The face belongs to neither Indian nor half-breed; it is as white as their own. By the faint light that glimmers through the parchment windows they see it scrutinising them interrogatively, with a piercing scrutiny. ‘Explorers?’ asks the stranger, ‘and Englishmen?’ Yes, they tell him, they are English explorers. Absalom Schanck of course counts as an Englishman. ‘Are you sent out by the English government?’ ‘No, we came on our own hook,’ replies Geoffrey Hossack, who is the first to recover from the surprise of the man’s appearance, and from a certain half-supernatural awe engendered by his aspect, which has a wild ghastliness, as of a wanderer from the under world. ‘But never mind how we came here; what we want is to get away. Don’t stand there jawing about our business, but come inside, and drop that tarpaulin behind you. Where have you left your party?’ ‘Nowhere,’ answers the stranger, stepping into the hut, and standing in the midst of them, tall and gaunt, clad in garments that are half Esquimaux, half Indian, and in the last stage of dilapidation, torn mooseskin shoes upon his feet, the livid flesh showing between every rent; ‘nowhere. I belong to no party—I’m alone.’ ‘Alone!’ they all exclaim, with a bitter pang of disappointment. They had been ready to welcome this wild creature as the forerunner of succour. ‘Yes, I was up some thousand miles northward of this, among icebergs and polar bears and Dog-rib Indians and Esquimaux, with a party of Yankees the summer before last; and served them well, too, for I know some of the Indian lingo, and was able to act as their interpreter. But the expedition was a failure. Unsuccessful men are hard to deal with. In short, we quarrelled, and parted company; they went their way, I went mine. There’s no occasion to enter into details. It was winter when I left them—the stores were exhausted, with the exception of a little ammunition. They had their guns, and may have found reindeer or musk oxen, but I don’t fancy they can have come to much good. They didn’t know the country as well as I do.’ ‘You have been alone nearly a year?’ asks Lucius Davoren, interested in this wild-looking stranger. ‘How have you lived during that time?’ ‘Anyhow,’ answers the other with a careless shrug of his bony shoulders. ‘Sometimes with the Indians, sometimes with the Esquimaux—they’re civil enough to a solitary Englishman, though they hate the Indians like poison—sometimes by myself. As long as I’ve a charge for my gun I don’t much fear starvation, though I’ve found myself face to face with it a good many times since I parted with my Yankee friends.’ ‘Do you know this part of the country?’ ‘No; it’s beyond my chart. I shouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t lost my way. But I suppose, now I am here, you’ll give me shelter.’