We rejoiced because Paride was no longer with us and did not share our suffering. But the hemostatic liquor cured our sickness.

It was the evening of the last day; the sun that marked the season’s end had disappeared on the horizon; a crepuscular glow remained long after its disappearance. The sunset was without agony, without purple on the clouds; the sun had disappeared slowly; its refracted rays still reached us. But it was already beginning to become very cold; the sea around us had frozen once more, imprisoning the ship. The ice thickened by the hour and constantly threatened to crush the ship; it offered us only the flimsiest protection, and we resolved to leave it. But I want to state clearly that our decision resulted neither from despair nor from timorous prudence but rather from a maniacal urge, for we could still break the ice, flee from the winter and follow the course of the sun; but that would have taken us backward. And so, preferring the harshest shores, provided that they were new, we moved toward the night, our day having come to an end. We knew that happiness is not simply escape from sadness; we were going, proud and strong, beyond the worst sorrows to the purest joy.

From parts of the ship we had fashioned a sled. After hitching the big reindeer to the sled, we began to load it with wood, axes and ropes. The last rays were disappearing as we set out toward the pole. On the deck of the ship was one spot, hidden by piles of cordage, which we never went near. Oh sad day’s end, when before leaving the ship, I walked the full length of the deck! Behind the rolls of cordage, when I untied them to take them along, alas, what did I see?

Paride!

We had sought for him in vain; I supposed that he, too weak to stir and too sick to reply, had hidden there like a dog searching for a place to die. But was this really Paride?

He was hairless, beardless; his teeth lay white on the deck around him, where he had spat them out. His skin was mottled, like a piece of cloth on which the colors have run; it was violet and pearl; nothing was more pitiful to see. He had lost his eyelashes, and at first I was unable to determine whether he was looking at us or at something else, for he could no longer smile. His huge, swollen, mummified, spongy gums had retracted and split his lips and now bulged outward like a large fruit; protruding from the middle was one white tooth, his last. He tried to extend his hand; his bones were too fragile and broke. I wanted to grasp his hand; it fell apart in mine, leaving between my fingers blood and rotted flesh. I think that he saw tears in my eyes, for he seemed to understand then that it was he who was crying, and I think that he still nurtured some hope concerning his condition which my tears of pity dissipated, for suddenly he uttered a raucous cry which was supposed to be a sob, and with the hand that I had not crushed, in a gesture of despair, a tragic and truly hopeless gesture, seizing the tooth and his lips, ironically and as if in jest, he suddenly tore out a great strip of flesh and fell back, dead.

That evening, as a sign of mourning and farewell, we burned the ship. Night was approaching majestically, moving in slowly. The flames leapt up triumphantly; the sea was aflame; the great masts and beams burned and then, the vessel having been consumed, the purple flames sank once again. Leaving the irreparable past, we set out for the polar sea.

Silence of night on the snow. Nocturnal silence. Solitude, and you, calm relief of death. Vast timeless plain; the sun’s last rays have withdrawn. All shapes are frozen; cold holds sway on the calm plain, and stillness—and stillness. And serenity. O pure rapture of our souls! Nothing stirs in the air, but a congealed radiance emanates from the glistening icebergs and hovers in the air. All is pale nocturnal blue—shall I say lunar blue?

The moon. Alone in these ecstatic surroundings, I prayed.