He turned the piece of wood in his hand nearer to the light, and looked lower down it.  More carving again, lower down!  Under the initials F. A. were two more letters—­C.  B.

“C.  B.?” he repeated to himself.  “His sweet heart’s initials, I suppose?  Of course—­at his age—­his sweetheart’s initials.”

He paused once more.  A spasm of inner pain showed the shadow of its mysterious passage, outwardly on his face.

“Her cipher is C. B.,” he said, in low, broken tones.  “C.  B.—­Clara Burnham.”

He waited, with the plank in his hand; repeating the name over and over again, as if it was a question he was putting to himself.

“Clara Burnham?  Clara Burnham?”

He dropped the plank, and turned deadly pale in a moment.  His eyes wandered furtively backward and forward between the strip of wood on the floor and the half-demolished berth.  “Oh, God! what has come to me now?” he said to himself, in a whisper.  He snatched up the ax, with a strange cry—­something between rage and terror.  He tried—­fiercely, desperately tried—­to go on with his work.  No! strong as he was, he could not use the ax.  His hands were helpless; they trembled incessantly.  He went to the fire; he held his hands over it.  They still trembled incessantly; they infected the rest of him.  He shuddered all over.  He knew fear.  His own thoughts terrified him.

“Crayford!” he cried out.  “Crayford! come here, and let’s go hunting.”

No friendly voice answered him.  No friendly face showed itself at the door.

An interval passed; and there came over him another change.  He recovered his self-possession almost as suddenly as he had lost it.  A smile—­a horrid, deforming, unnatural smile—­spread slowly, stealthily, devilishly over his face.  He left the fire; he put the ax away softly in a corner; he sat down in his old place, deliberately self-abandoned to a frenzy of vindictive joy.  He had found the man!  There, at the end of the world—­there, at the last fight of the Arctic voyagers against starvation and death, he had found the man!

The minutes passed.

He became conscious, on a sudden, of a freezing stream of air pouring into the room.

He turned, and saw Crayford opening the door of the hut.  A man was behind him.  Wardour rose eagerly, and looked over Crayford’s shoulder.

Was it—­could it be—­the man who had carved the letters on the plank?  Yes!  Frank Aldersley!

Chapter 11.

“Still at work!” Crayford exclaimed, looking at the half-demolished bed-place.  “Give yourself a little rest, Richard.  The exploring party is ready to start.  If you wish to take leave of your brother officers before they go, you have no time to lose.”

He checked himself there, looking Wardour full in the face.

“Good Heavens!” he cried, “how pale you are!  Has anything happened?”