"Mart of Spitzbergen") called
"Doctor," it was also very charming.

After luncheon was over, and while coffee was being served, the
commander sent Treacle to his cabin for a photograph of all hands which
had been taken when they were at the foot of Mount Erebus; and when it
came I was called upon to identify one by one, the shaggy, tousled,
unkempt, bearded, middle-aged men in the picture with the smart,
clean-shaven young officers who sat round me at the table.

Naturally I made shockingly bad shots, and the worst of them was when I
associated Treacle with the commander, which made the latter rock in
his seat and the former shake and shout so much that he spilled the
coffee.

"But what about the fourth man in the front row from the left?" asked
the commander.

"Oh, I should recognise him if I were blindfolded," I answered.

"By what?"

"By his eyes," I said, and after this truly Irish and feminine answer
the men shrieked with laughter.

"She's got you there, doc," cried somebody.

"She has sure," said Martin, who had said very little down to that
moment, but was looking supremely happy.

At length the time came for the men to go, and I went up on deck to see
them off by the launch, and then nobody was left on the ship except
Martin and myself, with the cook, the cabin-boy and a few of the crew,
including Treacle.

I knew that that was the right time to speak, but I was too greedy of
every moment of happiness to break in on it with the story of my
troubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the ship, away I went
with him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, and
sledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, and
the double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleum
and the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the
men's provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the
dried fish and biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and the
empty cage for the dogs themselves, which had just been sent up to the
Zoo to be taken care of.

Last of all he showed me his own cabin, which interested me more than
anything else, being such a snug little place (though I thought I should
like to tidy it up a bit), with his medical outfit, his books, his bed
like a shelf, and one pretty photograph of his mother's cottage with the
roses growing over it, that I almost felt as if I would not mind going
to the Antarctic my