Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Captain of the 'Pole-star'"

[Being an extract from the singular journal of JOHN MCALISTER RAY, student of medicine, kept by him during the six months' voyage in the Arctic Seas, of the steam-whaler Pole-star, of Dundee, Captain Nicholas Craigie.]

September 20th , evening. - I crossed the ice this morning with a party of men exploring the southern part of the floe, while Mr. Milne went off in a northerly direction (...)

We had hardly gone a hundred yards before M`Donald of Peterhead cried out that he saw something in front of us, and began to run(...) as we raced along together it took the shape of a man, and eventually of the man of whom we were in search. He was lying face downwards upon a frozen bank (...)  I have learned never to ridicule any man's opinion, however strange it may seem. Sure it is that Captain Nicholas Craigie had met with no painful end, for there was a bright smile upon his blue pinched features, and his hands were still outstretched as though grasping at the strange visitor which had summoned him away into the dim world that lies beyond the grave (...)

We buried him the same afternoon with the ship's ensign around him, and a thirty-two pound shot at his feet. (...) There he shall lie, with his secret and his sorrows and his mystery all still buried in his breast, until that great day when the sea shall give up its dead, and Nicholas Craigie come out from among the ice with the smile upon his face, and his stiffened arms outstretched in greeting(...)

I shall not continue my journal. Our road to home lies plain and clear before us, and the great ice field will soon be but a remembrance of the past. It will be some time before I get over the shock produced by recent events. When I began this record of our voyage I little thought of how I should be compelled to finish it. I am writing these final words in the lonely cabin, still starting at times and fancying I hear the quick nervous step of the dead man upon the deck above me. I entered his cabin to-night, as was my duty, to make a list of his effects in order that they might be entered in the official log. All was as it had been upon my previous visit, save that the picture which I have described as having hung at the end of his bed had been cut out of its frame, as with a knife, and was gone. With this last link in a strange chain of evidence I close my diary of the voyage of the Pole-star .

----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
    Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 16:37:55 -0300
    From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Reply-To: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
 Subject: Re:      Fwd: Re: John Ray Jr & Conan Doyle
      To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum

Hello, Carolyn and Anthony

There are levels of misteries in Conan Doyle´s short-story, presented as an
excerpt from a diary written by the son of Dr.John M. Ray Senior.

Since the diary-writer is a medical student, in time he would also become John
Ray Jr, MD - like Lolita´s psychiatrist who divulges HH´s manuscript - were it
not for the intervening M´Alister.

Young John Ray apparently survived his adventure with madness and ghosts.  Why
then is his diary presented by his father and why was the latter in the
position to prohibit or to authorize its publication?

I didn´t solve Doyle´s puzzle concerning the structuring of his short-story, but
it might offer a clue for "Lolita"  when we consider Dr.John Ray Jr´s use of
HH´s manuscript ( some readers think that HH and John Ray are one, or that HH
and Quilty are one, etc ) and the storie´s mad captain, his medically-minded
companion and Dr.John M´Alister Ray, father.