"Thanks, old top," he said. "Thanks."

His fingers closed over the manacle-marked wrist.

Over their heads the arctic storm was crashing in a mighty fury, as if
striving to beat down the little cabin that had dared to rear itself in
the dun-gray emptiness at the top of the world, eight hundred miles
from civilization. There were curious waitings, strange screeching
sounds, and heart-breaking meanings in its strife, and when at last its
passion died away and there followed a strange quiet, the two men could
feel the frozen earth under their feet shiver with the rumbling
reverberations of the crashing and breaking fields of ice out in
Hudson's Bay. With it came a dull and steady roar, like the incessant
rumble of a far battle, broken now and then--when an ice mountain split
asunder--with a report like that of a sixteen-inch gun. Down through
the Roes Welcome into Hudson's Bay countless billions of tons of ice
were rending their way like Hunnish armies in the break-up.

"You'd better lie down," suggested Keith.

Conniston, instead, rose slowly to his feet and went to a table on
which a seal-oil lamp was burning. He swayed a little as he walked. He
sat down, and Keith seated himself opposite him. Between them lay a
worn deck of cards. As Conniston fumbled them in his fingers, he looked
straight across at Keith and grinned.

"It's queer, devilish queer," he said.

"Don't you think so, Keith?" He was an Englishman, and his blue eyes
shone with a grim, cold humor. "And funny," he added.