At last, however, there came a faint glow in the east, and the daylight began to break over the stormy sea. Augusta turned her head and stared through the mist.

"What is that?" she said, in a voice trembling with excitement, to the sailor Bill, who was taking his turn at the tiller; and she pointed to a dark mass that loomed up almost over them.

The man looked, looked again; and then halloaed out joyfully, "Land-land ahead!"

Up struggled Mr. Meeson on to his knees-his legs were so stiff that he could not stand-and began to stare wildly about him.

"Thank God!" he cried.

"Where is it?

Is it New

I'll never

Zealand? If ever I get there, I'll stop there.

go on a ship again !"

"Are you a

"New Zealand!" growled the sailor. fool? It's Kerguelen Land, that's what it is-where it rains all day, and nobody lives-not even a nigger. It's like enough that you'll stop there, though; for I don't reckon that anybody will come to take you off in a hurry."

Mr. Meeson collapsed with a groan, and a few minutes afterwards the sun rose, while the mist grew less and less, till at last it almost disappeared, revealing a grand panorama to the occupants of the boat. For before them were line upon line of jagged and lofty peaks, stretching as far as the eye could reach, till far away they gradually melted into the cold white gleam of snow. Bill slightly altered the boat's course to the southward, and, sailing round a point, she came into comparatively calm water. Then, due north of them, running into the land, they saw the mouth of a great fjord, bounded on either side by

towering mountain banks, so steep as to be almost precipitous, around whose lofty cliffs thousands of sea-fowl wheeled, awaking the echoes with their clamour. Right into this beautiful fjord they sailed, past a line of flat rocks on which sat huge fantastic monsters that the sailors said were sea-lions, along the line of beetling cliff, till they came to a spot where the shore, on which grew a rank, sodden-looking grass, shelved gently up from the water's edge to the frowning and precipitous background. And here, to their delight, they discovered two huts roughly built of old ship's timbers placed within a score of yards of each other, and at a distance of some fifty paces from the water's edge.

"Well, there's a house, anyway," said the flat-nosed Johnnie, "though it don't look as though it had paid rates and taxes lately."

"Let us land, and get out of this horrible boat," said Mr. Meeson feebly: a proposition that Augusta seconded heartily enough. Accordingly, the sail was lowered, and, getting out the oars, the two sailors rowed the boat into a little natural harbour that opened out of the main creek. In ten minutes her occupants were once more stretching their legs upon dry land; that is, if any land in Kerguelen Island, that region of perpetual wet, could be said to be dry.

Their first care was to go up to the huts and examine them, with a result that could scarcely be called encouraging. The huts had been built some years-whether by the expedition which, in 1874, came thither to observe the transit of Venus, or by former parties of shipwrecked mariners, they never discovered and were now in a state of ruin. Mosses and lichens grew plentifully upon the beams, and even on the floor; while great holes in the

roof let in the wet, which lay in little slimy puddles beneath. Still, with all their drawbacks, they were decidedly better than the open beach; a very short experience of which, in that inclement climate, would certainly have killed them; and they thankfully decided to make the best of them. Accordingly, the smaller of the two huts was given up to Augusta and the boy Dick, while Mr. Meeson and the sailors took possession of the large one. Their next task was to move up their scanty belongings (the boat having first been carefully beached), and to clean out the huts and make them as habitable as possible by stretching the sails of the boat over the damp floors and covering up the holes in the roof as best they could with stones and bits of board from the bottom of the boat. The weather was, fortunately, dry, and as they all (with the exception of Mr. Meeson, who seemed to be quite prostrated) worked with a will, not excepting Master Dick -who toddled backwards and forwards after Augusta in high glee at finding himself on terra firma-by mid-day everything that could be done was done. Then they made a fire of some drift-wood-for, fortunately, they had a few matches-and Augusta cooked the two fowls they had recovered from the floating hen-coop, as well as circumstances would allow-which, as a matter of fact, was not very well-and they had dinner, of which they all stood sadly in need.

Of

After dinner they reckoned up their resources. water there was an ample supply, for not far from the huts a stream ran down into the fjord. For food they had the best part of a bag of biscuits weighing about a hundred pounds. Also there was the moved into their own hut. there were plenty of shellfish

cask of rum, which the men But that was not all, for about if they could find