w him in my life until this last October, when, one windy day,
he found me coughing on the Exton pier; and, soon afterward, he brought
me down here."

"Came, then, on your account?"

"By no means; he was coming himself. It's a queer story; I'll tell it to
you. It seems he went with the Kenton Arctic expedition--you remember
it? Two of the ships were lost; his was one. But I'll have to get up and
say it as he did." Here Carl rose, put down his pipe, extended one hand
stiffly in a fixed position, and went on speaking, his very voice, by
force of the natural powers of mimicry he possessed, sounding like
Mark's:

"We were a company of eight when we started away from the frozen hulk,
which would never see clear water under her bows again. Once before we
had started, thirty-five strong, and had come back thirteen. Five had
died in the old ship, and now the last survivors were again starting
forth. We drew a sledge behind us, carrying our provisions and the
farcical records of the expedition which had ended in death, as they
must all end. We soon lose sight of the vessel. It was our only shelter,
and we look back; then, at each other. 'Cheer up!' says one. 'Take this
extra skin, Mark; I am stronger than you.' It's Proctor's voice that
speaks. Ten days go by. There are only five of us now, and we are
walking on doggedly across the ice, the numbing ice, the killing ice,
the never-ending, gleaming, taunting, devilish ice. We have left the
sledge behind. No trouble now for each to carry his share of food, it is
so light. Now we walk together for a while; now we separate, sick of
seeing one another's pinched faces, but we keep within call. On the
eleventh day a wind rises; bergs come sailing into view. One moves down
upon us. Its peak shining in the sunshine far above is nothing to the
great mass that moves on under the water. Our ice-field breaks into a
thousand pieces. We leap from block to block; we cry aloud in our
despair; we call to each other, and curse, and pray. But the strips of
dark water widen between us; our ice-islands grow smaller; and a current
bears us onward. We can no longer keep in motion, and freeze as we
stand. Two float near each other as darkness falls; 'Cheer up, Mark,
cheer up!' cries one, and throws his flask across the gap between. Again
it is Proctor's voice that speaks.

"In the morning only one is left alive. The others are blocks of ice,
and float around in the slow eddy, each solemnly staring, o