“Now I clapped my hands in an agony, lest the fog should close in again, and the vision fade before my eyes; for, following the sweep of the tusk, I was aware of the phantom presentment of some monster creature lying imbedded within the ice, its mighty carcase prostrate as it had fallen; the conformation of its enormous forehead presented directly to our gaze.  Its little toffee-ball eyes—­little proportionately, that is to say—­squinted at us, it seemed, through half-closed lids, and a huge, hairy trunk lay curled, like the proboscis of a dead moth, between its tree-like fore-legs.  Away beyond, the great red-brown drum of its hide bellied upward on ribs as thick as a Dutch galliot’s, and sprouting from its shoulders was the hump I have mentioned, but here, from its position, sprawled abroad and lying over in a shapeless mass.

“There was something else—­horribly nauseating but for its strangeness.  The brute had been partly disembowelled, as there was ample evidence to show, for the ice had preserved all.

“Suddenly my companion gave a high nervous shriek.

“‘Look!’ he cried—­’the hand! the hand sticking out of the side!’

“I saw in a moment; turned, and called excitedly to the captain.  He—­all the crew—­came tumbling forward up the slippery deck.  I seized him by the shoulder.

“‘Do you see?’ I screamed—­’the human hand beckoning to us from that great body!’

“He gazed stupidly, swaying where he stood.

“‘One o’ them bloomin’ pre-hadymite cows!’ he muttered; ’caught in the cold nip, by thunder! and some unfortnit crept into her for warmth.’

“I believed the creature’s rude intuition had flown true.

“‘Cannot you get at it?’ I gasped.

“He stared at me.  All in an instant a little paltry demon of avarice blinked out of his eye-holes.

“‘Why,’ he said slowly, ’who knows but it mayn’t be a gal a-jingling from top to toe with gold curtain rings!’

“He was a furious dare-devil immediately, and quick, and savage, and peremptory.  His spirit entered into his men.  They went over the side with pikes and axes, and, scrambling for any foothold, set to work on the ice like maniacs.  In the lust of cupidity they did not even think how they wrought against their own safety and that of the ship.

“The point of the uppermost tusk came to within a foot of the ice-surface.  This they soon reached, and, prising frantically with crowbars, flaked off and rolled away half-ton blocks of the superincumbent mass.  I need not detail the fierce process.  In half an hour they had laid bare a great segment of that part of the trunk whence the hand protruded, and then they paused, and at a word flung down their tools.

“I was leaning over the bulwarks watching them.  I could contain my excitement no longer.

“‘Come,’ I said to my friend, ‘help me down, for I must go.’

“He climbed over, trembling, and assisted me to a standing on the ice.  We scrambled along the track of debris left by the crew.  At the moment half a dozen of the latter were rolling back a broad flap of the hide, in which they had found a long L-shaped rent revealed.  Then a hoarse cry broke from them, and I stumbled forward and looked down, and saw.