Now, for the first time, she was to know just what had happened, just what he had endured.

As usual, Bennett paced the floor from wall to wall, his cigar in his teeth, his tattered, grimy ice-journal in his hand.  At the desk Lloyd’s round, bare arm, the sleeve turned up to the elbow, moved evenly back and forth as she wrote.  In the intervals of Bennett’s dictation the scratching of Lloyd’s pen made itself heard.  A little fire snapped and crackled on the hearth.  The morning’s sun came flooding in at the windows.

“...  Gale of wind from the northeast,” prompted Lloyd, raising her head from her writing.  Bennett continued: 

“Impossible to march against it in our weakened condition.”

He paused for her to complete the sentence.

“...  Must camp here till it abates....”

“Have you got that?” Lloyd nodded.

“...  Made soup of the last of the dog-meat this afternoon....  Our last pemmican gone.”

There was a pause; then Bennett resumed: 

“December 1st, Wednesday—­Everybody getting weaker....  Metz breaking down....  Sent Adler to the shore to gather shrimps ... we had about a mouthful apiece at noon ... supper, a spoonful of glycerine and hot water.”

Lloyd put her hand to her temple, smoothing back her hair, her face turned away.  As before, in the park, on that warm and glowing summer afternoon, a swift, clear vision of the Ice was vouchsafed to her.  She saw the coast of Kolyuchin Bay—­primordial desolation, whirling dust-like snow, the unleashed wind yelling like a sabbath of witches, leaping and somersaulting from rock to rock, folly-stricken and insensate in its hideous dance of death.  Bennett continued.  His voice insensibly lowered itself, a certain gravity of manner came upon him.  At times he looked at the written pages in his hand with vague, unseeing eyes.  No doubt he, too, was remembering.

He resumed: 

“December 2d, Thursday—­Metz died during the night....  Hansen dying.  Still blowing a gale from the northeast....  A hard night.”

Lloyd’s pen moved slower and slower as she wrote.  The lines of the manuscript began to blur and swim before her eyes.

And it was to this that she must send him.  To this inhuman, horrible region; to this life of prolonged suffering, where death came slowly through days of starvation, exhaustion, and agony hourly renewed.  He must dare it all again.  She must force him to it.  Her decision had been taken; her duty was plain to her.  Now it was irrevocable.

“...  Hansen died during early morning....  Dennison breaking down....

“...  December 5th—­Sunday—­Dennison found dead this morning between Adler and myself....”

The vision became plainer, more distinct.  She fancied she saw the interior of the tent and the dwindling number of the Freja’s survivors moving about on their hands and knees in its gloomy half-light.  Their hair and beards were long, their faces black with dirt, monstrously distended and fat with the bloated irony of starvation.  They were no longer men.  After that unspeakable stress of misery nothing but the animal remained.