Fame, the plaudits
of the world, the highest scientific honours--all these in my effort to
annihilate her, I had deliberately thrust upon this woman to my own
everlasting detriment and disgrace.
A sort of howl escaped from Dr. Fooss, who had dismounted and who had
been scratching in the slush with his feet like a hen. For already this
slight gallinaceous effort of his had laid bare a hairy section of frozen
mammoth.
Lezard, weeping bitterly, squatted beside him clawing at the thin skin of
ice with a pick-axe.
It seemed more than I could bear and I flung myself from my mule and
seizing a spade, fell violently to work, the tears of rage and
mortification coursing down my cheeks.
"Hurrah!" cried Dr. Delmour, excitedly, scrambling down from her mule and
lifting a box of dynamite from her saddle-bags.
Transfigured with enthusiasm she seized a crowbar, traced in the slush
the huge outlines of the buried beast, then, measuring with practiced eye
the irregular zone of cleavage, she marked out a vast oval, dug holes
along it with her bar, dropped into each hole a stick of dynamite, got
out the batteries and wires, attached the fuses, covered each charge,
and retired on a run toward the moraine, unreeling wire as she sped
upward among the bowlders.
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