After the eleventh day our rate of march improved: all lanes disappeared, and ridges became much less frequent. By the fifteenth day I was leaving behind the ice-grave of David Wilson at the rate of ten to thirteen miles a day.
Yet, as it were, his arm reached out and touched me, even there.
His disappearance had been explained by a hundred different guesses on the ship—all plausible enough. I had no idea that anyone connected me in any way with his death.
But on our twenty-second day of march, 140 miles from our goal, he caused a conflagration of rage and hate to break out among us three.
It was at the end of a march, when our stomachs were hollow, our frames ready to drop, and our mood ravenous and inflamed. One of Mew's dogs was sick: it was necessary to kill it: he asked me to do it.
'Oh,' said I, 'you kill your own dog, of course.'
'Well, I don't know,' he replied, catching fire at once, 'you ought to be used to killing, Jeffson.'
'How do you mean, Mew?' said I with a mad start, for madness and the flames of Hell were instant and uppermost in us all: 'you mean because my profession——'
'Profession! damn it, no,' he snarled like a dog: 'go and dig up David Wilson—I dare say you know where to find him—and he will tell you my meaning, right enough.'