s there.

Twenty hours later we met behind the great saddle-shaped hummock, some
six miles to the S.E. of the ship. We had set out at different times, so
that no one might suspect. And each brought a ship's-lantern.

Wilson had dug an ice-grave near the hummock, leaving at its edge a
heap of brash-ice and snow to fill it. We stood separated by an interval
of perhaps seventy yards, the grave between us, each with a lantern at
his feet.

Even so we were mere shadowy apparitions one to the other. The air
glowered very drearily, and present in my inmost soul were the frills of
cold. A chill moon, a mere abstraction of light, seemed to hang far
outside the universe. The temperature was at 55 deg. below zero, so that we
had on wind-clothes over our anoraks, and heavy foot-bandages under our
Lap boots. Nothing but a weird morgue seemed the world, haunted with
despondent madness; and exactly like that world about us were the minds
of us two poor men, full of macabre, bleak, and funereal feelings.

Between us yawned an early grave for one or other of our bodies.

I heard Wilson cry out:

'Are you ready, Jeffson?'

'Aye, Wilson!' cried I.

'_Then here goes!_' cries he.

Even as he spoke, he fired. Surely, the man was in deadly earnest to
kill me.

But his shot passed harmlessly by me: as indeed was only likely: we
were mere shadows one to the other.

I fired perhaps ten seconds later than he: but in those ten seconds he
stood perfectly revealed to me in clear, lavender light.

An Arctic fire-ball had traversed the sky, showering abroad, a
sulphurous glamour over the snow-landscape. Before the intenser blue of
its momentary shine had passed away, I saw Wilson stagger forward, and
drop. And him and his lantern I buried deep there under the rubble ice.

* * * * *

On the 13th March, nearly three months later, Clark, Mew and I left the
Boreal in latitude 85 deg. 15'.

We had with us thirty-two dogs, three sledges, three kayaks, human
provisions for 112 days, and dog provisions for 40. Being now about 340
miles from the Pole, we hoped to reach it in 43 days, then, turning
south, and feeding living dogs with dead, make either Franz Josef Land
or Spitzbergen, at which latter place we should very likely come up with
a whaler.

Well, during the first days, progress was very slow, the ice being rough
and laney, and the dogs behaving most badly, stopping dead at every
difficulty, and leapi