With his one good hand Ferriss drew a pipe and a handful of tea leaves wrapped in oiled paper from the breast of his deer-skin parkie.

“Do you mind filling this pipe for me, Ward?” he asked of Bennett.

Bennett glanced at the tea leaves and handed them back to Ferriss, and in answer to his remonstrance produced a pouch of his own.

“Tobacco!” cried Ferriss, astonished; “why, I thought we smoked our last aboard ship.”

“No, I saved a little of mine.”

“Oh, well,” answered Ferriss, trying to interfere with Bennett, who was filling his pipe, “I don’t want your tobacco; this tea does very well.”

“I tell you I have eight-tenths of a kilo left,” lied Bennett, lighting the pipe and handing it back to him.  “Whenever you want a smoke you can set to me.”

Bennett lit a pipe of his own, and the two began to smoke.

“’M, ah!” murmured Ferriss, drawing upon the pipe ecstatically, “I thought I never was going to taste good weed again till we should get home.”

Bennett said nothing.  There was a long silence.  Home! what did not that word mean for them?  To leave all this hideous, grisly waste of ice behind, to have done with fighting, to rest, to forget responsibility, to have no more anxiety, to be warm once more—­warm and well fed and dry—­to see a tree again, to rub elbows with one’s fellows, to know the meaning of warm handclasps and the faces of one’s friends.

“Dick,” began Bennett abruptly after a long while, “if we get stuck here in this damned ice I’m going to send you and probably Metz on ahead for help.  We’ll make a two-man kyack for you to use when you reach the limit of the pack, but besides the kyack you’ll carry nothing but your provisions, sleeping-bags, and rifle, and travel as fast as you can.”  Bennett paused for a moment, then in a different voice continued:  “I wrote a letter last night that I was going to give you in case I should have to send you on such a journey, but I think I might as well give it to you now.”

He drew from his pocket an envelope carefully wrapped in oilskin.

“If anything should happen to the expedition—­to me—­I want you to see that this letter is delivered.”

He paused again.

“You see, Dick, it’s like this; there’s a girl—­” his face flamed suddenly, “no—­no, a woman, a grand, noble, man’s woman, back in God’s country who is a great deal to me—­everything in fact.  She don’t know, hasn’t a guess, that I care.  I never spoke to her about it.  But if anything should turn up I should want her to know how it had been with me, how much she was to me.  So I’ve written her.  You’ll see that she gets it, will you?”

He handed the little package to Ferriss, and continued indifferently, and resuming his accustomed manner: 

“If we get as far as Wrangel Island you can give it back to me.  We are bound to meet the relief ships or the steam whalers in that latitude.  Oh, you can look at the address,” added Bennett as Ferriss, turning the envelope bottom side up, was thrusting it into his breast pocket; “you know her even better than I do.  It’s Lloyd Searight.”