“From our high vantage we could command a vast circle of sunless, melancholy cold.”—Page 117. ] We carried one of Ferratoni’s telephones—a neat, compact little affair, with handles for convenience, and from nearly a mile distant communicated with the inventor, who had ascended to the crow’s-nest for the experiment. It was a successful trial, and we believed it would have been equally so had the distance been much greater. Then we pushed in among the silent bergs, and ascending by a circuitous path to the battlements of a great ice fortress, tried it again. “Hello,” I called, “can you hear a message from the South Pole?” The answer that came back was as prompt as it was unexpected. “There is a message in the air,” said the voice of Ferratoni. “It is very close—around and about us. Some day—perhaps soon—I shall hear it.” I repeated this to Edith Gale, wonderingly. “What do you suppose he means?” I whispered. “You remember what I told you in the fighting-top,” she said. “I am sure of it now.” I did not answer, but together our eyes followed the white way to the south. A light snow had fallen during the forenoon, and dull clouds were banked heavily against the sky. From our high vantage we could command a vast circle of sunless, melancholy cold. Beyond this there lay another horizon, and beyond that still another, and yet another. In this deep solitude the distant black outline of the Billowcrest marked our only human tie. A silence and an awe fell upon us—a mysterious fear of this pale land that was not a land, but a chill spectral semblance, with amazing forces and surprising shapes. We descended hastily and set out for the ship without speaking. From among the bergs the creeping gloom gathered and shut us in. Uncanny sea-leopards and mournful penguins regarded us as we hurried past. We were clumsy on our snow-shoes, but we consumed no unnecessary time in reaching the vessel, and not until we were warmed and cheered by a good dinner were we altogether restored. But then came weariness, and with the Billowcrest now moveless and silent, we realized that night more fully than ever before the perfect blessing of dreamless, Antarctic sleep. And now passed some days in which I grew ever more uneasy, but maintained as far as possible a cheerful outward calm. The cold lingered, and the way seaward did not open. Huge cracks split the pack here and there, but they did not reach the Billowcrest. Then came that terror of all polar expeditions—the ice pressure—the meeting and closing in of enormous ice-fields moving irresistibly in opposite directions.