E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan,
Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
| Chapter I. |
| Chapter II. |
| Chapter III. |
| Chapter IV. |
| Chapter V. |
| Chapter VI. |
| Chapter VII. |
| Chapter VIII. |
| Chapter IX. |
| Chapter X. |
| Chapter XI. |
The following novel was completed March 22, 1899, and sent to theprinter in October of the same year. After the plates had been madenotice was received that a play called "A Man's Woman" had been writtenby Anne Crawford Flexner, and that this title had been copyrighted.
As it was impossible to change the name of the novel at the time thisnotice was received, it has been published under its original title.
F.N.
New York.
At four o'clock in the morning everybody in the tent was still asleep,exhausted by the terrible march of the previous day. The hummocky iceand pressure-ridges that Bennett had foreseen had at last been met with,and, though camp had been broken at six o'clock and though men and dogshad hauled and tugged and wrestled with the heavy sledges until fiveo'clock in the afternoon, only a mile and a half had been covered. Butthough the progress was slow, it was yet progress. It was not theharrowing, heart-breaking immobility of those long months aboard theFreja. Every yard to the southward, though won at the expense of abattle with the ice, brought them nearer to Wrangel Island and ultimatesafety.
Then, too, at supper-time the unexpected had happened. Bennett, moved nodoubt by their weakened condition, had dealt out extra rations to eachman: one and two-thirds ounces of butter and six and two-thirds ouncesof aleuronate bread—a veritable luxury after the unvarying diet ofpemmican, lime juice, and dried potatoes of the past fortnight. The menhad got into their sleeping-bags early, and until four o'clock in themorning had slept profoundly, inert, stupefied, almost without movement.But a few minutes after four o'clock Bennett awoke. He was usually upabout half an hour before the others. On the day before he had been ableto get a meridian altitude of the sun, and was anxious to complete hiscalculations as to the expedition's position on the chart that he hadbegun in the evening.
He pushed back the flap of the sleeping-bag and rose to his full height,passing his hands over his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He wasan enormous man, standing six feet two inches in his reindeer footnipsand having the look more of a prize-fighter than of a sc