Sailors are proverbially good needle-men of a rough kind.

Meetuck showed them how to set about their work.

Each man made his own garments, and in less than a week they were completed.

It is true, the boots perplexed them a little, and the less ingenious among the men made very rare and curious-looking foot-gear for themselves; but they succeeded after a fashion, and at last the whole crew appeared on deck in their new habiliments, as we have already mentioned, capering among the snow like bears, to their own entire satisfaction and to the intense delight of Meetuck, who now came to regard the white men as brothers--so true is it that "the tailor makes the man!" "'Ow 'orribly 'eavy it is, _h_ain't it ?" gasped Mivins, after dancing round the main-hatch till he was nearly exhausted.
"Heavy!" cried Buzzby, whose appearance was such that you would have hesitated to say whether his breadth or length was greater--"heavy, d'ye say?
It must be your sperrits wot's heavy, then, for I feel as light as a feather myself." "O morther! then may I niver sleep on a bed made o' sich feathers!" cried O'Riley, capering up to Green, the carpenter's mate, and throwing a mass of snow in his face.

The frost rendered it impossible to form the snow into balls, but the men made up for this by throwing it about each other's eyes and ears in handfuls.
"What d'ye mean by insultin' my mate ?--take that!" said Peter Grim, giving the Irishman a twirl that tumbled him on the deck.
"Oh, bad manners to ye!" spluttered O'Riley, as he rose and ran away; "why don't ye hit a man o' yer own size ?" "'Deed, then, it must be because there's not one o' my own size to hit," remarked the carpenter with a broad grin.
This was true.