e the captain with an excuse for turning
back before the object is attained."

"Count on me, Mr. Jeorling, I will serve you to the best of my
ability."

"You will not repent of doing so, Hurliguerly. Nothing is easier
than to add a round o to the four hundred dollars which each man is
to have, if that man be something more than a sailor--even were his
functions simply those of boatswain on board the _Halbrane_."

Nothing important occurred on the 13th and 14th, but a fresh fall in
the temperature took place. Captain Len Guy called my attention to
this, pointing out the flocks of birds continuously flying north.

While he was speaking to me I felt that his last hopes were fading.
And who could wonder? Of the land indicated by the half-breed
nothing was seen, and we were already more than one hundred and
eighty miles Tsalal Island. At every point of the compass was the
sea, nothing but the vast sea with its desert horizon which the
sun's disk had been nearing since the 21st and would touch on the
21st March, prior to during the six months of the austral night.
Honestly, was it possible to admit that William Guy and his five
panions could have accomplished such a distance on a craft, and was
there one chance in a hundred that the could ever be recovered?

On the 15th of January an observation most carefully taken gave 43 deg.
13' longitude and 88 deg. 17' latitude. The _Halbrane_ was less than
two degrees from the pole.

Captain Len Guy did not seek to conceal the result of this
observation, and the sailors knew enough of nautical calculation to
understand it. Besides, if the consequences had to be explained to
them, were not Holt and Hardy there to do this, and Hearne, to
exaggerate them to the utmost?

During the afternoon I had indubitable proof that the sealing-master
had been working on the minds of the crew. The men, emerging at the
foot of the mainmast, talked in whispers and cast evil glances at
us. Two or three sailors made threatening gestures undisguisedly;
then arose such angry mutterings that West could not to be deaf to
them.

He strode forward and called out. "Silence, there! The first man
who speaks will have to reckon with me?"

Captain Len Guy was shut up in his cabin, but every moment I
expected to see him come out, give one last long around the waste of
waters, and then order the ship's course to be reversed.
Nevertheless, on the next day the schooner was sailing in the same
direction. Unfo