This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896. Excerpt: ... shooting up tongue-shaped or arrow-like into the throat of the sooty pouring. It was wide daylight and the antarctic day young, but the clouds rimmed the horizon with the shadow of night, and the crimson light of the flare promised as swift an intelligence of our forlorn condition as the smoke. The seamen continued to feed the fire; and all the while Captain Burke was stretching his telescope at the distant gleam; the men again and again turning their eyes from it to him with looks growing dark with impatience and consuming anxiety. Mr. Owen had fetched his binocular glass and strained his eyes through them without intermission. Mrs. Burke and I standing in the companion, which was the one sheltered part of that long stretch of frozen deck and smashed bulwarks, gazed without speech. Suddenly a sailor, one who had been most active in feeding the fire, sprang on to the rail; he grasped a spear-shaped projection of ice, which broke short off and he fell on his back; he sprang again with an oath, and after looking, turned to others who were standing near the fire and roared: 'Mates, she's leaving us, by God!' 'She takes us for a whaler trying out. There's no good in smoke as a signal down here, ' said a sailor. 'It's our chance, ' bawled the fellow who had sprung and fallen, now throwing himself back on to the deck. 'There mayn't come another for weeks. What's to happen then? Are we to drive about in this fired ocean till we ends as froze-up corpses? I'm for following her.' 'Take her bearings, bo'sun, while she's in sight, ' shouted a seaman, and the huge sailor, as obedient as though the captain had given the command, rolled aft and put the sharp of his hand upon the compass bowl. Captain Burke, ' exclaimed one of the seamen, in a voice startling with its sudde...