n the slush with his feet like a hen. For already this
slight gallinaceous effort of his had laid bare a hairy section of frozen
mammoth.

Lezard, weeping bitterly, squatted beside him clawing at the thin skin of
ice with a pick-axe.

It seemed more than I could bear and I flung myself from my mule and
seizing a spade, fell violently to work, the tears of rage and
mortification coursing down my cheeks.

"Hurrah!" cried Dr. Delmour, excitedly, scrambling down from her mule and
lifting a box of dynamite from her saddle-bags.

Transfigured with enthusiasm she seized a crowbar, traced in the slush
the huge outlines of the buried beast, then, measuring with practiced eye
the irregular zone of cleavage, she marked out a vast oval, dug holes
along it with her bar, dropped into each hole a stick of dynamite, got
out the batteries and wires, attached the fuses, covered each charge,
and retired on a run toward the moraine, unreeling wire as she sped
upward among the bowlders.

Half frantic with grief and half mad with the excitement of the moment we
still had sense enough to shoulder our tools and drive our mules back
across the moraine.

Only the mule-hammock in which reposed Professor Bottomly remained on the
marsh. For one horrid instant temptation assailed me to press the button
before James Skaw could lead the hammock-mules up to the moraine. It was
my closest approach to crime.

With a shudder I viewed the approach of the mules. James Skaw led them by
the head; the hammock on its bar and swivels swung gently between them;
Professor Bottomly slept, lulled, no doubt, to deeper slumber by the
gently swaying hammock.

When the hammock came up, one by one we gazed upon its unconscious
occupant.

And, even amid dark and revengeful thoughts, amid a mental chaos of grief
and fury and frantic self-reproach, I had to admit to myself that Jane
Bottomly was a fine figure of a woman, and good-looking, too, and that
her hair was all her own and almost magnificent at that.

With a modiste to advise her, a maid to dress her, I myself might
have--but let that pass. Only as I gazed upon her fresh complexion and
the softly parted red lips of Professor Bottomly, and as I noted the
beautiful white throat and prettily shaped hands, a newer, bitterer, and
more overwhelming despair seized me; and I realized now that perhaps I
had thrown away more than fame, honours, applause; I had perhaps thrown
away love!

At that moment Professor