The two men then shook hands warmly.
When they turned towards the doctor, they saw his eyes full of tears.
"Ah, my friends," he murmured, as he dried his eyes, "how can my heart hold the joy with which you fill it? My dear companions, you have sacrificed a miserable question of nationality in order to unite in your common success! You know that England and America have nothing to do with all this; that mutual sympathy ought to bind you together against the dangers of the journey! If the North Pole is discovered, what difference does it make who does it? Why stand bickering about English or American, when we can be proud of being men?"
The doctor embraced the reconciled foes; he could not restrain his joy. The two new friends felt themselves drawn closer together by the friendship this worthy man had for them both. Clawbonny spoke freely of the vanity of competition, of the madness of rivalry, and of the need of agreement between men so far from home. His words, his tears and caresses, came from the bottom of his heart.
Still, he grew calm after embracing Hatteras and Altamont for the twentieth time.
"And now," he said, "to work, to work! Since I was no use as a hunter, let me try in another capacity!"
Thereupon he started to cut up the ox, which he called the "ox of reconciliation," but he did it as skilfully as if he were a surgeon conducting a delicate autopsy. His two companions gazed at him in amusement. In a few minutes he had cut from the body a hundred pounds of flesh; he gave each one a third of it, and they again took up their march to Fort Providence. At ten o'clock in the evening, after walking in the oblique rays of the sun, they reached Doctor's House, where Johnson and Bell had a good supper awaiting them.
But before they sat down to table, the doctor said in a voice of triumph, as he pointed to his two companions,—
"Johnson, I carried away with me an Englishman and an American, did I not?"
"Yes, Dr. Clawbonny," answered the boatswain.