Here nothing was in sight but ice and fog. The heavens above, the earth beneath, the waters under the earth, were all congealed into dead greyness; there was not even the blue shimmer of sun-struck bergs. Everything was unreal. The ear was assailed by a low, unceasing groan, which now rose into a crescendo of unearthly crashes and shrieks and again rolled in dim reverberant thunders, felt rather than heard; this came from the ice, floes and small bergs and crushed mountains hanging at crazy angles, all hurled into one inchoate mass by the tremendous urge of the bay waters trying to crowd through the narrow straits to the sea. In the air was that bitter and penetrating chill which comes of melting floes--a chill mocking at furs, thrusting into the very heart and entrails of the two men who appeared and vanished again, crawling across that drear expanse. To the northwest, hidden among the white masses, the position of the bark _Northstar_ was marked by a thread of smoke two miles away; even this smoke looked cold and shivery as it wound shuddering into the sky and fog. To east and south rose the steep and awful cliffs of Cape Digge and the strait; they ran, ice-dripping, into heaven and melted in the horizon fog, cold barriers set two thousand feet in air to keep the inland sea cloaked in thin mist and bitter chill. Digge’s Island was a dim blur; to west and south were grinding, crushing bergs and floes. Overhead was dun sunlight drowned in high fog--a ghastly and unearthly fog which threatened to close down again in an hour or two and add its clammy fingers to the merciless grip of the ice. “The shot came from about here,” called Crawford, giving a hallo to which none answered. He paused on a rounded hummock to sweep the surrounding surface with his gaze. From his left, where Frontin was toiling among upflung masses of rough ice, broke a sudden sharp cry. “Here we are, cap’n! Name of the saints--come and look!” Turning, Crawford hastened to join his lieutenant, scrambling over pinnacles and avoiding pools of melted water. Frontin, poised on a ridge of broken masses, uttered a curt comment. “No hurry. He’s dead, or I’m a liar!” Cursing the bitter chill, Crawford climbed up beside this tall and saturnine comrade and friend, this Frontin of the cynical air and the warm heart. Reaching the ridge, he found himself looking down at a hollow, an icepan closed in all around by crushed pinnacles, like an open glade in a forest. Below the two men, at the near side of this hollow, lay the outstretched shape of a huge white bear, the top of its head blown away--and beside this, the motionless figure of a man, apparently an Eskimo, lying across a gun. “These Eskimos have no fusils and don’t use powder,” said Crawford, for despite his astonishment, his brain was quickly at work. “Yet--where could he have come from? Certainly no ship has come ahead of us--the Eskimos told us that much. One might have followed us into the straits----”