Page:An Antarctic Mystery.pdf/220

202 "Well, well, we have not yet come to that, I hope, and I count on you, Hurliguerly, to prevent any attempt against Dirk Peters. Reason with your men. Make them understand that we have time to return to the Falklands before the end of the fine season. Their reproaches must not be allowed to provide the captain with an excuse for turning back before the object is attained."

"Count on me, Mr. Jeorling. I will serve you to the best of my ability."

"You will not repent of doing so, Hurliguerly. Nothing is easier than to add a round 0 to the four hundred dollars which each man is to have, if that man be something more than a sailor—even were his functions simply those of boatswain on board the Halbrane.

Nothing important occurred on the 13th and 14th, but a fresh fall in the temperature took place. Captain Len Guy called my attention to this, pointing out the flocks of birds continuously flying north.

While he was speaking to me I felt that his last hopes were fading. And who could wonder? Of the land indicated by the half-breed nothing was seen, and we were already more than one hundred and eighty miles from Tsalal Island. At every point of the compass was the sea, nothing but the vast sea with its desert horizon which the sun's disk had been nearing since the 21st of December, and would touch on the 21st March, prior to disappearing during the six months of the austral night. Honestly, was it possible to admit that William Guy and his five companions could have accomplished such a distance on a frail craft, and was there one chance in a hundred that they could ever be recovered?