chap, in TO SPITSBERGEN 51 



with that abominable gully. However, the disablement of 

 one of my cameras at the very start was too serious a loss 

 to be accepted without a struggle, so, toiling up the rotten 

 buttress once more, I managed to regain possession of the 

 box. In returning, however, I dropped my fur cap while 

 stooping to improve a step. It disappeared down the 

 couloir, and there it lies, for a careful search at the bottom 

 failed to reveal a trace of it. 



As I jumped and waded along the five miles of swamp 

 to the coast, I recollected that I had eaten nothing since 

 breakfast on the ship, and it was already seven o'clock. The 

 reflection was not a cheering one. The steamer had gone, 

 and Battye and the artist had, I knew, returned long since 

 to the ship. I glanced about for a sleeping-place and for 

 something to shoot, and thought of the stories of marooned 

 mariners. Only the night before Battye had recited to us a 

 ballad of his own composition anent a marooned whaler, 

 whose brain gave way under the strain of Arctic solitude. 

 Some of the verses recurred to me, and seemed to describe 

 very closely my own predicament. 



" And who shall win when the fates begin to rustle their pinions black ? 

 For the bergs that ride with wind and tide had driven the vessel back, 

 So that she lay ten miles away, low in a red sun's track. 



This was the thing which, wearying in hunger, and alone, 

 Allan learned as he returned to drop on a barren stone, 

 Sick with the sense of his impotence, and with doubt of the drear un- 

 - known." 



Nor was the sequel which describes the finding of 

 the marooned man any more cheering. It ran something 

 like this : — 



" And out of the ground a figure wound through the roof of a lair of snow, 

 Weird as the theme of a graveyard dream, gaunt as a gallows crow, 

 And rocked itself on an icy shelf, moaningly and slow. 



