When the last of the deer died, my heart sank; and when the dogs killed two of their number, and a bear crushed a third, I was fully expecting what actually came; it was this:  Clark announced that he could now take only two companions with him in the spring:  and they were Wilson and Mew.  So once more I saw David Wilson’s pleased smile of malice.

We settled into our second winter-quarters.  Again came December, and all our drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would not work, leaving us without the electric light.

Ah me, none but those who have felt it could dream of one half the mental depression of that long Arctic night; how the soul takes on the hue of the world; and without and within is nothing but gloom, gloom, and the reign of the Power of Darkness.

Not one of us but was in a melancholic, dismal and dire mood; and on the 13th December Lamburn, the engineer, stabbed Cartwright, the old harpooner, in the arm.

Three days before Christmas a bear came close to the ship, and then turned tail.  Mew, Wilson, I and Meredith (a general hand) set out in pursuit.  After a pretty long chase we lost him, and then scattered different ways.  It was very dim, and after yet an hour’s search, I was returning weary and disgusted to the ship, when I saw some shadow like a bear sailing away on my left, and at the same time sighted a man—­I did not know whom—­running like a handicapped ghost some little distance to the right.  So I shouted out: 

‘There he is—­come on!  This way!’

The man quickly joined me, but as soon as ever he recognised me, stopped dead.  The devil must have suddenly got into him, for he said: 

‘No, thanks, Jeffson:  alone with you I am in danger of my life....’

It was Wilson.  And I, too, forgetting at once all about the bear, stopped and faced him.

‘I see,’ said I.  ’But, Wilson, you are going to explain to me now what you mean, you hear?  What do you mean, Wilson?’

‘What I say,’ he answered deliberately, eyeing me up and down:  ’alone with you I am in danger of my life.  Just as poor Maitland was, and just as poor Peters was.  Certainly, you are a deadly beast.’

Fury leapt, my God, in my heart.  Black as the tenebrous Arctic night was my soul.

‘Do you mean,’ said I, ’that I want to put you out of the way in order to go in your place to the Pole?  Is that your meaning, man?’

‘That’s about my meaning, Jeffson,’ says he:  ’you are a deadly beast, you know.’

‘Stop!’ I said, with blazing eye.  ’I am going to kill you, Wilson—­as sure as God lives:  but I want to hear first.  Who told you that I killed Peters?’

’Your lover killed him—­with your collusion.  Why, I heard you, man, in your beastly sleep, calling the whole thing out.  And I was pretty sure of it before, only I had no proofs.  By God, I should enjoy putting a bullet into you, Jeffson!’