say--or did he say
anything--the captain, I mean--this morning about going up again? I
heard you talking to him at breakfast. That's it, that's the kind of
talk he needs. I can't talk that talk to him. I'm so main scared of him.
I wouldn't 'a' believed the captain would ever say he'd give up, would
ever say he was beaten. But, Miss, I'm thinking as there's something
wrong, main wrong with the captain these days besides fever. He's
getting soft--that's what he is. If you'd only know the man that he
was--before--while we was up there in the Ice! That's his work, that's
what he's cut out for. There ain't nobody can do it but him, and to see
him quit, to see him chuck up his chance to a third-rate ice-pilot like
Duane--a coastwise college professor that don't know no more about Ice
than--than you do--it regularly makes me sick. Why, what will become of
the captain now if he quits? He'll just settle down to an ordinary
stay-at-home, write-in-a-book professor, and write articles for the
papers and magazines, and bye-and-bye, maybe, he'll get down to
lecturing! Just fancy, Miss, him, the captain, lecturing! And while he
stays at home and writes, and--oh, Lord!--lectures, somebody else,
without a fifth of his ability, will do the _work_. It'll just naturally
break my heart, it will!" exclaimed Adler, "if the captain chucks. I
wouldn't be so main sorry that he won't reach the Pole as that he quit
trying--as that a man like the captain--or like what I thought he
was--gave up and chucked when he could win."

"But, Adler," returned Lloyd, "the captain--Mr. Bennett, it seems to me,
has done his share. Think what he's been through. You can't have
forgotten the march to Kolyuchin Bay?"

But Adler made an impatient gesture with the hand that held the cap.
"The danger don't figure; what he'd have to go through with don't
figure; the chances of life or death don't figure; nothing in the world
don't figure. _It's his work_; God A'mighty cut him out for that, and
he's got to do it. Ain't you got any influence with him, Miss? Won't you
talk good talk to him? Don't let him chuck; don't let him get soft. Make
him be a Man and not a professor."

When Adler had left her Lloyd sank into a little seat at the edge of the
garden walk, and let the flowers drop into her lap, and leaned back in
her place, wide-eyed and thoughtful, reviewing in her imagination the
events of the past few months. What a change that summer had brought to
both of them;