Enoch and I exchanged glances, and Enoch answered: "We wa'n't goin' to "Frisco."
"Around the Horn, then?" inquired the stranger, sitting up. "But you will land me in 'Frisco, won't you? I can't wait, I must—"
"We're goin' in," said Enoch; "goin' north, for a three-years' cruise."
"North!" shouted the stranger, wildly. "Three years in that hell of ice. Three years! My God! North! North!"
He was dancing around the deck like a maniac, trying to put his pack-loop over his head. Enoch went toward him, to tell him how he could go on the "Enchantress," but he looked wildly at him, ran forward and sprang out on the bowsprit, and from there to the jib. Enoch saw he was out of his mind, and ordered two sailors to bring him in. As they sprang on to the bow, he stood up and screamed:
"No! No! No! Three years! Three lives! Three hells! I never—"
One of the men reached for him here, but he kicked at the sailor viciously, and turning sidewise, sprang into the water below.
A boat, already in the water, was manned instantly; but the worn-out body of another North Pole explorer had gone to the sands of the bottom where so many others have gone before; evidently his heavy pack had held him down, there to guard the story it could tell—in death as he had in life.
THE END