put his hand to the head, and a lax skin came away at his touch.... It
was Aubrey Maitland who was underneath it, and I had shot him dead.

For the past few days he had been cleaning skins, among them the skin of
the bear from which I had saved him at Taimur. Now, Maitland was a born
pantomimist, continually inventing practical jokes; and perhaps to
startle me with a false alarm in the very skin of the old Bruin which
had so nearly done for him, he had thrown it round him on finishing its
cleaning, and so, in mere wanton fun, had crept on deck at the hour of
his watch. The head of the bear-skin, and the fog, must have prevented
him from seeing me taking aim.

This tragedy made me ill for weeks. I saw that the hand of Fate was upon
me. When I rose from bed, poor Maitland was lying in the ice behind the
great camel-shaped hummock near us.

By the end of January we had drifted to 80° 55'; and it was then that
Clark, in the presence of Wilson, asked me if I would make the fourth
man, in the place of poor Maitland, for the dash in the spring. As I
said 'Yes, I am willing,' David Wilson spat with a disgusted emphasis. A
minute later he sighed, with 'Ah, poor Maitland...' and drew in his
breath with a _tut! tut!_

God knows, I had an impulse to spring then and there at his throat, and
strangle him: but I curbed myself.

There remained now hardly a month before the dash, and all hands set to
work with a will, measuring the dogs, making harness and seal-skin shoes
for them, overhauling sledges and kayaks, and cutting every possible
ounce of weight. But we were not destined, after all, to set out that