just in front of me I saw a great wave come pouring over the ship's side. Somebody seized my hand and there was a startled cry of my name. Then somebody was clinging to me-somebody that I was holding close and helping into the cabin. In the half blackness I saw that Chauncey Gale and Ferratoni were just behind. The cabin was dark and the ship pitching violently.

It was all over in ten minutes.

rolled, but the storm had passed.

The vessel still

Zar, who had

been napping when the Pampeiro struck, came running in to her mistress.

"You po' li'l' lam', how wet you is!" she said, an' how yo' heart beat-so frightened!"

She bore off her charge, and the rest of us took account of stock.

We found we had lost some sail-a top-mastseveral steamer chairs, and one man-Frenchywho had been directly in the path of the wave.

"That's what that shark meant," said Chauncey Gale solemnly, "he won't follow us any more. And say, Biff, it was worth the price of admission to hear you comb those fellows down. By the great corner-stone, but you did it beautiful!"

On the whole there were compensations. We had seen a Pampeiro, for one thing, and we had got rid of a mutiny; a disturbing element had been removed and an old superstition had been con

firmed.

Altogether, everybody was satisfied, including the shark.

But to me had come an added joy. In the moment of danger it was to me that Edith Gale had turned.

That night we walked the deck together. The sky was clear and black again, though the sea was still billowy, and there was a chill head-wind which, with our damaged rigging, necessitated the use of

steam.

We walked back to the stern, and leaning over looked down at the surge boiling up from the screw beneath. Like a huge serpent it twisted away into the night, showing a white coil here and there as it vanished in the shoreless dark behind. A mighty awe came upon us. Face to face with the vastness of the universe, we were overpowered by that dread loneliness which lies between the stars.

By and by I told her of the man sailing around the world in a little boat, alone. She would not let me dwell upon it. Then I said I had thought of doing it myself.

66

"You must never do it," she shuddered, promise me that you never will."

There had never been the slightest danger of my doing it, and never would be, but it did not seem strange that I should promise.

XI.

IN GLOOMY SEAS.

IN entering the waters below Cape Horn it had been my plan to continue southward not farther than the northern extremity of the South Shetland Islands, thence to bear off in a southwesterly course until the outer edge of the field-or pack-ice-had been reached. This ice fringe would, I believed, begin somewhat north of the Antarctic Circle, not lower than the sixty-fifth parallel-possibly much higher. It would recede before the warm sun of December-the month answering to our northern June. My continued purpose was to creep westward along the edge of the ice-pack, examining every foot of the way, in the hope of finding a warm northerly flowing current, of the sort that Borchgrevink had reported. Such a current would afford a possible entrance to the frozen expanses surrounding the Antarctic Continent-perhaps guide us to the very gateway of the continent itself. Failing to find a passage sooner, we would continue westward

to the coast of Victoria Land, and endeavor to reach our destination by following the warm current already reported by Borchgrevink.

I was rather surprised at Captain Biffer's hearty approval of this outline. I believe now he was of the opinion that a few weeks along the edge of the pack, with perhaps a little squeeze here and there, would satisfy Chauncey Gale's ambition for Antarctic conquest, and that the Billowcrest would be ordered north for a cruise in the Pacific, in the direction of more friendly latitudes.

For the present, therefore, we continued directly southward-very slowly, for we were still full early -keeping well off the stormy coast of Patagonia, and to the eastward of the Falkland Islands. These we sighted one morning, and ran close in to get a glimpse of inhabited land once more before plunging into the vastness of unknown and unpeopled seas. It was a bleak shore, and perhaps reminded Mr. Larkins of his native Newfoundland, where the conditions were somewhat similar. He gazed solemnly at the forbidding coast along which there showed but meager signs of foliage.

"Thim's nootmig threes," he said, at last, waving at the stunted vegetation which we were inspecting through the glasses, and upon which we had been commenting.

Edith Gale protested,

"Oh, Mr Larkins! Nutmeg trees don't grow in this cold latitude!"

'Yis, ma'am,-wooden nootmigs. The people ship 'em to the shtates."

"And that long, smooth rock running down; what's that, Mr. Larkins?

"That's a seals'

shlidy-down. The seals,

ma'am, get out there and shoot the shoots.

Many's
I

the time I've watched them in Newfoundland. shouldn't wonder if the bake-apple grows over there, too," he added, reflectively.

"Baked apple! Do apples grow already baked in Newfoundland, Mr. Larkins?"

"Not baked apple, but bake-apple, ma'am. A bit of a foine yellow berry that grows on the top of a shlip of a shtalk, so high "—(holding his hand down to within a foot of the deck)-" one berry to the shtalk, ma'am, and delishuous, my worrd! And the bake-apple jam!" Mr Larkins closed his eyes and wagged his head in a manner to indicate that life without bake-apple jam was but a poor shift, at best. "The bake-apple, is it!" he continued. “Oh, but, Miss, you must never die without tasting the bake-apple!"

There was something about Mr. Larkins's manner that compelled faith in this unknown fruit, which ordinarily we would have regarded as pleasant myth of his own. We caught a measure