The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER IV. MORE CONFUSED THAN EVER. - When the figure of the girl who had been walking and talking but a moment before disappeared, I will confess that I was afraid. Imagine a shipwrecked man who had drifted for days on an angry ocean, who had climbed ice- bergs and traveled over ice fields for days, who had heard mysterious voices, been mysteriously provided with food and shelter, seen that which he could explain in no other way than as spirit, who had received notes in places where no human hands could have placed them. A man alone in a mysterious land which civilized portions of the globe had not believed to exist. What could the strongest man, under such circum- stances, do but stand in fear and anguish? What was this strange land; was it the entrance to the infernal regions, or peopled with shades of the departed? Or was I losing my mind and imagining all these things? The latter I rejected after the first thought, for the food and the lodging were too substantial for me to have dreamed them. And the first was almost as unreasonable, for with whatever this land was peopled they certainly had no evil intention toward me. I stood there on the summit of the mountain range for half an hour meditating upon these strange things and Gomichbook (E(o)