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"Stay now, sir; not another word till you have broken your fast," said Rooney, with kindly violence, as he hastily cut a large slice from his piece of bear's meat. "Sit down on that stone, and eat it at once. A fasting man should not talk." "But my companions need food to the full as much as I do," objected the missionary. "Do as I bid ye, sir," returned Rooney, with decision.

She won't do it again, I'll engage will ye, Elleney? Ye see, me dear," she added in a confidential undertone, "we do have to be very particular in an establishment like this. 'Twouldn't do for me at all to go lettin' a boy like Pat Rooney forget himself. He's a very decent boy, poor fellow, an' his mother the Lord ha' mercy on her! was a most respectable poor woman.

"Ay, that's true enough," replied the sailor, with an easy smile of patronage; "we call it writing." A look of grave perplexity rested on the visage of the Eskimo. "It's quite easy when you understand it, and know how to do it," continued Rooney; "nothing easier." A humorous look chased away the Eskimo's perplexity as he replied "Everything is easy when you understand it."

The result of this visit was that Baldwin was engaged to dive for the cargo of the Seagull, and found himself, a few days later, busy at work on the Welsh coast with a staff of men under him, among whom were our friends Rooney Machowl and surly David Maxwell. The latter had at first declined to have anything to do with the job, but, on consideration of the wages, he changed his mind.

Baldwin was right in this prophecy, for in a few months Rooney Machowl became one of the best and coolest divers on his staff. We need not try the reader's patience with an account of Edgar's descent, which immediately followed that of the Irishman. Let it suffice to say that he too accomplished, with credit and with less demonstration, his first descent to the bottom of the sea.

"If you run there," continued the seaman, with a look and tone of deep solemnity, "at the very toppest speed that you can do, and look round that ice-point, you will see " "What?" gasped Ippegoo excitedly for he was easily excited. "Something," returned Rooney mysteriously.

Angut was particularly restless during the night, and got up several times to take a look at the weather, as Rooney expressed it. On one of these occasions he found the Kablunet standing by the shore of the calm sea. "I don't like the look o' things," said Rooney, giving a sailor-like glance at the horizon and the sky. "It seems to me as if we were goin' to have dirty weather."

"I think I'll take the breech-loader, sir," replied the other, suiting the action to the word and proceeding to examine the lock of one of the Martini-Henrys, which seemed to be an old acquaintance of his, for he loaded the chamber much quicker than I could manage my new acquisition; "and I don't believe you could do better than hand the other to Rooney, as you suggested.

"That's all right," repeated Baldwin; "now the ice is fairly broken, and we'll soon see how he's going to get on." In order that we too may see that more comfortably, you and I, reader, will again go under water and watch him. We will also listen to him, for Rooney has a convenient habit of talking to himself, and neither water nor helmet can prevent us from overhearing.

I wondered what he was going to do, and was puzzling my head about the matter, not liking to interrupt Tim Rooney, when the boy himself the next instant satisfied my curiosity by going up to the ship's bell, which was suspended in its usual place, under the break of the forecastle, just above and in front of the windlass bits away forward; when, catching hold of a lanyard hanging from the end of the clapper, he struck four sharp raps against the side of the bell, the sound ringing through the air and coming back distinctly to us aft on the poop.