bling from head to foot.

"What is the matter? What has frightened you, my dear?"

"Lucy! I _have_ heard of him!"

"Richard Wardour again?"

"Remember what I told you. I have heard every word of the conversation
between Captain Helding and your husband. A man came to the captain this
morning and volunteered to join the _Wanderer_. The captain has taken
him. The man is Richard Wardour."

"You don't mean it! Are you sure? Did you hear Captain Helding mention
his name?"

"No."

"Then how do you know it's Richard Wardour?"

"Don't ask me! I am as certain of it, as that I am standing here! They
are going away together, Lucy--away to the eternal ice and snow. My
foreboding has come true! The two will meet--the man who is to marry me
and the man whose heart I have broken!"

"Your foreboding has _not_ come true, Clara! The men have not met
here--the men are not likely to meet elsewhere. They are appointed
to separate ships. Frank belongs to the _Sea-mew_, and Wardour to the
_Wanderer_. See! Captain Helding has done. My husband is coming this
way. Let me make sure. Let me speak to him."

Lieutenant Crayford returned to his wife. She spoke to him instantly.

"William! you have got a new volunteer who joins the _Wanderer_?"

"What! you have been listening to the captain and me?"

"I want to know his name?"

"How in the world did you manage to hear what we said to each other?"

"His name? has the captain given you his name?"

"Don't excite yourself, my dear. Look! you are positively alarming Miss
Burnham. The new volunteer is a perfect stranger to us. There is his
name--last on the ship's list."

Mrs. Crayford snatched the list out of her husband's hand, and read the
name:

"RICHARD WARDOUR."

Second Scene--The Hut of the _Sea-mew_.

Chapter 6.

Good-by to England! Good-by to inhabited and civilized regions of the
earth!

Two years have passed since the voyagers sailed from their native
shores. The enterprise has failed--the Arctic expedition is lost and
ice-locked in the Polar wastes. The good ships _Wanderer_ and _Sea-mew_,
entombed in ice, will never ride the buoyant waters more. Stripped of
their lighter timbers, both vessels have been used for the construction
of huts, erected on the nearest land.

The largest of the two buildings which now shelter the lost men is
occupied by the surviving officers and crew of the _Sea-mew_. On one
side of the principal room are the sleeping berths an