We settled into our second winter-quarters. Again came December, and all our drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would not work, leaving us without the electric light.
Ah me, none but those who have felt it could dream of one half the mental depression of that long Arctic night; how the soul takes on the hue of the world; and without and within is nothing but gloom, gloom, and the reign of the Power of Darkness.
Not one of us but was in a melancholic, dismal and dire mood; and on the 13th December Lamburn, the engineer, stabbed Cartwright, the old harpooner, in the arm.
Three days before Christmas a bear came close to the ship, and then turned tail. Mew, Wilson, I and Meredith (a general hand) set out in pursuit. After a pretty long chase we lost him, and then scattered different ways. It was very dim, and after yet an hour’s search, I was returning weary and disgusted to the ship, when I saw some shadow like a bear sailing away on my left, and at the same time sighted a man—I did not know whom—running like a handicapped ghost some little distance to the right. So I shouted out:
“There he is—come on! This way!”
The man quickly joined me, but as soon as ever he recognised me, stopped dead. The devil must have suddenly got into him, for he said:
“No, thanks, Jeffson: alone with you I am in danger of my life. …”
It was Wilson. And I, too, forgetting at once all about the bear, stopped and faced him.
“I see,” said I. “But, Wilson, you are going to explain to me now what you mean, you hear? What do you mean, Wilson?”
“What I say,” he answered deliberately, eyeing me up and down: “alone with you I am in danger of my life. Just as poor Maitland was, and just as poor Peters was. Certainly, you are a deadly beast.”
Fury leapt, my God, in my heart. Black as the tenebrous Arctic night was my soul.
“Do you mean,” said I, “that I want to put you out of the way in order to go in your place to the Pole? Is that your meaning, man?”
“That’s about my meaning, Jeffson,” says he: “you are a deadly beast, you know.”
“Stop!” I said, with blazing eye. “I am going to kill you, Wilson—as sure as God lives: but I want to hear first. Who told you that I killed Peters?”
“Your lover killed him—with your collusion. Why, I heard you, man, in your beastly sleep, calling the whole thing out. And I was pretty sure of it before, only I had no proofs. By God, I should enjoy putting a bullet into you, Jeffson!”
“You wrong me—you, you wrong me!” I shrieked, my eyes staring with ravenous lust for his blood; “and now I am going to pay you well for it. Look out, you!”
I aimed my gun for his heart, and I touched the trigger. He held up his left hand.
“Stop,” he said, “stop.” (He was one of the coolest of men ordinarily.) “There is no gallows on the Boreal, but Clark could easily rig one for you. I want to kill you, too, because there are no criminal courts up here, and it would be doing a good action for my country. But not here—not now. Listen to me—don’t shoot. Later we can meet, when all is ready, so that no one may be the wiser, and fight it all out.”
As he spoke I let the gun drop. It was better so. I knew that he was much the best shot on the ship, and I an indifferent one: but I did not care, I did not care, if I was killed.
It is a dim, inclement land, God knows: and the spirit of darkness and distraction is there.
Twenty hours later we met behind the great saddle-shaped hummock, some six miles to the S. E. of the ship. We had set out at different times, so that no one might suspect. And each brought a ship’s-lantern.
Wilson had dug an ice-grave near the hummock, leaving at its edge a heap of brash-ice and snow to fill it. We stood separated by an interval of perhaps seventy yards, the grave between us, each with a lantern at his feet.
Even so we were mere shadowy apparitions one to the other. The air glowered very drearily, and present in my inmost soul were the frills of cold. A chill moon, a mere abstraction of light, seemed to hang far outside the universe. The temperature was at 55° below zero, so that we had on wind-clothes over our anoraks, and heavy foot-bandages under our Lap boots. Nothing but a weird morgue seemed the world, haunted with despondent madness; and exactly like that world about us were the minds of us two poor men, full of macabre, bleak, and funereal feelings.
Between us yawned an early grave for one or other of our bodies.
I heard Wilson cry out:
“Are you ready, Jeffson?”
“Aye, Wilson!” cried I.
“Then here goes!” cries he.
Even as he spoke, he fired. Surely, the man was in deadly earnest to kill me.
But his shot passed harmlessly by me: as indeed was only likely: we were mere shadows one to the other.
I fired perhaps ten seconds later than he: but in those ten seconds he stood perfectly revealed to me in clear, lavender light.
An Arctic fireball had traversed the sky, showering abroad, a sulphurous glamour over the snow-landscape. Before the intenser blue of its momentary shine had passed away, I saw Wilson stagger forward, and drop. And him and his lantern I buried deep there under the rubble ice.
On the 13th March, nearly three months later, Clark, Mew and I left the Boreal in latitude 85° 15′.
We had with us thirty-two dogs, three sledges, three kayaks, human provisions for 112 days, and dog provisions for 40. Being now about 340 miles from the
