urned towards the doctor, they saw his eyes full of tears.

"Ah, my friends," he murmured, as he dried his eyes, "how can my heart
hold the joy with which you fill it? My dear companions, you have
sacrificed a miserable question of nationality in order to unite in
your common success! You know that England and America have nothing to
do with all this; that mutual sympathy ought to bind you together
against the dangers of the journey! If the North Pole is discovered,
what difference does it make who does it? Why stand bickering about
English or American, when we can be proud of being men?"

The doctor embraced the reconciled foes; he could not restrain his
joy. The two new friends felt themselves drawn closer together by the
friendship this worthy man had for them both. Clawbonny spoke freely
of the vanity of competition, of the madness of rivalry, and of the
need of agreement between men so far from home. His words, his tears
and caresses, came from the bottom of his heart.

Still, he grew calm after embracing Hatteras and Altamont for the
twentieth time.

"And now," he said, "to work, to work! Since I was no use as a hunter,
let me try in another capacity!"

Thereupon he started to cut up the ox, which he called the "ox of
reconciliation," but he did it as skilfully as if he were a surgeon
conducting a delicate autopsy. His two companions gazed at him in
amusement. In a few minutes he had cut from the body a hundred pounds
of flesh; he gave each one a third of it, and they again took up their
march to Fort Providence. At ten o'clock in the evening, after walking
in the oblique rays of the sun, they reached Doctor's House, where
Johnson and Bell had a good supper awaiting them.

But before they sat down to table, the doctor said in a voice of
triumph, as he pointed to his two companions,--

"Johnson, I carried away with me an Englishman and an American, did I
not?"

"Yes, Dr. Clawbonny," answered the boatswain.

"Well, I've brought back two brothers."

[Illustration: "'Well, I've brought back two brothers.'"]

The two sailors gladly shook Altamont's hand; the doctor told them
what the American captain had done for the English captain, and that
night the snow-house held five perfectly happy men.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LAST PREPARATIONS.

The next day the weather changed; there was a return of cold; the snow
and rain gust raged for many days.

Bell had finished the launch; it was perfectly satisfact