whole extent of the w...

“Um, yes, Humpty. You are to drive back to our tribe, and tell them they must get away over the horizon again and camp there, but to return to-morrow before sunrise, because I b...

“Well, gentlemen, Ingomar being merely my stage name because I played in that piece more than in any other, I ought at the very offset to tell you my baptismal one. That was Han...

The stars were still glowing like diamonds in the sky, then, and the merry dancers--the aurora--were still at their revels when he turned out to have his bath. A quarter of an h...

The surprise was this: no fewer than four young Greenland bears[C] were led forth, and attached or harnessed to a hugely large sledge, and seemed so perfectly quiet and well bro...

It is true enough that Captain Mayne Brace was only a simple sailor. But if his heart was kind and soft, it was also a brave one. Nor did he lack genuine business habits, and lo...

In the good old barque the _Walrus_ went not only Captain Mayne Brace himself with our American hero Ingomar, and our two British boys, but the spectioneer, with Dumpty, and a p...

When men have been at sea for months and months, catching hardly e’er a blink of the shore, and seeing day by day only the faces and forms of their shipmates, or exchanging pass...

These scraps of conversation are but specimens of those heard on board the good _Sea Elephant_, fore and aft, when the _Walrus_ people boarded her at Kerguelen, after dropping a...

One of the sailors--a light-weight, but strong--had just proposed shinning down the rope, when suddenly it was shaken three successive times, and the men commenced hauling up wi...

At the council or consultation that took place some days after this in the ward-room of the _Walrus_, both Charlie and Walt were present, but, of course, were not supposed to sp...

“Land ho!” This is a cheering cry at times to the mariner. More especially if it be the chalky cliffs of Britain bold, and he is just returning from a long and weary voyage.

The hummocks in this pack were not like those in Greenland seas, which are generally rounded off by wind and snow. These were more like pieces of ice set on end, and were of eve...

Both Curtis and Ingomar were capital story-tellers or “yarn spinners,” and the tales they told the boys helped to while away the time on many a forenight which might otherwise h...

“She is bound to be,” said Captain Mayne Brace, a day or two before the good ship _Walrus_ reached Kerguelen. “Bound to be, Mr. Armstrong. She is the better craft of the two, yo...

The _Sea Elephant’s_ cruise around the great Antarctic continent, and all her captain and bold men did, and said and saw, would make a book in itself. That may one day see the l...

“You are snow-blind, boys, just for the moment. If you’d come when I told you, when the sun was still above the horizon, you would have had a daylight view.

The Eskimo dogs had got their summer clothes on; the Eskimos themselves, especially Slap-dash, were very lively. The bears wanted to go on prowl at once. Gruff, Grumpey, Growley...

It was often carried out under considerable difficulties, too. For even in summer the weather is most unsettled. One year of open ice does not always follow another. There is th...

Down below to the left was the still slumbering camp; the middle distance was the eternal snow guarded by its hills, then came the sea-beach, shingly now. They could even see th...

We find our Expedition to South Polar regions now cut up into four divisions, though I know, as if by instinct, that the hearts of my readers are in the highlands of the far int...

I was obliged to belay my jawing tackle, as sailors say, in that last chapter, and to cut short my yarn, else my subject, which is to me a most interesting one, might have led m...

There was much talk of home to-night, between Curtis and Ingomar. The former told his friend all about his English roof-tree, and cheerfully of his doings while living there as...

It would not be far wrong to say that for the next month or six weeks, ere the sun went finally down, Hope sustained the hearts of our heroes almost as much as did the food they...

Six weeks after this, and when the captain of the _Walrus_ had given the explorers up for lost, after searching the snows in vain, for winter storms had obliterated every track,...