He dropped the plank, and turned deadly pale in a moment. His
eyes wandered furtively backward and forward between the strip of
wood on the floor and the half-demolished berth. "Oh, God! what
has come to me now?" he said to himself, in a whisper. He
snatched up the ax, with a strange cry--something between rage
and terror. He tried--fiercely, desperately tried--to go on with
his work. No! strong as he was, he could not use the ax. His
hands were helpless; they trembled incessantly. He went to the
fire; he held his hands over it. They still trembled incessantly;
they infected the rest of him. He shuddered all over. He knew
fear. His own thoughts terrified him.

"Crayford!" he cried out. "Crayford! come here, and let's go
hunting."

No friendly voice answered him. No friendly face showed itself at
the door.

An interval passed; and there came over him another change. He
recovered his self-possession almost as suddenly as he had lost
it. A smile--a horrid, deforming, unnatural smile--spread slowly,
stealthily, devilishly over his face. He left the fire; he put
the ax away softly in a corner; he sat down in his old place,
deliberately self-abandoned to a frenzy of vindictive joy. He had
found the man! There, at the end of the world--there, at the last
fight of the Arctic voyagers against starvation and death, he had
found the man!

The minutes passed.