"What are you hoping for?" asked Johnson.
"I don't know. Who can tell the future? It is necessary, too, that you should get your strength a little recruited. You might sink down on the road with fatigue, without even a snow hut to shelter you."
"But think of the terrible death that awaits us here," replied the carpenter.
"My friends," said Hatteras, in almost supplicating tones; "you are despairing too soon. I should propose that we should seek our deliverance towards the north, but you would refuse to follow me, and yet why should there not be Esquimaux tribes round about the Pole as well as towards the south? The open sea, of the existence of which we are certified, must wash the shores of continents. Nature is logical in all her doings. Consequently vegetation must be found there when the earth is no longer ice-bound. Is there not a promised land awaiting us in the north from which you would flee?"
Hatteras became animated as he spoke, and Doctor Clawbonny's excitable nature was so wrought upon that his decision began to waver. He was on the point of yielding, when Johnson, with his wiser head and calmer temperament, recalled him to reason and duty by calling out-
"Come, Bell, let us be off to the sledge."
"All right," said Bell, and the two had risen to leave the hut, when Hatteras exclaimed-
"Oh, Johnson! You! you! Well, go! I shall stay, I shall stay!"
"Captain!" said Johnson, stopping in spite of himself.
"I shall stay, I tell you. Go! Leave me like the rest! Come, Duk, you and I will stay together."