in a disordered patch of snow, with one little eye open, and her
fierce-looking mouth also; and the cub lay across her haunch, biting
into her rough fur. I set to work upon her, and allowed the dogs a
glorious feed on the blubber, while I myself had a great banquet on the
fresh meat. I had to leave the greater part of the two carcasses, and I
can feel again now the hankering reluctance--quite unnecessary, as it
turned out--with which I trudged onwards. Again and again I found
myself asking: 'Now, what could have killed those two bears?'

With brutish stolidness I plodded ever on, almost like a walking
machine, sometimes nodding in sleep while I helped the dogs, or
manouvred the sledge over an ice-ridge, pushing or pulling. On the 3rd
June, a month and a half from my start, I took an observation with the
theodolite, and found that I was not yet 400 miles from the Pole, in
latitude 84° 50'. It was just as though some Will, some Will, was
obstructing and retarding me.

However, the intolerable cold was over, and soon my clothes no longer
hung stark on me like armour. Pools began to appear in the ice, and
presently, what was worse, my God, long lanes, across which, somehow, I
had to get the sledge. But about the same time all fear of starvation
passed away: for on the 6th June I came across another dead bear, on the
7th three, and thenceforth, in rapidly growing numbers, I met not bears
only, but fulmars, guillemots, snipes, Ross's gulls, little awks--all,
all, lying dead on the ice. And never anywhere a living thing, save me,
and the two remaining dogs.

If ever a poor man stood shocked before a mystery, it was I now. I had a
big fear on my heart.