must be a mile across, and in its middle is a pillar of
ice, very low and broad; and I had the clear impression, or dream, or
notion, that there was a name, or word, graven all round in the ice of
the pillar in characters which I could never read; and under the name a
long date; and the fluid of the lake seemed to me to be wheeling with a
shivering ecstasy, splashing and fluttering, round the pillar, always
from west to east, in the direction of the spinning of the earth; and it
was borne in upon me--I can't at all say how--that this fluid was the
substance of a living creature; and I had the distinct fancy, as my
senses failed, that it was a creature with many dull and anguished eyes,
and that, as it wheeled for ever round in fluttering lust, it kept its
eyes always turned upon the name and the date graven in the pillar. But
this must be my madness....

* * * * *

It must have been not less than an hour before a sense of life returned
to me; and when the thought stabbed my brain that a long, long time I
had lain there in the presence of those gloomy orbs, my spirit seemed to
groan and die within me.

In some minutes, however, I had scrambled to my feet, clutched at a
dog's harness, and without one backward glance, was flying from that
place.

Half-way to the halting-place, I waited Clark and Mew, being very sick
and doddering, and unable to advance. But they did not come.

Later on, when I gathered force to go further, I found that they had
perished in the upheaval of the ice. One only of the sledges, half
buried, I saw near the spot of our bivouac.

* * * * *

Alone that same day I began my way southward, and for five days made
good progress. On the eighth day I noticed, stretched right across the
south-eastern horizon, a region of purple vapour which luridly obscured
the face of the sun: and day after day I saw it steadily brooding
there. But what it could be I did not understand.

* * * * *

Well, onward through the desert ice I continued my lonely way, with a
baleful shrinking terror in my heart; for very stupendous, alas! is the
burden of that Arctic solitude upon one poor human soul.

Sometimes on a halt I have lain and listened long to the hollow silence,
recoiling, crushed by it, hoping that at least one of the dogs might
whine. I have even crept shivering from the thawed sleeping-bag to flog
a dog, so that