ement.
But a few minutes after four o'clock Bennett awoke. He was usually up
about half an hour before the others. On the day before he had been able
to get a meridian altitude of the sun, and was anxious to complete his
calculations as to the expedition's position on the chart that he had
begun in the evening.

He pushed back the flap of the sleeping-bag and rose to his full height,
passing his hands over his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He was
an enormous man, standing six feet two inches in his reindeer footnips
and having the look more of a prize-fighter than of a scientist. Even
making allowances for its coating of dirt and its harsh, black stubble
of half a week's growth, the face was not pleasant. Bennett was an ugly
man. His lower jaw was huge almost to deformity, like that of the
bulldog, the chin salient, the mouth close-gripped, with great lips,
indomitable, brutal. The forehead was contracted and small, the forehead
of men of single ideas, and the eyes, too, were small and twinkling, one
of them marred by a sharply defined cast.

But as Bennett was fumbling in the tin box that was lashed upon the
number four sledge, looking for his notebook wherein he had begun his
calculations for latitude, he was surprised to find a copy of the record
he had left in the instrument box under the cairn at Cape Kammeni at the
beginning of this southerly march. He had supposed that this copy had
been mislaid, and was not a little relieved to come across it now. He
read it through hastily, his mind reviewing again the incidents of the
last few months. Certain extracts of this record ran as follows:

"Arctic steamer Freja, on ice off Cape Kammeni, New Siberian
Islands, 76 deg. 10 min. north latitude, 150 deg. 40 min. east
longitude, July 12, 1891.... We accordingly froze the ship in on
the last day of September, 1890, and during the following winter
drifted with the pack in a northwesterly direction.... On Friday,
July 10, 1891, being in latitude 76 deg. 10 min. north; longitude
150 deg. 10 min. east, the Freja was caught in a severe nip between
two floes and was crushed, sinking in about two hours. We abandoned
her, saving 200 days' provisions and all necessary clothing,
instruments, etc....

"I shall now attempt a southerly march over the ice to Kolyuchin Bay
by way of Wrangel Island, where provisions have been cached, hoping
to fall in with the relief ships or steam whalers on the way. Our
party consists of the