me when for three days we
saw no ice and the men's tongues were stiff for thirst. Their eyes
looked cruel and sad. Thus, one night, as I lay at my place under the
forward seat, wrapped in a bear-skin, I saw the black figure of a man on
the rail at the other side of the ship. He crept to where the rail ends
in the lift of the fore-deck. Then, dropping to the bench under which I
lay, he crawled to the cauldron where a little water was left, and
putting in his hand he broke off, little by little, pieces, until I
could see by the long time that his hand rested in the cauldron that
there was no more there. Then I reached out and grasped him by the leg
and pulling him off the bench I rolled myself about him and called out
for the oar-captain. The oar-captain came and all the men came after and
they lit a light, and I lay off him, and we saw his face; and the
oar-captain said--and to every man it seemed just--

"You have stolen the last of our water, more than your share, therefore
you shall go to join your comrades under the sea; when you are ready."

The man drew himself up and walked the length of the ship stepping from
bench to bench, we all following, our feet making a clatter as we went.
He came to the upper-deck and climbed up, and went to the rail and stood
there and looked on the moveless sea under the moonlight.

"Are you ready?" asked the oar-captain.

"Get out your oars," answered the man.

Some half of the men went to their places and shoved the oars out.

"When I go, row!" he said, in a loud voice.

Then, climbing across the bulwark, he stood at the edge a moment his
hands on his hips, then suddenly he raised his clenched fists in the
air, and in perfect silence met the sea. As we rowed away, we could see
his dark head in the moonlight as he swam, and until we had shifted the
position of the ship many times we could not lose it, as the men rowed
on, the oars creaking, and the indifferent moonlight silvering their
slow dips.

* * * * *

We are bound in by the ice, and the ship lies high in the bow, white,
like a lord's tomb in the snow. It has been snowing all day, and the
oar-captain makes us tramp one after the other round the half-buried
ship till we can walk no more, when we sleep in the skins under the
fore-deck till a comrade shakes us, and we groan and rouse and walk
again. The dull sky has turned to the colour of ashes. Sometimes the air
lifts for a moment into a sl