Walking towards the vessel, I came, within fifty yards of the water, lapping against the clean-cut edge of the ice. I could not see across, and my shouts were not answered. I went back to the sick sailor.

"Karlson," said I, "we are adrift." "What!" said he, arousing himself. "I fear we are adrift. I can see or hear nothing of the men nor the ship, and there is water close at hand. What can we do?"

"Drag the boat to the water and get back," said he, "That is the only thing to do--and be quick about it."

I tried to move the boat. I could not budge it. Karlson was hardly able to sit up, but he came bravely to my help, but his strength was not in his muscles, and we could do nothing. The snow had made a heavy slush; besides, the boat was too heavy. We now felt that we were on a moving mass. In what direction we were moving or at what rate, we could not tell; but we were yet alive, and that was more than we could safely say of our comrades. Our weakness had perhaps been our salvation.

For hours we sat and looked at each other, saying very little. The snow ceased and the sun came out, but nothing more did we ever see of the ship ESKEN or its crew.

Now that we could see our position we found that our floe was a good sized one. Up towards its center there was a higher ridge of ice, and on that I decided to prepare our camp. We had plenty of provisions and clothing, and we could live quite comfortable as long as our floating island would bear us in safety. There seemed to be no immediate danger, at least.

I brushed away the snow, and with boxes and canvas I managed to make a shelter. We opened a box of provisions, and I melted some ice in our oil stove. Karlson partook sparingly, but I ate a hearty meal.

There was ice all around us. It seemed to be drifting with us, sometimes opening and then coming together again with a grinding noise. If only the contending masses would not disturb us!

I asked Karlson if he could take an observation of the sun to determine about where we were, but he was no wiser in that respect than I. There were instruments no doubt in our mass of stuff taken from the ship, but they were useless to us.

The sun went around and around in its endless path. We had beautiful weather, and had my companion been well, we could have been comfortable enough. But he was in a bad way. For hours he would lie perfectly still, and I would have believed him dead had it not been for the wide-open gaze which he fixed on the southern horizon. Poor fellow, he no doubt had someone looking northward with just as hungry a look as was his, southward.

We had medicine, too; I tried some of the simpler remedies which I knew, but Karlson became weaker day after day until at last he died. I think it was on our third day adrift that I was left alone.

I carried the body of my dead comrade a few rods away from the camp, and covered it with canvas, left it there. The next day it occurred to me that it would be better to give him a seaman's burial than to have the body lie in the warm sun. So I went to work and wrapped it in a sheet of canvas, placing a heavy iron kettle at the feet. I then carried it to the edge of the floe, to a large opening. From my traveling bag I took the Bible which I had carried with me, but, shame to say, I had not read much, and from it I read aloud a chapter. I fear the selection was not very appropriate, but it was something anyway. Then I slipped the body over the edge of the ice and it sank into the cold, green water of the sea.

Now, indeed, was I alone. I was a living speck in the vast frozen, northern world. Yet, somehow, I was not lonesome. I had read the descriptions given of this region by Arctic explorers and had thought that in this sublime solitude I might draw some peace of heart. In this vast expanse of snow and ice and water, with the continuous brightness of the sun, my soul was subdued. The strangeness of my situation appealed to me. The uncertainty of my fate did not seem to disturb me. I can see now that I ought to have given up even the faintest shadow of hope as regards living any length of time-but strange to say I did not.

I had retained my watch with me, and had thus far been able to keep track of the time and also the directions. At twelve midnight, the sun was a little nearer the horizon than when it was twelve noon. By this I knew I was drifting north. My ice floe kept intact, though I could see all around me wide lanes of green water leading sometimes to the horizon.

Slowly, day by day, I drifted in a northerly direction. At first, we had seen some animal life, a bear, some walrusses, and quite a number of screaming birds; but now there was not a sign of life. This could not have been because of the cold, as it seemed to me to become warmer the further north I drifted. I suffered no great inconvenience. I made myself comfortable in the shelter I had built. I had plenty to eat and drink, and then I had this vast, strange world to myself. The ice floes around me diminished, and in a few days I was floating in a free sea, unhindered by ice or land as far as I could see to the north,

Yes I had indeed come into a new world, but I had brought my old heart with me, and its life in that other world which I had left would not be obliterated. I have heard that the heart is the last part of a person that dies, and this, perhaps is the reason. Sitting day after day on the highest point of my ice-island and looking at the sky and waves, my mind's eye went out past the great ice barrier which, seemingly, I had left behind me, to a world of high mountains, rushing streams and green fields and meadows! And thus I saw a simple farm house, no, not mine - not the one I lived in, but another some miles farther up the road. I saw the dingy, red brick, the neglected lawn, the rows of boxelder trees; and then I saw one in her light summer dress come to meet me with a hand extended and a smile of welcome. I heard her words. I saw the light in her eyes-the light that was so easily extinguished. Yes, I saw and heard and felt, ah, yes, I felt that my heart was yet the greatest thing that I had brought with me from that other world, and it would assert itself, no matter where I was or what I was doing!