following twelve persons: ... All well with
the exception of Mr. Ferriss, the chief engineer, whose left hand
has been badly frostbitten. No scurvy in the party as yet. We have
eighteen Ostiak dogs with us in prime condition, and expect to drag
our ship's boat upon sledges.

"WARD BENNETT, Commanding Freja Arctic Exploring Expedition."

Bennett returned this copy of the record to its place in the box, and
stood for a moment in the centre of the tent, his head bent to avoid the
ridge-pole, looking thoughtfully upon the ground.

Well, so far all had gone right--no scurvy, provisions in plenty. The
dogs were in good condition, his men cheerful, trusting in him as in a
god, and surely no leader could wish for a better lieutenant and comrade
than Richard Ferriss--but this hummocky ice--these pressure-ridges which
the expedition had met the day before. Instead of turning at once to his
ciphering Bennett drew the hood of the wolfskin coat over his head,
buttoned a red flannel mask across his face, and, raising the flap of
the tent, stepped outside.

Under the lee of the tent the dogs were sleeping, moveless bundles of
fur, black and white, perceptibly steaming. The three great McClintock
sledges, weighted down with the Freja's boats and with the expedition's
impedimenta, lay where they had been halted the evening before.

In the sky directly in front of Bennett as he issued from the tent three
moons, hooped in a vast circle of nebulous light, shone roseate through
a fine mist, while in the western heavens streamers of green, orange,
and vermilion light, immeasurably vast, were shooting noiselessly from
horizon to zenith.

But Bennett had more on his mind that morning than mock-moons and
auroras. To the south and east, about a quarter of a mile from the tent,
the pressure of the floes had thrown up an enormous ridge of shattered
ice-cakes, a mound, a long hill of blue-green slabs and blocks huddling
together at every conceivable angle. It was nearly twenty feet in
height, quite the highest point that Bennett could discover. Scrambling
and climbing over countless other ridges that intervened, he made his
way to it, ascended it almost on hands and knees, and, standing upon its
highest point, looked long and carefully to the southward.

A wilderness beyond all thought, words, or imagination desolate
stretched out before him there forever and forever--ice, ice, ice,
fields and floes of ice, laying themselves out under that