y, and sparkled upon his
dark seaman's jacket. As we came up some wandering puff of wind caught
these tiny flakes in its vortex, and they whirled up into the air,
partially descended again, and then, caught once more in the current,
sped rapidly away in the direction of the sea. To my eyes it seemed but
a snow-drift, but many of my companions averred that it started up in
the shape of a woman, stooped over the corpse and kissed it, and then
hurried away across the floe. I have learned never to ridicule any man's
opinion, however strange it may seem. Sure it is that Captain Nicholas
Craigie had met with no painful end, for there was a bright smile upon
his blue pinched features, and his hands were still outstretched as
though grasping at the strange visitor which had summoned him away into
the dim world that lies beyond the grave.

We buried him the same afternoon with the ship's ensign around him, and
a thirty-two pound shot at his feet. I read the burial service, while
the rough sailors wept like children, for there were many who owed much
to his kind heart, and who showed now the affection which his strange
ways had repelled during his lifetime. He went off the grating with a
dull, sullen splash, and as I looked into the green water I saw him go
down, down, down until he was but a little flickering patch of white
hanging upon the outskirts of eternal darkness. Then even that faded
away, and he was gone. There he shall lie, with his secret and his
sorrows and his mystery all still buried in his breast, until that great
day when the sea shall give up its dead, and Nicholas Craigie come out
from among the ice with the smile upon his face, and his stiffened arms
outstretched in greeting. I pray that his lot may be a happier one in
that life than it has been in this.

I shall not continue my journal. Our road to home lies plain and clear
before us, and the great ice field will soon be but a remembrance of
the past. It will be some time before I get over the shock produced by
recent events. When I began this record of our voyage I little thought
of how I should be compelled to finish it. I am writing these final
words in the lonely cabin, still starting at times and fancying I hear
the quick nervous step of the dead man upon the deck above me. I entered
his cabin to-night, as was my duty, to make a list of his effects in
order that they might be entered in the official log. All was as it
had been upon my previous visit, sa