Here Noah took a look at the pumpkin, after which he made no ceremony in plumply telling Dr.Reasono that he had been greatly mistaken in laying down the position of Captivity Island, as he himself had named the spot where the amiable strangers had fallen into human hands.

The philosopher was a little tenacious of his opinion; but what is argument in the face of facts?
Here was the pumpkin, and there were the blue waters! The captain now quite frankly declared that he had great doubts whether there was any such place as Leaphigh at all; and as the ship had a capital position for such an object, he bluntly, though privately proposed to me, that we should throw all the monikins overboard, project the entire polar basin on his chart as being entirely free from islands, and then go a-sealing.

I rejected the propositions, firstly, as premature; secondly, as inhuman; thirdly, as inhospitable; fourthly, as inconvenient; and lastly, as impracticable.
There might have arisen a disagreeable controversy between us on this point; for Mr.Poke had begun to warm, and to swear that one good seal, of the true quality of fur, was worth a hundred monkeys; when most happily the panther at the masthead cried out that two of the largest mountains, to the southward of us, were separating, and that he could discern a passage into another basin.

Hereupon Captain Poke concentrated his oaths, which he caused to explode like a bomb, and instantly made sail again in the proper direction.

By three o'clock, P.M., we had run the gauntlet of the bergs a second time, and were at least a degree nearer the pole, in the basin just alluded to.
The mountains had now entirely disappeared in the southern board; but the sea was covered, far as the eye could reach, with field-ice.