But singular destiny!  Whatever I did—­if I did evil, if I did good—­the result was the same:  tragedy dark and sinister!  Poor Maitland was doomed that voyage, and my rescue of his life was the means employed to make his death the more certain.

I think that I have already written, some pages back, about a man called Scotland, whom I met at Cambridge.  He was always talking about certain ‘Black’ and ‘White’ beings, and their contention for the earth.  We others used to call him the black-and-white mystery-man, because, one day—­but that is no matter now.  Well, with regard to all that, I have a fancy, a whim of the mind—­quite wide of the truth, no doubt—­but I have it here in my brain, and I will write it down now.  It is this:  that there may have been some sort of arrangement, or understanding, between Black and White, as in the case of Adam and the fruit, that, should mankind force his way to the Pole and the old forbidden secret biding there, then some mishap should not fail to overtake the race of man; that the White, being kindly disposed to mankind, did not wish this to occur, and intended, for the sake of the race, to destroy our entire expedition before it reached; and that the Black, knowing that the White meant to do this, and by what means, used me—­me!—­to outwit this design, first of all working that I should be one of the party of four to leave the ship on ski.

But the childish attempt, my God, to read the immense riddle of the world!  I could laugh loud at myself, and at poor Black-and-White Scotland, too.  The thing can’t be so simple.

Well, we left Taimur the same day, and good-bye now to both land and open sea.  Till we passed the latitude of Cape Chelyuskin (which we did not sight), it was one succession of ice-belts, with Mew in the crow’s-nest tormenting the electric bell to the engine-room, the anchor hanging ready to drop, and Clark taking soundings.  Progress was slow, and the Polar night gathered round us apace, as we stole still onward and onward into that blue and glimmering land of eternal frore.  We now left off bed-coverings of reindeer-skin and took to sleeping-bags.  Eight of the dogs had died by the 25th September, when we were experiencing 19 deg. of frost.  In the darkest part of our night, the Northern Light spread its silent solemn banner over us, quivering round the heavens in a million fickle gauds.

The relations between the members of our little crew were excellent—­with one exception:  David Wilson and I were not good friends.

There was a something—­a tone—­in the evidence which he had given at the inquest on Peters, which made me mad every time I thought of it.  He had heard Peters admit just before death that he, Peters, had administered atropine to himself:  and he had had to give evidence of that fact.  But he had given it in a most half-hearted way, so much so, that the coroner had asked him:  ‘What, sir, are you hiding from me?’ Wilson had replied:  ‘Nothing.  I have nothing to tell.’