* * * * *

Well, onward through the desert ice I continued my lonely way, with a
baleful shrinking terror in my heart; for very stupendous, alas! is the
burden of that Arctic solitude upon one poor human soul.

Sometimes on a halt I have lain and listened long to the hollow silence,
recoiling, crushed by it, hoping that at least one of the dogs might
whine. I have even crept shivering from the thawed sleeping-bag to flog
a dog, so that I might hear a sound.

I had started from the Pole with a well-filled sledge, and the sixteen
dogs left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This was
on the evening of the 13th April. I had saved from the wreck of our
things most of the whey-powder, pemmican, &c., as well as the
theodolite, compass, chronometer, train-oil lamp for cooking, and other
implements: I was therefore in no doubt as to my course, and I had
provisions for ninety days. But ten days from the start my supply of
dog-food failed, and I had to begin to slaughter my only companions, one
by one.

Well, in the third week the ice became horribly rough, and with moil
and toil enough to wear a bear to death, I did only five miles a day.
After the day's work I would crawl with a dying sigh into the
sleeping-bag, clad still in the load of skins which stuck to me a mere
filth of grease, to sleep the sleep of a swine, indifferent if I never
woke.

Always--day after day--on the south-eastern horizon, brooded sullenly
that curious stretched-out region of purple vapour, like the smoke of