sound of a footfall, furtive and cautious!

The blood flew poundingly to the boy’s pulses. He sprang erect, knife in hand. What he might be called upon to face he did not know.

But he knew he was not alone on the iceberg.

His heart beat thick and hot and then seemed to stop. Advancing onward, from round a shoulder of ice which reached down to the shelf on which he had found refuge, was a tall white form.

It resembled nothing that the boy had ever seen. As if in a nightmare he stood there fixed as a graven image, staring at it with starting eyes as it slowly approached him.

CHAPTER V: IMPRISONED.

Captain Briggs looked blankly at Jack as the frightened boy came forward by leaps and bounds to the bridge, shouting “Man overboard,” a cry which was speedily taken up and echoed from end to end of the ship.

“Whasser marrer?” demanded the captain, seizing the excited boy’s shoulder.

Jack pointed back into the obscurity. His voice was choked with emotion.

“It’s Raynor,—Billy Raynor, second assistant engineer, sir. He fell overboard when we bumped that berg.”

“He did, eh?” repeated the captain thickly, staring stupidly at Jack. “Well, he’s in Davy Jones locker by this time, you may depend upon that.”

For a moment Jack stood stupefied. Then he broke out angrily, utterly forgetting all discipline.

“Aren’t you lowering a boat? Why don’t you order one away? Raynor’s drowning back there.”

“Look here, my lad, you’re excited,” said the captain in more collected, sober tones, “I’m not going to lay my ship to among these icebergs on the chance,—it’s one in ten thousand,—of saving him. A boat couldn’t live among that field ice. It would be crushed in a jiffy.”

“Then you’re going to hold on your course without an effort to save him—? You’re going to abandon him like a coward?” shouted Jack, beside himself.

“Nuzzing to be done,” mumbled the captain, relapsing again, “on your course, Mr. Mulliner.”

But Jack was too far enraged to stand this. He sprang forward and grasped the first officer’s sleeve.

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