“Thim’s nootmig threes,” he said, at last, waving at the stunted vegetation which we were inspecting through the glasses, and upon which we had been commenting. Edith Gale protested. “Oh, Mr. Larkins! Nutmeg trees don’t grow in this cold latitude!” “Yis, ma’am,—wooden nootmigs. The people ship ’em to the shtates.” “And that long, smooth rock running down; what’s that, Mr. Larkins?” “That’s a seals’ shlidy-down. The seals, ma’am, get out there and shoot the shoots. Many’s the time I’ve watched them in Newfoundland. I shouldn’t wonder if the bake-apple grows over there, too,” he added, reflectively. “Baked apple! Do apples grow already baked in Newfoundland, Mr. Larkins?” “Not baked apple, but bake-apple, ma’am. A bit of a foine yellow berry that grows on the top of a shlip of a shtalk, so high”—(holding his hand down to within a foot of the deck)—“one berry to the shtalk, ma’am, and delishuous, my worrd! And the bake-apple jam!” Mr. Larkins closed his eyes and wagged his head in a manner to indicate that life without bake-apple jam was but a poor shift, at best. “The _bake_-apple, is it!” he continued. “Oh, but, Miss, you must never die without tasting the bake-apple!” There was something about Mr. Larkins’s manner that compelled faith in this unknown fruit, which ordinarily we would have regarded as a pleasant myth of his own. We caught a measure of his enthusiasm. We wanted to see the mysterious golden berry that grew one on a stalk, and had we not been on our way to find the South Pole, I believe we might have gone in pursuit of the bake-apple. And now we were indeed getting well to the southward. The sun though on its upward incline had fallen far behind. Our days became long spectral cycles broken only by brief periods of luminous twilight, and the glacial feeling in the air was no longer a quality of our imagination. Against the chill wind that came over our bow we tacked but leisurely. Gradually, as we should, we were acquiring the taste for Antarctic cold, and daily the fascination of it, and of the lonely seas around and about, grew upon us. XII. WHERE CAPTAIN BIFFER REVISES SOME OPINIONS. I went up on the bridge one morning to find Captain Biffer gazing intently through the glass at some distant object. “There’s your South Shetlands,” he announced, as I approached, “Elephant Island, I should say. Looks pretty cold to me.” I did not reply for a moment, but stood looking out over the black tossing waters that lie below Cape Horn. Somewhere it was, in this cold expanse, that my uncle’s vessel was believed to have gone down. Here, amid the crash of storm and surge, she had been last seen, more than twenty years before, and here must have perished: I swept the sea in every direction, as if seeking to locate the very spot.