ocks of the chartroom doors were slight,
they flew open, and the carpenter, possessing himself of the captain's
revolver, fired a shot of defiance.

Falk was about to go on deck and have it out at once, when he remarked
that one of the ports of his cabin commanded the approaches to the
freshwater pump. Instead of going out he remained in and secured the
door. "The best man shall survive," he said to himself--and the other,
he reasoned, must at some time or other come there to drink. These
starving men would drink often to cheat the pangs of their hunger. But
the carpenter too must have noticed the position of the port. They were
the two best men in the ship, and the game was with them. All the rest
of the day Falk saw no one and heard no sound. At night he strained his
eyes. It was dark--he heard a rustling noise once, but he was certain
that no one could have come near the pump. It was to the left of his
deck port, and he could not have failed to see a man, for the night was
clear and starry. He saw nothing; towards morning another faint noise
made him suspicious. Deliberately and quietly he unlocked his door. He
had not slept, and had not given way to the horror of the situation. He
wanted to live.

But during the night the carpenter, without at all trying to approach
the pump, had managed to creep quietly along the starboard bulwark, and,
unseen, had crouched down right under Falk's deck port. When daylight
came he rose up suddenly, looked in, and putting his arm through the
round brass framed opening, fired at Falk within a foot. He missed--and
Falk, instead of attempting to seize the arm holding the weapon, opened
his door unexpectedly, and with the muzzle of his long revolver nearly
touching the other's side, shot him dead.

The best man had survived. Both of them had at the beginning just
strength enough to stand on their feet, and both had displayed pitiless
resolution, endurance, cunning and courage--all the qualities of classic
heroism. At once Falk threw overboard the captain's revolver. He was a
born monopolist. Then after the report of the two shots, followed by a
profound silence, there crept out into the cold, cruel dawn of Antarctic
regions, from various hiding-places, over the deck of that dismantled
corpse of a ship floating on a grey sea ruled by iron necessity and with
a heart of ice--there crept into view one by one, cautious, slow, eager,
glaring, and unclean, a band of hungry and livid skeletons