The Frozen Deep

” he said. “Why do you wake me?”“Look round you, Richard. We are alone.”“Well — and what

ing in return, but to rest my weary heart in the sunshine of her smile. And her own lips — the lips I had kissed at parting — told me that another man had robbed me of her. I spoke but few words when I heard that confession, and left her forever. ‘The time may come,’ I told her, ‘when I shall forgive you. But the man who has robbed me of you shall rue the day when you and he first met.’ Don’t ask me who he was! I have yet to discover him. The treachery had been kept secret; nobody could tell me where to find him; nobody could tell me who he was. What did it matter? When I had lived out the first agony, I could rely on myself — I could be patient, and bide my time.”“Your time? What time?”“The time when I and that man shall meet face to face. I knew it then; I know it now — it was written on my heart then, it is written on my heart now — we two shall meet and know each other! With that conviction strong within me, I volunteered for this service, as I would have volunteered for anything that set work and hardship and danger, like ramparts, between my misery and me. With that conviction strong within me still, I tell you it is no matter whether I stay here with the sick, or go hence with the strong. I shall live till I have met that man! There is a day of reckoning appointed between us. Here in the freezing cold, or away in the deadly heat; in battle or in shipwreck; in the face of starvation; under the shadow of pestilence — I, though hundreds are falling round me, I shall live! live for the coming of one day! live for the meeting with one man!”He stopped, trembling, body and soul, under the hold that his own terrible superstition had fastened on him. Crayford drew back in silent horror. Wardour noticed the action — he resented it — he appealed, in defense of his one cherished conviction, to Crayford’s own experience of him.“Look at me!” he cried. “Look how I have lived and thriven, with the heart-ache gnawing at me at home, and the winds of the icy north whistling round me here! I am the strongest man among you. Why? I have fought through hardships that have laid the best-seasoned men of all our party on their backs. Why? What have I done, that my life should throb as bravely through every vein in my body at this minute, and in this deadly place, as ever it did in the wholesome breezes of home? Wh