mer home.

The good people at Port Lyttelton were loath to let us go. But after I
had made my excuses, ("crazy to get back to wives and sweethearts, you
know") they sent a school of boys (stunning little chaps in Eton suits)
to sing us off with "Forty Years On"--which brought more of my mother
into my eyes than I knew to be left there.

At Sydney we had the same experience--the same hearty crowds, the same
welcome, the same invitations, to which we made the same replies, and
then got away by a fast liner which happened to be ready to sail.

On the way "back to the world" I had slung together a sort of a despatch
for the newspaper which had promoted our expedition (a lame, limping
thing for want of my darling's help to make it go), saying something
about the little we had been able to do but more about what we meant,
please God, to do some day.

"She'll see that, anyway, and know we're coming back," I thought.

But to make doubly sure I sent two personal telegrams, one to my dear
one at Castle Raa and the other to my old people at home, asking for
answers to Port Said.

Out on the sea again I was tormented by the old dream of the crevassed
glacier; and if anybody wonders why a hulking chap who had not been
afraid of a ninety-mile blizzard in the region of the Pole allowed
himself to be kept awake at night by a buzzing in the brain, all I can
say is that it was so, and I know nothing more about it.

Perhaps my recent experience with the "wireless" persuaded me that if
two sticks stuck in the earth could be made to communicate with each
other over hundreds of miles, two hearts that loved each other knew no
limitations of time or space.

In any case I was now so sure that my dear one had called me home from
the Antarctic that by the time we reached Port Said, and telegrams were
pouring in on me, I had worked myself up to such a fear that I dared not
open them.

From sheer dread of the joy or sorrow that might be enclosed in the
yellow covers, I got O'Sullivan down in my cabin to read my telegrams,
while I scanned his face and nearly choked with my own tobacco smoke.

There was nothing from my dear one! Nothing from my people at home
either!

O'Sullivan got it into his head that I was worrying about my parents,
and tried to comfort me by saying that old folks never dreamt of
telegraphing, but by the holy immaculate Mother he'd go bail there would
be a letter for me before long.

There was.

We stayed two ete