run. We all got a glimpse of it and ran too. At first it was only
a vague darkness against the white ice, but as we raced along
together it took the shape of a man, and eventually of the man of
whom we were in search. He was lying face downwards upon a frozen
bank. Many little crystals of ice and feathers of snow had drifted
on to him as he lay, and sparkled upon his dark seaman's jacket.
As we came up some wandering puff of wind caught these tiny flakes
in its vortex, and they whirled up into the air, partially
descended again, and then, caught once more in the current, sped
rapidly away in the direction of the sea. To my eyes it seemed but
a snow-drift, but many of my companions averred that it started up
in the shape of a woman, stooped over the corpse and kissed it, and
then hurried away across the floe. I have learned never to
ridicule any man's opinion, however strange it may seem. Sure it
is that Captain Nicholas Craigie had met with no painful end, for
there was a bright smile upon his blue pinched features, and his
hands were still outstretched as though grasping at the strange
visitor which had summoned him away into the dim world that lies
beyond the grave.

We buried him the same afternoon with the ship's ensign around him,
and a thirty-two pound shot at his feet. I read the burial
service, while the rough sailors wept like children, for there were
many who owed much to his kind heart, and who showed now the
affection which his strange ways had repelled during his
lifetime. He went off the grating with a dull, sullen splash, and
as I looked into the green water I saw him go down, down, down
until he was but a little flickering patch of white hanging upon
the outskirts of eternal darkness. Then even that faded away, and
he was gone. There he shall lie, with his secret and his sorrows