above it, which marks the grave of a naturalist of a past expedition. He fell to speculating where the _Perhaps_ lay now. Parliament had met in the first days of January. It was just before the opening of Parliament that Hemming had started on the mail steamer to New Zealand to pick up his ship in Lyttelton Harbor. Allow him five weeks for his journey. The second week of February would have come to an end before the _Perhaps_ had steamed out past the headland. Hemming himself had recognized that he was late. The difficulty of collecting money to finance the expedition had detained him beyond his time. A fortnight out from New Zealand, where was the _Perhaps_ now? She might still be in the stormy seas on the outer edge of Ross's pack with the petrels and the albatrosses like a cloud about her yards. Or she might have touched at one of the northerly harbors of the continent. Perhaps winter was coming early on to wrap her about with snow and ice. If that happened, Hemming's chance was gone, for he had only money for one year. He must reach the Pole this next summer or not at all. He must therefore winter well to the South. Rames got up from his chair, trying not to hope that Hemming's expedition would fail. He looked up from this map to the spot where Cynthia had stood close to the door, and a smile came upon his face. "She was wrong," he said. "We are in the clutch of the unfinished, not the finished things." He carried his map over to a bureau which stood against the wall and opened a drawer from the lock of which his bunch of keys was dangling. There were other charts in the drawer, a barometer which had hung in his cabin in the _Perhaps_ throughout the three years during which that ship had been his home, a shell or two dredged up from the depths of the sea, and a brown paper package tied up with a piece of string. The charts lying there were all the charts which existed of the Antarctic seas, arranged in the order of their making. He added to them now his map, the last of them all; the printed facsimile of his own chart. Then reluctantly he locked the drawer. The reverberation of the seas seemed to fill the room and through it imperative and loud rang the call of the South. Yet he was aware, too, of Cynthia standing in her delicate blue frock, subduing her pride, revealing herself in a passionate appeal. He was stirred to shame at the poverty of his own response. She had been friend, counsellor, wife in the normal way. They had jogged side by side along the low road of his endeavor. To-night she pleaded for more, she offered more. He could never quite look upon her as he had been wont to. For she had stirred him to shame. He slipped the key off the ring and swung it round upon his finger. At all events he would keep his bargain.