“Cold,” I said. “Feels like the North Pole!” (It was, in fact, about zero at the time, but we did not mind it in the least.) “What’s the matter with the South Pole?” This from Captain Biffer. “Hot, there!” I yelled. The Captain laughed. “Well,” he shouted, “you’re right about some things, but you’ll find that barrel a parlor stove compared with the South Pole.” Edith Gale leveled a glass toward the southern horizon. We were well down in the sixties, now. Icebergs and floating pack-ice had become common. To the southward lay mystery that in some weird form might at any moment rise above the somber waters. Presently she handed me the glass. “See if you make out anything,” she said. I looked steadily, and at first saw nothing. Then, low down, and stretching from rim to rim across our watery world, far-off and faint, rising, falling, lifting and disappearing. I saw a thin, uncertain, glittering edge—the ice-pack! It was our turn, now, to cheer. Captain Biffer ran up to see and verify. By nightfall (the radiant dusk fell late now, for it was November, and the sun shone till ten o’clock) we were in the midst of loose, grinding ice—the edge of the pack. The second stage of the Great Billowcrest Expedition had begun. XIII. IN THE “FIGHTING-TOP.” Our crow’s nest became at once the nucleus of the expedition. Edith Gale named it our “fighting-top” because of the fierce discussions that took place there. This warfare concerning the new objects that appeared daily on our horizon was almost continual, and when not actively engaged in the combats, I was supposed to adjust them. They occurred most frequently between Edith Gale and her father, both of whom delighted in our lookout, and remained with me there a greater part of the time, in spite of bitter cold, and even the wet freezing discomfort that often swept in about us. A paragraph of Borchgrevink’s came back to me now—the fulness of which I had not before realized. “Only from the crow’s nest,” he says, “can one fully appreciate the supernatural charm of Antarctic scenery. Up there you seem lifted above the pettiness and troubles of everyday life. Your horizon is wide, and from your high position you rule the little world below you. Onward, onward stretch the ice-fields, the narrow channels about the ship are opened and closed again by the current and wind, and as you strain your sight to the utmost to find the best places for the vessel to penetrate, your eyes wander from the ship’s bow out toward the horizon, where floes and channels seem to form one dense vast ice-field. Ice and snow cover spars and ropes, and everywhere are perfect peace and silence.”