Upon our voyage to the north I shall not dwell. I have neither the time nor the willingness to do so. The memory of those days is weird and depressing. I would cover with all speed the place they occupy in this history.

From Bottle Bay we followed the great salt current eastward, as we did not believe it possible to work northward against it. For two days all went well, and we found happiness in our reunion and homeward progress. Then all the joyless misery of Antarctic lands and seas seemed to gather and shut us in.

For five weeks through this blinding fog, crashing ice, and imminent, sleep-destroying peril we crept, and toiled, and struggled, and battled our way toward open water. For days we did not remove our clothing to rest, but lay down ready for instant action, whether to save or desert the ship.

Depression seized upon us all. Edith Gale was ill much of the time and lost her appreciation of the beauties of nature. Even Gale himself found it 306hard to create cheer through this grim period. During moments of comparative calm he wandered about with his hands in his pockets, trying to whistle, but it was a dismal tune.

As for myself, I despaired utterly. More than ever I realized what I had done in bringing those who had trusted me into so dire a plight. And for what? To prove a theory that was worth nothing to them or to me, after all was told. To seek out a practically inaccessible land, and what now seemed to me a paltry, indolent race that added nothing to the world’s store of wealth or progress—to pay for it with our lives. I had promised a new world, perhaps wealth beyond our wildest dreams. I had found, instead, a land of dreams only, and of shadows. I had brought us all, at last, face to face with privation, suffering—death. Even should we eventually reach home, it seemed to me that I, still a penniless adventurer, could not presume to claim the hand of Edith Gale. Truly I was in the depths.

Whether we kept with the current, or what part it played in our struggles, we could not tell, but we reached at last the easier seas below Cape Horn, and here we were met by what seemed to us the King of All Storms, determined at last to destroy us for having penetrated the depths of his domain.

We were off the South Shetlands again, somewhere near the spot where, twenty years before, my 307uncle’s vessel had been last seen battling with a mighty tempest, and was supposed to have gone down. I reflected vaguely that it must have been another just such as this, and that it was a curious fate that had brought me with those I loved to find a grave in the same unfriendly waters.

There were nights, now, and the black sea and sky made this one a memory that divides as with a sable curtain all that went before it from all that followed after.

Once there came a heavy jar as our keel struck and grated over some hidden reef. We had no means of knowing where we were, and even had we known, the knowledge would have availed us little in these uncharted seas.

Suddenly, in the electric glow of our searchlight, there rose straight before us a black wall that was not the penetrable night. A great wave just then lifted us and bore us forward. An instant later there came a jar that threw us from our feet, and then the stanch old Billowcrest no longer tossed and pitched and battled, but lay rocking helplessly, as though wounded to the life.

There came first a quick order to lower the boats. Then another to hold them in readiness, but not to launch until the vessel gave signs of breaking up. It was better to remain where we were, as long as we could—to wait for daylight, if possible. Examined 308below, the Billowcrest showed as yet no opening, and seemed to be lying easily.

Morning dawned at last on a gray, desolate shore, with a sea as gray and desolate, between. But the King of Storms, satisfied, perhaps, that he had stranded us on a desert island, had gone his way.

Chauncey Gale came on deck presently with Edith, still pale and ill, but more animated than she had been for days. With Captain Biffer I had come out early to view the shore.

“Well, Biff,” greeted Gale, “you seem to have got us anchored some place at last. Don’t look much like the last place we stopped, but I s’pose it’s all in a day’s work. What do you call it?”

“One of the South Shetlands, I should say. I don’t know which.”

“How’s the ship? Any holes in her yet?”

“No, and she ain’t grinding any that I can hear. But she’s aground good and hard. She seems to be on a flat surface—mebbe sand. The sea’s running down, too, and I shouldn’t wonder if we were left high and dry before long.”

“Oh, can’t we go ashore?” asked Edith Gale, eagerly.

Poor girl, it was the first real land she had seen for more than a year, and even this cheerless coast seemed inviting.

Captain Biffer nodded grimly.

309“We’ll have plenty of time to do that, ma’am,” he said, “before we get out of here, I’m thinking.”

“Oh, Nicholas, will you take me right away? I do so want to set foot on solid ground again.”

“We will go as soon as the Captain will let us,” I said, “and give us somebody to take us over.”

The sea continued to run down, and during the forenoon the Billowcrest listed, though far less than if she had been a deeper vessel. The weather cleared just before luncheon, and soon afterwards Chauncey and Edith Gale, with Officer Larkins and myself, and a small crew, made ready to set out in the launch for investigation. At the last moment, we heard somebody come puffing up the companion-way, and Zar, fully arrayed for the trip, stood before us.

“Look heah, I wan’ you take me in dat boat! I jes’ wan’ to set dis old foot on solidificated groun’ once more befo’ I die. I mighty tiahd dis ole ship dat toss, an’ tip, an’ spread-eagle, and doubleshuffle, an’ keep hit up foh six weeks at a stretch, an’ now tip ovah like a side-hill, so a’ old, fat ’ooman like me cain’t fin’ her balance, nohow. I w............