“Well, sir, I do hear, because I’m not deaf; but I don’t understand.”
“Then just do as you are told, Mr. Inglis.”
“Certainly, sir, certainly.”
So a little privacy was obtained for Sheelah and Taffy, and, as it turned out afterwards, no one was the loser for the “women-people” being on board.
Do coming events throw their shadows before?
Perhaps they do. Anyhow, when the two ships looked their last on Kerguelen—the last for a long time, at all events—there was more silence on board than is usual with sailors going off to sea.
They knew the dangers they were going to encounter, but they were all quite acclimatized to the rigorous Antarctic climate by this time, and there was not a man on board, British or American, who was not prepared to do his best. Which of us can do more?
CHAPTER II
A FIGHT BETWEEN MEN AND ICE
The Sea Elephant’s cruise around the great Antarctic continent, and all her captain and bold men did, and said and saw, would make a book in itself. That may one day see the light, as well as the adventures of the men left behind at Kerguelen.
We must now follow our heroes into a country as widely different in every way as Scotland or England is from the moon.