*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69070 ***

[Illustration: When he caught sight of the fugitives, they were
already out of effective pistol range.
FRONTISPIECE. _See page 308._]




                              THE ISLE OF
                              RETRIBUTION

                                   BY
                            EDISON MARSHALL

                          WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
                              DOUGLAS DUER

                          [Illustration: logo]

                                 BOSTON
                       LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
                                  1923




                           _Copyright, 1923_,
                     By Little, Brown, and Company.

                 *        *        *        *        *

                        Published February, 1923
                Printed in the United States of America




                        The Isle of Retribution




                                   I


The manifold powers of circumstance were in conspiracy against Ned
Cornet this late August afternoon. No detail was important in itself. It
had been drizzling slowly and mournfully, but drizzle is not uncommon in
Seattle. Ned Cornet had been passing the time pleasantly in the Totem
Club, on Fourth Street, doing nothing in particular, nothing exceedingly
bad or good or even unusually diverting; but such was quite a customary
practice with him. Finally, Cornet’s special friend, Rodney Coburn, had
just returned from one of his hundred sojourns in far places,—this time
from an especially attractive salmon stream in Canada.

The two young men had met in Coburn’s room at the Totem Club, and the
steward had gone thither with tall glasses and ice. Coburn had not
returned empty-handed from Canada. Besides pleasant memories of singing
reels and throbbing rods and of salmon that raced like wild sea horses
down the riffles, he had brought that which was much less
healthful,—various dark bottles of time-honored liquors. Partly in
celebration of his return, and partly because of the superior quality of
the goods that had accompanied him, his friend Ned raised his afternoon
limit from two powerful pre-dinner cocktails to no less than four richly
amber whiskies-and-sodas. Thus their meeting was auspicious, and on
leaving the club, about seven, it came about that Ned Cornet met the
rain.

It was not enough to bother him. He didn’t even think about it. It was
only a lazy, smoky drizzle that deepened the shadows of falling twilight
and blurred the lights in the street. Ned Cornet had a fire within that
more or less occupied his thoughts. He didn’t notice the rain, and he
quite failed to observe the quick pulsation of the powerful engine in
his roadster that might otherwise have warned him that he had long since
passed the absolute limit that tolerant traffic officers could permit in
the way of speed.

Cornet was not really drunk. His stomach was fortified, by some years of
experience, against an amount somewhere in the region of a half-pint of
the most powerful spirits,—sufficient poison to kill stone dead a good
percentage of the lower animals. Being a higher animal Ned held his
liquor surprisingly well. He was somewhat exhilarated, faintly flushed;
his eyes had a sparkle as of broken glass, and he felt distinctly warm
and friendly toward all the hurrying thousands on the street, but his
motor centers were not in the least impaired. Under stress, and by
inhaling sharply, he could deceive his own mother into thinking that he
had not had a drink. Nevertheless a pleasant recklessness was upon him,
and he couldn’t take the trouble to observe such stupid things as
traffic laws and rain-wet pavements.

But it came about that this exhilaration was not to endure long. In a
space of time so short that it resembled some half-glimpsed incident in
a dream, Ned found himself, still at his wheel, the car crosswise in the
street and the front wheels almost touching the curb, a terrible and
ghastly sobriety upon him. Something had happened. He had gone into a
perilous skid at the corner of Fourth and Madison, the car had slid
sickeningly out of his control, and at the wrong instant a dark shape,
all too plainly another automobile, had lurched out of the murk of the
rain. There had been no sense of violent shock. All things had slid
easily, the sound at his fender was slow and gentle, and people, in the
fading light, had slow, peculiar expressions on their faces. Then a
great fear, like a sharp point, pricked him and he sprang from his seat
in one powerful leap.

Ned Cornet had had automobiles at his command long before it was safe
for him to have his hands on them. When cold sober he drove rather too
fast, none too carefully, but had an almost incredible mastery over his
car. He knew how to pick his wheel tracks over bumpy roads, and he knew
the exact curve that a car could take with safety in rounding a corner.
Even now, in the crisis that had just been, he had handled his car like
the veteran he was. The wonder was not that he had hit the other car,
but rather, considering the speed with which he had come, that it should
continue to remain before his sight, but little damaged, instead of
being shattered into kindling and dust. His instincts had responded
rather well. It was a somewhat significant thing, to waken hope in the
breast of an otherwise despairing father, that in that stress and terror
he had kept his head, he had handled his brakes and wheel in the only
way that would be of any possible good, and almost by miracle had
avoided a smashing crash that could have easily killed him and every
occupant in the colliding car. Nevertheless it was not yet time to
receive congratulations from spectators. There had been serious
consequences enough. He was suddenly face to face with the fact that in
his haste to get home for dinner he had very likely obliterated a human
life.

There was a curious, huddled heap on the dim pavement, just beyond the
small car he had struck. It was a girl; she lay very still, and the face
half covered by the arm seemed very white and lifeless. And blasted by a
terror such as was never known in all his wasted years, Ned leaped,
raced, and fell to his knees at her side.

It seemed to him that the soft noise of the crash was not yet dead in
the air. It was as if he had made the intervening distance in one leap.
In that same little second his brain encompassed limitless
areas,—terror, remorse, certain vivid vistas of his past life, the
whiteness of the eyelids and the limpness of the little arms, and the
startled faces of the spectators who were hurrying toward him. His
mental mechanism, dulled before by drink, was keyed to such a degree
that the full scope of the accident went home to him in an instant.

The car he had struck was one of the thousands of “jitneys” of which he
had so often spoken with contempt. The girl was a shopgirl or factory
worker, on her way home. Shaken with horror, but still swift and strong
from the stimulus of the crisis, he lifted her head and shoulders in his
arms.

It was a dark second in the life of this care-free, self-indulgent son
of wealth as he stared into the white, blank, thin face before him. He
was closer to the Darkness that men know as Death than he had ever been
before,—so close that some of its shadow went into his own eyes, and
made them look like odd black holes in his white skin, quite different
from the vivid orbs that Rodney Coburn had seen over the tall glasses an
hour before. For once, Ned Cornet was face to face with stern reality.
And he waited, stricken with despair, for that face to give some sign of
life.

It was all the matter of a second. The people who had seen the accident
and the remaining passengers of the “jitney” had not yet reached his
side. But for all that, the little instant of waiting contained more of
the stuff of life than all the rest of Ned Cornet’s time on earth. Then
the girl smiled in his face.

“I’m not hurt,” he heard her say, seemingly in answer to some senseless
query of his. She shook her head at the same time, and she smiled as she
did it. “I know what I’m saying,” she went on. “I’m not hurt—one—bit!”

A great elation and enthusiasm went over the little crowd that was
gathering around her. There could be no doubt but that she told the
truth. Her voice had the full ring of one whose nerves are absolutely
unimpaired. Evidently she had received but the slightest blow from one
of the cars when its momentum was all but spent. And now, with the aid
of a dozen outstretching hands, she was on her feet.

The little drama, as if hurled in an instant from the void, was already
done. Tragedy had been averted; it was merely one of the thousands of
unimportant smash-ups that occur in a great city every year. Some of the
spectators were already moving on. In just a moment, before half a dozen
more words could be said, other cars were swinging by, and a policeman
was on the scene asking questions and jotting down license numbers. Just
for a moment he paused at Ned’s elbow.

“Your name and address, please?” he asked coldly.

Ned whirled, turning his eyes from the girl’s face for the first time.
“Ned Cornet,” he answered. And he gave his father’s address on Queen
Anne Hill.

“Show up before Judge Rossman in the morning,” he ordered. “The jitney
there will send their bills to you. I’d advise you to pay ’em.”

“I’ll pay ’em,” Ned agreed. “I’ll throw in an extra twenty to pay for
their loss of time.”

“This young lady says she ain’t hurt,” the policeman went on. “It
certainly is no credit to you that she ain’t. There is plenty of
witnesses here if she wants to make a suit.”

“I’ll give this young lady complete satisfaction,” Ned promised. He
turned to her in easy friendliness, a queer little crooked smile,
winning and astonishingly juvenile, appearing at his mouth. “Now let’s
get in my car. I’ll take you home—and we can talk this over.”

They pushed together through the little circle of the curious, he helped
her courteously into the big, easy seat of his roadster, and in a moment
they were threading their way through the early evening traffic.

“Good Lord,” the man breathed. “I wouldn’t have blamed that mob if they
had lynched me. Where do we go?”

She directed him out Madison, into a district of humble, modest, but
respectable residences. “It’s lucky you came along—I don’t often get a
ride clear to my door.”

“Lucky! I want to say if it wasn’t for all the luck in the world you’d
be going to the hospital instead. I’m taking all the blame for that
smash back there—I got off mighty lucky. Now let’s settle about the
dress—and a few other things. First—you’re sure you’re not hurt?”

He was a little surprised at the gay, girlish smile about her lips. “Not
a particle. It would be nice if I could go to the hospital two weeks or
so, just to rest—but I haven’t the conscience to do it. I’m not even
scratched—just pushed over in the street. And I’m afraid I can’t even
charge you for the dress. I’ve always had too much conscience, Mr.
Cornet.”

“Of course I’m going to pay——”

“The dress cost only about twenty dollars—at a sale. And it doesn’t
seem to be even damaged. Of course it will have to be cleaned. To save
you the embarrassment I see growing in your face, I’ll gladly send the
bill to you if you like——”

In the bright street light he looked up, studying her face. He had never
really observed it before. Before he had watched it for a sign of life
that was only the antithesis of death, but now he found himself
regarding it from another viewpoint. Her slender, pretty face was wholly
in keeping with her humor, her honesty, her instinctive good manners. If
she were a factory worker, hard toil had not in the least coarsened or
hardened her. Her skin had a healthy freshness, pink like the marvelous
pink of certain spring wild flowers, and she had delicate girlish
features that wholly suited his appraising eye.

She was one of those girls who have worlds of hair to spend lavishly in
setting off piquant faces. It must have been dark brown; at least it
looked so in the street light. Below was a clear, girlish brow, with
never a line except the friendly ones of companionship and humor. Her
eyes seemed to be deeply blue, good-natured, childishly happy, amazingly
clear and luminous, a perfect index to her mood. Now they were smiling,
partly with delight in the ride and in the luxury of the car, partly
from the sheer joy of the adventure. Ned rather wished that the light
was better. He’d like to have given them further study.

She had a pretty nose, and full, almost sensuous lips that curled easily
and softly as she smiled. Then there was a delectable glimpse of the
little hollow of a slender throat, at the collar of her dress.

Ned found himself staring, and he didn’t know just why. He was no
stranger to women’s beauty; some degree of it was the rule rather than
the exception in the circle in which he moved; but some way this before
him now was beauty of a different kind. It was warm, and it went down
inside of him and touched some particular mood and fancy that had never
manifested itself before. He had seen such beauty, now and again, in
children—young girls with the freshness of a spring flower, just
emerging into the bloom of first womanhood, and not yet old enough for
him to meet in a social way—but it had never occurred to him that it
could linger past the “flapper” age. This girl in his car was in her
early twenties—over, rather than under—of medium height, with the
slender strength of an expert swimmer, yet her beauty was that of a
child.

He couldn’t tell, at first, in just what her beauty lay. Other girls had
fresh skins, bright eyes, smiling lips and masses of dark, lustrous
hair,—and some of them even had the simplicity of good manners. Ned had
a quick, sure mind, and for a moment he mused over his wheel as he tried
to puzzle it out.

In all probability it lay in the soft, girlish lines about her lips and
eyes. Curiously there was not the slightest _hardness_ about them. Some
way, this girl had missed a certain hardening process that most of his
own girl friends had undergone; the life of the twentieth century, in a
city of more than three hundred thousand, had left her unscathed. There
were only tenderness and girlish sweetness in the lines, not
sophistication, not self-love, not recklessness or selfishness that he
had some way come to expect.

But soon after this Ned Cornet caught himself with a whispered oath. He
was positively maudlin! The excitement, the near approach to tragedy,
the influence of the liquor manifesting itself once more in his veins
were making him stare and think like a silly fool. The girl was a
particularly attractive shopgirl or factory worker, strong and athletic
for all her appealing slenderness, doubtless pretty enough to waken
considerable interest in certain of his friends who went in for that
sort of thing, but he, Ned Cornet, had other interests. The gaze he bent
upon her was suddenly indifferent.

They were almost at their destination now, and he did not see the sudden
decline of her mood in response to his dying interest. Sensitive as a
flower to sunlight, she realized in a moment that a barrier of caste had
dropped down between them. She was silent the rest of the way.

“Would you mind telling me what you do—in the way of work, I mean?” he
asked her, at her door. “My father has a business that employs many
girls. There might be a chance——”

“I can do almost anything with a needle, thank you,” she told him with
perfect frankness. “Fitting, hemstitching, embroidery—I could name a
dozen other things.”

“We employ dozens of seamstresses and fitters. I suppose I can reach you
here—after work-hours. I’ll keep you in mind.”

An instant later he had bidden her good night and driven away, little
dreaming that, through the glass pane of the door, her lustrous blue
eyes had followed the red spark that was his tail-light till it
disappeared in the deepening gloom.




                                   II


Ned Cornet kept well within the speed laws on his way back to his
father’s beautiful home on Queen Anne Hill. He was none too well pleased
with himself, and his thoughts were busy. There would be some sort of a
scene with Godfrey Cornet, the gray man whose self-amassed wealth would
ultimately settle for the damages to the “jitney” and the affront to the
municipality,—perhaps only a frown, a moment’s coldness about the lips,
but a scene nevertheless. He looked forward to it with great
displeasure.

It was a curious thing that lately he had begun to feel vague
embarrassment and discomfiture in his father’s presence. He had been
finding it a comfort to avoid him, to go to his club on the evenings his
father spent at home, and especially to shun intimate conversation with
him. Ned didn’t know just why this was true; perhaps he had never paused
to think about it before. He simply felt more at ease away from his
father, more free to go his own way. Some way, the very look on the gray
face was a reproach.

No one could look at Godfrey Cornet and doubt that he was the veteran of
many wars. The battles he had fought had been those of economic stress,
but they had scarred him none the less. His face was written over, like
an ancient scroll, with deep, dark lines, and every one marked him as
the fighter he was.

Every one of his fine features told the same story. His mouth was hard
and grim, but it could smile with the kindest, most boyish pleasure on
occasion. His nose was like an eagle’s beak, his face was lean with
never a sagging muscle, his eyes, coal black, had each bright points as
of blades of steel. People always wondered at his trim, erect form,
giving little sign of his advanced years. He still looked hard as an
athlete; and so he was. He had never permitted “vile luxury’s contagion”
to corrupt his tissues. For all the luxury with which he had surrounded
his wife and son, he himself had always lived frugally: simple food,
sufficient exercise, the most personal and detailed contact with his
great business. He had fought upward from utter poverty to the
presidency and ownership of one of the greatest fur houses of his
country, partly through the exercise of the principle of absolute
business integrity, mostly through the sheer dynamic force of the man.
His competitors knew him as a fair but remorseless fighter; but his fame
carried far beyond the confines of his resident city. Bearded trappers,
running their lines through the desolate wastes of the North, were used
to seeing him come venturing up their gray rivers in the spring,
fur-clad and wind-tanned,—finding his relaxation and keeping fit by
personally attending to the buying of some of his furs. Thus it was hard
for a soft man to feel easy in his presence.

Ned Cornet wished that he didn’t have to face him to-night. The
interview, probably short, certainly courteous, would leave him a vague
discomfort and discontent that could only be alleviated by further
drinks, many of them and strong. But there was nothing to do but face
it. Dependence was a hard lot; unlike such men as Rodney Coburn and Rex
Nard, Ned had no great income-yielding capital in his own name. He was
somewhat downcast and sullen as he entered the cheerfully lighted
hallway of his father’s house.

In the soft light it was immediately evident that he was his father’s
son, yet there were certain marked differences between them. Warrior
blood had some way failed to come down to Ned. For all his stalwart
body, he gave no particular image of strength. There was noticeable
extra weight at his abdomen and in the flesh of his neck, and there was
also an undeniable flabbiness of his facial muscles.

Godfrey Cornet’s hands and face were peculiarly trim and hard and brown,
but in the bright light and under careful scrutiny, his son’s showed
somewhat sallow. To a casual observer he showed unmistakable signs of an
easy life and luxurious surroundings; but the mark of prolonged
dissipation was not immediately evident. Perhaps the little triangles on
either side of his irises were not the hard, bluish-white they should
be; possibly there was the faintest beginning of a network of fine, red
lines just below the swollen flesh sacks beneath his eyes. The eyes
themselves were black and vivid, not unlike his father’s; he had a
straight, good nose, a rather crooked, friendly mouth, and the curly
brown hair of a child. As yet there was no real viciousness in his face.
There was amiable weakness, truly, but plenty of friendly boyishness and
good will.

He took his place at the stately table so gravely and quietly that his
parent’s interest was at once wakened. His father smiled quietly at him
across the board.

“Well, Ned,” he asked at last. “What is it to-day?”

“Nothing very much. A very close call, though, to real tragedy. I might
as well tell you about it, as likely enough it’ll be in the papers
to-morrow. I went into a bad skid at Fourth and Madison, hit a jitney,
and before we got quite stopped managed to knock a girl over on the
pavement. Didn’t hurt her a particle. But there’s a hundred dollars’
damage to the jit—and a pretty severe scare for your young son.”

As he talked, his eyes met those of his father, almost as if he were
afraid to look away. The older man made little comment. He went on with
his dessert, and soon the talk veered to other matters.

There hadn’t been any kind of a scene, after all. It was true that his
father looked rather drawn and tired,—more so than usual. Perhaps
difficult problems had come up to-day at the store. His voice had a
peculiar, subdued, quiet note that wasn’t quite familiar. Ned felt a
somber heaviness in the air.

He did not excuse himself and hurry away as he had hoped to do. He
seemed to feel that to make such an offer would precipitate some
impending issue that he had no desire to meet. His father’s thoughts
were busy; both his wife and his son missed the usual absorbingly
interesting discourse that was a tradition at the Cornet table. The
older man finished his coffee, slowly lighted a long, sleek cigar, and
for a moment rested with elbows on the table.

“Well, Ned, I suppose I might as well get this off my chest,” he began
at last. “Now is as auspicious a time as any. You say you got a good
scare to-day. I’m hoping that it put you in a mood so that at least you
can give me a good hearing.”

The man spoke rather humbly. The air was electric when he paused. Ned
leaned forward.

“It wasn’t anything—that accident to-day,” he answered in a tone of
annoyance. “It could have happened to any one on slippery pavements. But
that’s ridiculous—about a good hearing. I hope I always have heard
everything you wanted to tell me, sir.”

“You’ve been a very attentive son.” Godfrey Cornet paused again. “The
trouble, I’m afraid, is that I haven’t been a very attentive father.
I’ve attended to my business—and little else—and now I’m paying the
piper.

“Please bear with me. It was only a little accident, as you say. The
trouble of it is that it points the way that things are going. It could
very easily have been a terrible accident—a dead girl under your
speeding wheels, a charge of manslaughter instead of the good joke of
being arrested for speeding, a term in the penitentiary instead of a
fine. Ned, if you had killed the girl it would have been fully right and
just for you to spend a good many of the best years of your life behind
prison walls. I ask myself whether or not I would bring my influence to
bear, in that case, to keep you from going there. I’m ashamed to say
that I would.

“You may wonder about that. I would know, in my heart, that you should
go there. I am not sure but that you should go there now, as it is. But
I would also know that I have been criminal too—criminally neglectful,
slothful, avoiding my obligations—just as much as you have been
neglectful and slothful and avoiding your obligations toward the other
residents of this city when, half-intoxicated, you drove your car at a
breakneck pace through the city streets. I can’t accuse you without also
accusing myself. Therefore I would try to keep you out of prison. In
doing that, I would see in myself further proof of my old weakness—a
weak desire to spare you when the prison might make a man of you.”

Ned recoiled at the words, but his father threw him a quick smile. “That
cuts a little, doesn’t it? I can’t help it. Ned, your mother and I have
always loved you too well. I suppose it is one of the curses of this
age—that ease and softness have made us a hysterical, sentimental
people, and we love our children not wisely, but too well. I’ve
sheltered you, instead of exposing you to the world. The war did not
stiffen you—doubtless because you were one of the millions that never
reached the front.”

Ned leaned forward. “That wasn’t my fault,” he said with fire. “You know
that wasn’t my fault.”

“I know it wasn’t. The fact remains that you lost out. Let me go on.
I’ve made it easy for you, always, instead of bitter hard as I should
have done. I’ve surrounded you with luxury instead of hardship. You’ve
never done an honest day’s toil on earth. You don’t know what it is to
sweat, to be so tired you can’t stand, to wonder where the next meal is
coming from, to know what a hard and bitter thing life is!

“A girl, thrown on the pavement. A working girl, you said—probably
homely, certainly not your idea of a girl. Perhaps, in your heart, you
think it wouldn’t have much mattered if you had killed her, except for
the awkwardness to you. She was just one of thousands. You, my son, are
Ned Cornet—one of our city’s most exalted social set, one of our
fashionable young clubmen.”

His tone had changed to one of unspeakable bitterness. Ned leaned
forward in appeal. “That isn’t true,” he said sharply. “I’m not a damned
snob!”

“Perhaps not. I’m not sure that I know what a snob is. I’ve never met
one—only men who have pretended to be snobs to hide their fear of me.
Let me say, though, Ned—whatever her lot, no matter how menial her
toil, your life could be spared much easier than hers. It would be
better that you should be snuffed out than that she should lose one of
her working hands. Likely you felt superior to her as you drove her
home; in reality you were infinitely inferior. She has gone much farther
than you have. She knows more of life; she is harder and better and
truer and worth more to this dark world in which we live. The world
could ill afford to lose her, a fighter, a worker. It would be better
off to lose you—a shirker, a slacker!

“I’m not accusing you. God knows the blame is on my own head. For my
part I sprang from the world of toil—never do I go out into that
society in which you move but that I thank God for the bitter toil I
knew in youth. The reason is that it has put me infinitely above them.
Such soft friends as you have wither before my eyes, knowing well that
they can not meet me on even grounds; or else they take refuge in an air
of conceit, a pretense of caste, that deceives themselves no more than
it deceives me. They talk behind my back of my humble origin—fearfully
clothing their own nakedness with the garments of worthy, fighting men
who have preceded them—and yet their most exalted gates open before my
knock. They dare not shut their doors to me. They treat me with the
respect that is born of fear.

“That toil, that hard schooling, has made me what I am and given me the
highest degree possible of human happiness. I find a satisfaction in
living; I am able to hold my head up among men. I have health, the
adoring love of a wonderful woman; I give service to the world. I can
see old age coming upon me without regret, without vain tears for what
might have been, without fear for whatever fate lies beyond. I am
schooled for that fate, Ned. I’ve got strength to meet it. My spirit
will not be buffeted willy-nilly in those winds that blow between the
worlds. I am a man, I’ve done man’s work, and I can hold my place with
other men in the great trials to come.

“What those tests are, I do not know. Personally I lean toward an older
theology, one mostly outworn now, one cast away by weak men because they
are afraid to believe in it. It is not for me to say that Dante foresaw
falsely. The only thing I can not believe is the legend over the
door—‘Abandon Hope, ye who enter here.’ There is no gateway here or
hereafter that can shut out Hope. I believe that no matter how terrible
the punishment that lies within those gates, however hard the school,
there is a way through and out at last.

“Hell is not the dream of a religious fanatic, Ned. I believe in it just
as surely as I believe in a heaven. There must be some school, some
bitter, dreadful training camp for those who leave this world unfitted
to go on to a higher, better world. Lately souls have been going there
in ever-increasing numbers. Let softness and self-indulgence and luxury
continue to degenerate this nation, and all travel will be in that
direction. My hope is yet, the urge behind all that I’m saying to you
to-night, is that you may take some other way.”

His black eyes gleamed over the board. For the moment, he might have
been some prophet of old, preaching the Word to the hosts of Israel. The
long dining room was deathly still as he paused. Realizing that the
intensity of his feeling was wakening the somber poetry within him,
revealing his inmost, secret nature, he steadied himself, watching the
upcurling smoke of his cigar. When he spoke again his voice and words
were wholly commonplace.

“There is no force in heaven or earth so strong as moral force,” he
said. “In the end, nothing can stand against it. If it dies in this
land, Lord help us—because we will be unable to help ourselves. We can
then no longer drive the heathen from our walls. With it, we are
great—without it we are a race of weaklings. And with luxury and ease
upon us, it seems to me I see it manifested ever less and less.

“Ned, there’s one thing to bring it back—and that is hardship. I mean
by hardship all that is opposite to ease: self-restraint instead of
license; service instead of self-love; devotion to a cause of right
rather than to pleasure; most of all, hard work instead of ease. I’ve
heard it said, as a thing to be deplored, that shirt sleeves go to shirt
sleeves every three generations. Thank God it is so. There is nothing
like shirt sleeves, Ned, to make a man—and hard-working, bunching
muscles under them. And through my own weakness I’ve let those fine
muscles of yours grow flabby and soft.

“Your mother and I have a lot to answer for. Both of us were busy, I
with my business, she with her household cares and social duties, and it
was easier to give you what you wanted than to refuse you things for
your own good. It was easier to let you go soft than to provide hardship
for you. It was pleasanter to give in than to hold out—and we loved you
too much to put you through what we should have put you through. We
excused you your early excesses. All young men did it, we told each
other—you were merely sowing your wild oats. Then I found, too late,
that I could not interest you in work—in business. You had always
played, and you didn’t want to stop playing. And your games weren’t
entirely harmless.

“This thing we’ve talked over before. I’ve never been firm. I’ve let you
grow to man’s years—twenty-nine, I believe—and still be a child in
experience. The work you do around my business could be done by a
seventeen-year-old boy. You don’t know what it means to keep a business
day. You come when you like and go when you like. In your folly you are
no longer careful of the rights of other, better people—or you wouldn’t
have driven as you did to-day. You can no longer be bright and
attractive at dinner except under the stimulation of cocktails—nothing
really vicious yet, but pointing to the way things are going. Ned, I
want to make a man of you.”

He paused again, and their eyes met over the table. All too plainly the
elder Cornet saw that his appeal had failed to go home. His son was
smiling grimly, his eyes sardonic, unmistakable contempt in the curl of
his lips. Whether he was angry or not the gray man opposite could not
tell. He hoped so in his heart—that Ned had not sunk so low that he
could no longer know the stirring urge of manly anger. A great
depression drew nigh and enfolded him.

“This isn’t a theater,” was the calloused reply at last. “You are not
delivering a lecture to America’s school children! Strangely, I feel
quite able to take care of myself.”

“I only wish that I could feel so too.”

“You must think I’m a child—to try to scare me with threats of hell
fire. Father, I didn’t realize that you had this streak of puritanism in
you.”

His father made no reply at first. Ned’s bitter smile had seemingly
passed to his own lips. “I suppose there’s no use of going on,” he said.

“By all means go on, since you are so warmed up to your subject,” Ned
answered coldly. “I wouldn’t like to deprive you of the pleasure. You
had something on your mind: what is it?”

“It was a real opportunity for you—a chance to show the stuff you’re
made of. It wasn’t much, truly—perhaps I have taken the whole thing too
seriously. Ned, I wonder if you like excitement.”

“Do I? You know how I love polo——”

“You love to watch! The point is, do you like excitement well enough to
take a slight risk of your life for it? Do you care enough about
success, on your own hook, to go through snow and ice to win it? A
chance came to-day to make from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars for
this firm; all it takes is a little nerve, a little endurance of
hardship, a little love of adventure. I hoped to interest you in it—by
so doing to get you started along the way that leads to manhood and
self-respect. You carry this off successfully, and it’s bound to give
you ambition to tackle even harder deals. It means contact with men, a
whole world of valuable experience, and a world of fun to boot. It
wouldn’t appeal to some of your cheap friends—but heaven knows, if you
don’t take it up, I’m going to do it myself.”

“Go ahead, shoot!” Ned urged. He smiled wanly, almost superciliously at
the enthusiasm that had overswept his father’s face. The old man’s eyes
were gleaming like black diamonds.

It was a curious thing, this love of adventure and trial and
achievement! The old man was half-mad, immersed in the Sunday-school
sentiments of a dead and moth-eaten generation, yet it was marvelous the
joy that he got out of living! He was one of an older generation, or he
would never anticipate pleasure in projects that incurred hardship,
work, responsibility, the silences of the waste places such as he knew
on his annual fur-buying expeditions. His sense of pleasure was weird;
yet he was consistent, to say the least. Now he was wildly elated from
merely _thinking_ about his great scheme,—doubtless some stupid plan to
add further prestige to the great fur house of Godfrey Cornet. Ned
himself could not find such happiness in twice the number of drinks that
were his usual wont.

“It’s simply this,” his father went on, barely able to curb his
enthusiasm. “To-day I met Leo Schaffner at lunch, and in our talk he
gave me what I consider a real business inspiration. He tells me, in his
various jobbing houses, he has several thousand silk and velvet gowns
and coats and wraps left on his hands in the financial depression that
immediately followed the war. He was cussing his luck because he didn’t
know what to do with them. Of course they were part of the surplus that
helped glut the markets when hard times made people stop buying—stock
that was manufactured during the booming days of the war. He told me
that this finery was made of the most beautiful silks and velvets, but
all of it was a good three seasons out of style. He offered me the lot
of two thousand for—I’m ashamed to tell you how much.”

“Almost nothing!” his son prompted him.

“Yes. Almost nothing. And I took him up.”

His son leaned back, keenly interested for the first time. “Good Lord,
why? You can’t go into business selling out-of-date women’s clothes!”

“Can’t, eh? Son, while he was talking to me, it occurred to me all at
once that the least of those gowns, the poorest one in the lot, was
worth at least a marten skin! Think of it! A marten skin, from Northern
Canada and Alaska, returned the trapper around sixty dollars in 1920.
Now let me get down to brass tacks.

“It’s true I don’t intend to sell any of those hairy old white trappers
any women’s silk gowns. But this was what I was going to have you do:
first you were to hire a good auxiliary schooner—a strong, sturdy,
seaworthy two-masted craft such as is used in northern trading. You’d
fit that craft out with a few weeks’ supplies and fill the hold with a
couple of thousand of those gowns. You’d need two or three men to run
the launch—I believe the usual crew is a pilot, a first and second
engineer, and a cook—and you’d have to have a seamstress to do fitting
and make minor alterations. Then you’d start up for Bering Sea.

“You may not know it, but along the coast of Alaska, and throughout the
islands of Bering Sea there are hundreds of little, scattered tribes of
Indians, all of them trappers of the finest, high-priced furs. Nor do
their women dress in furs and skins altogether, either, as popular
legend would have you believe. Through their hot, long summer days they
wear dresses like American women, and the gayer and prettier the
dresses, the better they like ’em. To my knowledge, no one has ever fed
them silk—simply because silk was too high—but being women, red or
white, they’d simply go crazy over it.

“The other factor in the combination is that the _Intrepid_, due to the
unsettled fur market, failed to do any extensive buying on her last
annual trading trip through the islands, and as a result practically all
the Indians have their full catch on hand. The _Intrepid_ is the only
trader through the particular chain of islands I have in mind—the
Skopin group, north and east of the Aleutian chain—and she’s not
counting on going up again till spring. Then she’ll reap a rich
harvest—unless you get there first.

“The Skopin Islands are charted—any that are inhabited at all—easy to
find, easy to get to with a seaworthy launch. Every one of those Indians
you’ll find there will buy a dress for his squaw or his daughter to show
off in, during the summer, and pay for it with a fine piece of fur. For
some of the brighter, richer gowns I haven’t any doubt but that you
could get blue and silver fox. As I say, the worst of ’em is worth at
least a single marten. Considering your lack of space, I’d limit you to
marten, blue and silver fox, fisher and mink, and perhaps such other
freak furs as would bring a high price—no white fox or muskrat or
beaver, perhaps not even ermine and land otter. Ply along from island to
island, starting north and working south and west clear out among the
Aleuts, to keep out of the way of the winter, showing your dresses at
the Indian villages and trading them for furs!

“This is August. I’m already arranging for a license. You’d have to get
going in a week. Hit as far north as you want—the farther you go the
better you will do—and then work south. Making a big chain that cuts
off the currents and the tides, the Skopin group is surrounded by an
unbroken ice sheet in midwinter, so you have to count on rounding the
Aleutian Peninsula into Pacific waters some time in November. If you
wait much longer you’re apt not to get out before spring.

“That’s the whole story. The cargo of furs you should bring out should
be worth close to a hundred thousand. Expenses won’t be fifteen thousand
in all. It would mean work; dealing with a bunch of crafty redskins
isn’t play for boys! Maybe there’d be cold and rough weather, for Bering
Sea deserves no man’s trust. But it would be the finest sport in the
world, an opportunity to take Alaskan bear and tundra caribou—plenty of
adventure and excitement and tremendous profits to boot. It would be a
man’s job, Ned—but you’d get a kick out of it you never got out of a
booze party in your life. And we split the profits
seventy-five—twenty-five—the lion’s share to you.”

He waited, to watch Ned’s face. The young man seemed to be musing. “I
could use fifty thousand, pretty neat,” he observed at last.

“Yes—and don’t forget the fun you’d have.”

“But good Lord, think of it. Three months away from Second Avenue.”

“The finest three months of your life—worth all the rest of your
stupid, silly past time put together.”

Almost trembling in his eagerness, the old man waited for his son’s
reply. The latter took out a cigarette, lighted it, and gazed
meditatively through the smoke. “Fifty thousand!” he whispered greedily.
“And I suppose I could stand the hardship.”

Then he looked up, faintly smiling. “I’ll go, if Lenore will let me,” he
pronounced at last.




                                  III


The exact moment that her name was on Ned’s lips, Lenore Hardenworth
herself, in her apartment in a region of fashionable apartments eight
blocks from the Cornet home, was also wondering at the perverse ways of
parents. It was strange how their selfish interests could disarrange
one’s happiest plans. All in all, Lenore was in a wretched mood,
savagely angry at the world in general and her mother in particular.

They had had a rather unpleasant half-hour over their cigarettes. Mrs.
Hardenworth had been obdurate; Lenore’s prettiest pouts and most winsome
ways hadn’t moved her a particle. The former knew all such little wiles;
time was when she had practiced them herself with consummate art, and
she was not likely to be taken in with them in her old age! Seeing that
these were fruitless, her daughter had taken the more desperate stand of
anger, always her last resort in getting what she wanted, but to-night
it some way failed in the desired effect. There had been almost, if not
quite, a scene between these two handsome women under the chandelier’s
gleam—and the results, from Lenore’s point of view, had been absolutely
nil. Mrs. Hardenworth had calmly stood her ground.

It was the way of the old, Lenore reflected, to give too much of their
thought and interest to their own fancied ills. Not even a daughter’s
brilliant career could stand between. And who would have guessed that
the “nervousness” her mother had complained of so long, pandered to by a
fashionable quack and nursed like a baby by the woman herself, should
ever lead to such disquieting results. The doctor had recommended a sea
voyage to the woman, and the old fool had taken him at his word.

It was not that Lenore felt she could not spare, for some months, her
mother’s guiding influence. It was merely that sea voyages cost money,
and money, at that particular time, was scarce and growing scarcer about
the Hardenworth apartment. Lenore needed all that was available for her
own fall and winter gowns, a mink or marten coat to take the place of
her near-seal cloak, and for such entertaining as would be needed to
hold her place in her own set. Seemingly the only course that remained
was to move forward the date of her marriage to Ned, at present set for
the following spring.

She dried her eyes, powdered her nose; and for all the late storm made a
bewitching picture as she tripped to the door in answer to her fiancé’s
knock. Lenore Hardenworth was in all probability the most beautiful girl
in her own stylish set and one of the most handsome women in her native
city. She was really well known, remembered long and in many places, for
her hair. It was simply shimmering gold, and it framed a face of
flowerlike beauty,—an even-featured, oval face, softly tinted and
daintily piquant. Hers was not a particularly warm beauty, yet it never
failed to win a second glance. She had fine, firm lips, a delicate
throat, and she had picked up an attractive way of half-dropping firm,
white lids over her gray, langourous eyes.

No one could wonder that Lenore Hardenworth was a social success.
Besides her beauty of face, the grace of a slender but well-muscled
form, she unquestionably had a great deal of ambition and spirit. She
was well schooled in the tricks of her trade: charming and ingratiating
with her girl friends, sweet and deeply respectful to the old, and
striking a fine balance between recklessness and demureness with
available men. It can be said for Lenore that she wasted no time with
men who were not eligible, in every sense of the word. Lenore had her
way to make in this world of trial and stress.

Long ago Ned had chosen her from among her girl friends as the most
worthy of his courtship,—a girl who could rule over his house, who
loved the life that he lived, whose personal appeal was the greatest.
Best of all, she was the product of his own time: a modern girl in every
sense of the word. The puritanism he deplored in his own parents was
conspicuously absent in her. She smoked with the ease and satisfaction
of a man; she held her liquor like a veteran; and of prudery she would
never be accused. Not that she was ever rough or crude. Indeed there was
a finesse about her harmless little immoralities that made them, to him,
wholly adorable and charming. She was always among the first to learn
the new dances, and no matter what their murky origin—whether the
Barbary Coast or some sordid tenderloin of a great Eastern city—she
seemed to be able to dance them without ever conveying the image of
vulgarity. Her idea of pleasure ran along with his. Life, at her side,
offered only the most delectable vistas.

Besides, the man loved her. His devotion was such that it was the
subject of considerable amusement among the more sophisticated of their
set. He’d take the _egg_, rather than the _horse-and-buggy_, they told
each other, and to those inured in the newest slang, the meaning was
simply that Lenore, rather than Ned, would be head of their house. The
reason, they explained wisely, was that it spelled disaster to give too
much of one’s self to a wife these days. Such devotion put a man at a
disadvantage. The woman, sure of her husband, would be speedily bored
and soon find other interests. Of course Lenore loved him too, but she
kept herself better in hand. For all his modern viewpoint, it was to be
doubted that Ned had got completely away from the influence of a dead
and moth-eaten generation. Possibly some little vestige of his parent’s
puritanism prevailed in him still!

Ned came in soberly, kissed the girl’s inviting lips, then sat beside
her on the big divan. Studying his grave face, she waited for him to
speak.

“Bad news,” he said at last.

She caught her breath in a quick gasp. It was a curious thing,
indicating, perhaps, a more devout interest in him than her friends gave
her credit for, that a sudden sense of dismay seemed to sweep over her.
Yet surely no great disaster had befallen. There was no cause to fear
that some one of the mighty arms on which they leaned for happiness—the
great fur house of Cornet, for instance—had weakened and fallen. Some
of the warm color paled in her face.

“What is it?” She spoke almost breathlessly, and he turned toward her
with wakened interest.

“Nothing very important,” he told her casually. “I’m afraid I startled
you with my lugubrious tones. I’ve got to go away for three months.”

She stared a moment in silence, and a warm flush, higher and more angry
than that which had just faded, returned to her cheeks. Just for an
instant there was a vague, almost imperceptible hardening of the little
lines about her beautiful eyes.

“Ned! You can’t! After all our plans. I won’t hear of it——”

“Wait, dearest!” the man pleaded. “Of course I won’t go if you say
not——”

“Of course I say not——”

“But it’s a real opportunity—to make forty or fifty thousand. Wait till
I tell you about it, anyway.”

He told her simply: the exact plan that his father had proposed. Her
interest quickened as he talked. She had a proper respect for wealth,
and the idea of the large profits went home speedily and surely to her
imagination, shutting out for the moment all other aspects of the
affair. And soon she found herself sitting erect, listening keenly to
his every word.

The idea of trading obsolete gowns for beautiful furs was particularly
attractive to her. “I’ve got some old things I could spare,” she told
him eagerly. “Why couldn’t you take those with you and trade them to
some old squaw for furs?”

“I could! I don’t see why I shouldn’t bring you back some beauties.”

Her eyes were suddenly lustful. “I’d like some silver fox—and enough
sable for a great wrap. Oh, Ned—do you think you could get them for
me?”

His face seemed rather drawn and mirthless as he returned her stare. It
had been too complete a victory. It can be said for the man that he had
come with the idea of persuading Lenore to let him go, to let him leave
her arms for the sake of the advantages to be accrued from the
expedition, but at least he wanted her to show some regret. He didn’t
entirely relish her sudden, unbounded enthusiasm, and the avaricious
gleam in her eyes depressed and estranged him.

But Lenore made no response to his darkened mood. Sensitive as she
usually was, she seemed untouched by it, wholly unaware of his
displeasure. She was thinking of silver fox, and the thought was as
fascinating as that of gold to a miser. And now her mind was reaching
farther, moving in a greater orbit, and for the moment she sat almost
breathless. Suddenly she turned to him with shining eyes.

“Ned, what kind of a trip will this be?” she asked him.

He was more held by the undertone of excitement in her voice than by the
question itself. “What is it?” he asked. “What do you mean——?”

“I mean—will it be a hard trip—one of danger and discomfort?”

“I don’t think so. I’m going to get a comfortable yacht—it will be a
launch, of course, but a big, comfortable one—have a good cook and
pleasant surroundings. You know, traveling by water has got any other
method skinned. In fact, it ought to be as comfortable as staying at a
club, not to mention the sport in hunting, and so on. I don’t intend to
go too far or too long—your little Ned doesn’t like discomfort any too
well to deliberately hunt it up. I can make it just as easy a trip as I
want. It’s all in my hands—hiring crew, schooner, itinerary, and
everything. Of course, father told a wild story about cold and hardship
and danger, but I don’t believe there’s a thing in it.”

“I don’t either. It makes me laugh, those wild and woolly stories about
the North! It’s just about as wild as Ballard! Edith Courtney went clear
to Juneau and back on a boat not long ago and didn’t have a single
adventure—except with a handsome young big-game hunter in the cabin.”

“But Juneau—is just the beginning of Alaska!”

“I don’t care. This hardship they talk about is all poppycock, and you
know it—and the danger too. To hear your father talk, and some of the
others of the older generation, you’d think they had been through the
infernal regions! They didn’t have the sporting instincts that’ve been
developed in the last generation, Ned. Any one of our friends would go
through what they went through and not even bother to tell about it. I
tell you this generation is better and stronger than any one that
preceded it, and their stories of privation and danger are just a
scream! I’m no more afraid of the North than I am of you.”

She paused, and he stared at her blankly. He knew perfectly well that
some brilliant idea had occurred to her: he was simply waiting for her
to tell it. She moved nearer and slipped her hand between his.

“Ned, I’ve a wonderful plan,” she told him. “There’s no reason why we
should be separated for three months. You say the hiring of the launch,
itinerary, and everything is in your hands. Why not take mother and me
with you?”

“My dear——”

“Why not? Tell me that! The doctor has just recommended her a sea trip.
Where could she get a better one? Of course you’d have to get a big,
comfortable launch——”

“I intended to get that, anyway.” Slowly the light that shone in her
face stole into his. “Are you a good sailor——?”

“It just happens that neither mother nor I know what sea-sickness means.
Otherwise, I’m afraid we wouldn’t find very much pleasure in the trip.
You remember the time, in Rex Nard’s yacht, off Columbia River bar? But
won’t you be in the inside passage, anyway?”

“The inside passage doesn’t go across the Bay of Alaska—but father says
it’s all quiet water among the islands we’ll trade at, in Bering Sea. It
freezes over tight in winter, so it must be quiet.” He paused, drinking
in the advantages of the plan. They would be together; that point alone
was inducement enough for him. By one stroke an arduous, unpleasant
business venture could be turned into a pleasure trip, an excursion on a
private yacht over the wintry waters of the North. It was true that
Lenore’s point of view was slightly different, but her enthusiasm was no
less than his. The plan was a perfect answer to the problem of her
mother’s sea trip and the inevitable expense involved. She knew her
mother’s thrifty disposition; she would be only too glad to take her
voyage as the guest of her daughter’s fiancé. And both of them could
robe themselves in such furs as had never been seen on Second Avenue
before.

“Take you—I should say I will take you—and your mother, too,” he was
exclaiming with the utmost enthusiasm and delight. “Lenore, it will be a
_regular_ party—a joy-ride such as we never took before.”

For a moment they were silent, lost in their own musings. The wind off
the Sound signaled to them at the windows—rattling faintly like ghost
hands stretched with infinite difficulty from some dim, far-off
Hereafter. It had lately blown from Bering Sea, and perhaps it had a
message for them. Perhaps it had heard the scornful words they had
spoken of the North—of the strange, gray, forgotten world over which it
had lately swept—but there was no need to tell them that they lied. A
few days more would find them venturing northward, and they could find
out for themselves. But perhaps the wind had a note of grim, sardonic
laughter as it sped on in its ceaseless journey.




                                   IV


Ned planned to rise early, but sleep was heavy upon him when he tried to
waken. It was after ten when he had finished breakfast and was ready to
begin active preparations for the excursion. His first work, of course,
was to see about hiring a launch.

Ten minutes’ ride took him to the office of his friend, Rex Nard,
vice-president of a great marine-outfitting establishment, and five
minutes’ conversation with this gentleman told him all he wanted to
know. Yes, as it happened Nard knew of a corking craft that was at that
moment in need of a charterer, possibly just the thing that Cornet
wanted. The only difficulty, Nard explained, was that it was probably a
much better schooner than was needed for casual excursions into northern
waters.

“This particular craft was built for a scientific expedition sent out by
one of the great museums,” Nard explained. “It isn’t just a fisherman’s
scow. She has a nifty galley and a snug little dining saloon, and two
foxy little staterooms for extra toney passengers. Quite an up-stage
little boat. Comfortable as any yacht you ever saw.”

“Staunch and seaworthy?”

“Man, this big-spectacled outfit that had it built took it clear into
the Arctic Sea—after walrus and polar bear and narwhal and musk ox; and
she’s built right. I’d cross the Pacific in her any day. Her present
owners bought her with the idea of putting her into coastal service,
both passengers and freight, between various of the little far northern
towns, but the general exodus out of portions of Alaska has left her
temporarily without a job.”

“How about cargo space?”

“I don’t know exactly—but it was big enough for several tons of walrus
and musk ox skeletons, so it ought to suit you.”

“What do you think I could get her for?”

“I don’t think—I know. I was talking to her owner yesterday noon. You
can get her for ninety days for five thousand dollars—seventy-five per
for a shorter time. That includes the services of four men, licensed
pilot, first and second engineer, and a nigger cook; and gas and oil for
the motor.”

Ned stood up, his black eyes sparkling with elation, and put on his hat.
“Where do I find her?”

“Hunt up Ole Knutsen, at this address.” Nard wrote an instant on a strip
of paper. “The name of the craft is the _Charon_.”

“The _Charon_! My heavens, wasn’t he the old boy who piloted the lost
souls across the river Styx? If I were a bit superstitious——”

“You’d be afraid you were headed straight for the infernal regions, eh?
It does seem to be tempting providence to ride in a boat with such a
name. Fortunately the average man Knutsen hires for his crew doesn’t
know Charon from Adam. Seamen, my boy, are the most superstitious crowd
on earth. No one can follow the sea and not be superstitious—don’t ask
me why. It gets to them, some way, inside.”

“Sorry I can’t stay to hear a lecture on the subject.” Ned turned toward
the door. “Now for Mr. Knutsen.”

Ned drove to the designated address, found the owner of the craft, and
executed a charter after ten minutes of conversation. Knutsen was a big,
good-natured man with a goodly share of Norse blood that had paled his
eyes and hair. Together they drew up the list of supplies.

“Of course, we might put in some of dis stuff at nordern ports,” Knutsen
told him in the unmistakable accent of the Norse. “You’d save money,
though, by getting it here.”

“All except one item—last but not least,” Ned assured him. “I’ve got to
stop at Vancouver.”

“Canadian territory, eh——?”

“Canadian whisky. Six cases of imperial quarts. We’ll be gone a long
time, and a sailor needs his grog.”

At which the only comment was made after the door had closed and the
aristocratic fur trader had gone his way. The Norseman sat a long time
looking into the ashes of his pipe. “Six cases—by Yiminy!” he
commented, with good cheer. “If his Pop want to make money out of dis
deal he better go himself!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

There was really very little else for Ned to do. The silk gowns and
wraps that were to be his principal article of trade would not be
received for a few days at least; and seemingly he had arranged for
everything. He started leisurely back toward his father’s office.

But yes, there was one thing more. His father had said that his staff
must include a fitter,—a woman who could ply the needle and make minor
alterations in the gowns. For a moment he mused on the pleasant
possibility that Lenore and her mother could hold up that end of the
undertaking. It would give them something to do, an interest in the
venture; it would save the cost of hiring a seamstress. But at once he
laughed at himself for the thought. He could imagine the frigid,
caste-proud Mrs. Hardenworth in the rôle of seamstress! In the first
place she likely didn’t know one end of a needle from another. If in
some humble days agone she had known how to sew, she was not the type
that would care to admit it now. He had to recognize this fact, even
though she were his sweetheart’s mother. Nor would she be likely to take
kindly to the suggestion. The belligerence with which she had always
found it necessary to support her assumption of caste would manifest
itself only too promptly should he suggest that she become a
needlewoman, even on a lark. Such larks appealed to neither Mrs.
Hardenworth nor her daughter. And neither of them would care for such
intimate relations with the squaws, native of far northern villages. The
two passengers could scarcely be induced to speak to such as these, much
less fit their dresses. No, he might as well plan on taking one of his
father’s fitters.

And at this point in his thoughts he paused, startled. Later, when the
idea that had come to him had lost its novelty, he still wondered about
that strange little start that seemed to go all over him. It was some
time before he could convince himself of the real explanation—that,
though seamstress she was, on a plane as far different from his own
Lenore as night was from day, the friendliness and particularly the good
sportsmanship of his last night’s victim had wakened real gratitude and
friendship for her. He felt really gracious toward her, and since it was
necessary that the expedition include a seamstress, it would not be bad
at all to have her along. She had shown the best of taste on the way
home after the accident, and certainly she would offend Lenore’s and his
own sensibilities less than the average of his father’s employees.

He knew where he could procure some one to do the fitting. Had not Bess
Gilbert, when he had left her at her door the previous evening, told him
that she knew all manner of needlecraft? Her well-modeled, athletic,
though slender form could endure such hardships as the work involved;
and she had the temperament exactly needed: adventurous, uncomplaining,
courageous. He turned at once out Madison where Bess lived.

She was at work at that hour, a gray, sweet-faced woman told him, but he
was given directions where he might find her. Ten minutes later he was
talking to the young lady herself.

Wholly without warmth, just like the matter of business that it was, he
told her his plan and offered her the position. It was for ninety days,
he said, and owing to the nature of the work, irregular hours and more
or less hardship, her pay would be twice that which she received in the
city. Would she care to go?

She looked up at him with blue eyes smiling,—a smile that crept down to
her lips for all that she tried to repel it. She looked straight into
Ned’s eyes as she answered him simply, candidly, quite like a social
equal instead of a lowly employee. And there was a lilt in her voice
that caught Ned’s attention in spite of himself.

“I haven’t had many opportunities for ocean travel,” she told him—and
whether or not she was laughing at him Ned Cornet couldn’t have sworn!
Her tone was certainly suspiciously merry. “Mr. Cornet, I’ll be glad
enough to accompany your party, any time you say.”




                                   V


It was a jesting, hilarious crowd that gathered one sunlit morning to
watch the departure of the _Charon_. Rodney Coburn was there, and Rex
Nard, various matrons who were members of Mrs. Hardenworth’s bridge
club, and an outer and inner ring of satellites that gyrated around such
social suns as Ned and Lenore. Every one was very happy, and no one
seemed to take the expedition seriously. The idea of Ned Cornet, he of
the curly brown hair, in the rôle of fur trader in the frozen wastes of
the North appealed to his friends as being irresistibly comic. The
nearest approach to seriousness was Coburn’s envy.

“I’d like to be in your shoes,” he told Ned. “Just think—a chance to
take a tundra caribou, a Kodiac bear, and maybe a polar bear and a
walrus—all in one swoop! I’ll have to hand over my laurels as a
big-game hunter when you get back, old boy!”

“Lewis and Clark, Godspeed!” Ted Wynham, known among certain
disillusioned newspaper men as “the court jester”, announced
melodramatically from a snubbing block. “In token of our esteem and good
wishes, we wish to present you with this magic key to success and
happiness.” He held out a small bundle, the size of a jack-knife,
carefully wrapped. “You are going North, my children! You, Marco
Polo”—he bowed handsomely to Ned—“and you, our lady of the
snows,”—addressing Lenore—“and last but not least, the
chaperone”—bowing still lower to Mrs. Hardenworth, a big, handsome
woman with iron-gray hair and large, even features—“will find full use
for the enclosed magic key in the wintry, barbarous, but blessed lands
of the North. Gentleman and ladies, you are not venturing into a desert.
Indeed, it is a land flowing with milk and honey. And this little watch
charm, first aid to all explorers, the friend of all dauntless travelers
such as yourselves, explorers’ delight, in fact, will come in mighty
handy! Accept it, with our compliments!”

He handed the package to Ned, and a great laugh went up when he revealed
its contents. It contained a gold-mounted silver cork-screw!

Both Lenore and her mother seemed in a wonderful mood. The ninety-day
journey on those far-stretching sunlit waters seemed to promise only
happiness for them. Mrs. Hardenworth was getting her sea trip, and under
the most pleasant conditions. There would also, it seemed, be certain
chances for material advantages, none of which she intended to overlook.
In her trunk she had various of her own gowns—some of them slightly
worn, it was true; some of them stained and a trifle musty—yet suddenly
immensely valuable in her eyes. She had intended to give them to the
first charity that would condescend to accept them, but now she didn’t
even trust her own daughter with them. Somewhere in those lost and
desolate islands of the North she intended trading them for silver fox!
Ned had chest upon chest of gowns to trade; surely she would get a
chance to work in her own. Her daughter looked forward to the same
profitable enterprise, and besides, she had the anticipation of three
wonderful, happy months’ companionship with the man of her choice.

They had dressed according to their idea of the occasion. Lenore wore a
beautifully tailored middy suit that was highly appropriate for summer
seas, but was nothing like the garb that Esquimo women wear in the fall
journeys in the Oomiacs. Mrs. Hardenworth had a smart tailored suit of
small black and white check, a small hat and a beautiful gray veil. Both
of them carried winter coats, and both were fitted out with binoculars,
cameras, and suchlike oceanic paraphernalia. Knutsen, of course,
supposed that their really heavy clothes, great mackinaws and slickers
and leather-lined woolens, such as are sometimes needed on Bering Sea,
were in the trunks he had helped to stow below. In this regard the blond
seaman, helmsman and owner of the craft, had made a slight mistake. In a
desire for a wealth of silver fox to wear home both trunks had been
filled with discarded gowns to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Ned, in a smart yachting costume, had done rather better by himself. He
had talked with Coburn in regard to the outfit, and his duffle bag
contained most of the essentials for such a journey. And Bess’s big,
plain bag was packed full of the warmest clothes she possessed.

Bess did not stand among the happy circle of Ned’s friends. Her mother
and sister had come down to the dock to bid her good-by, and they seemed
to be having a very happy little time among themselves. Bess herself was
childishly happy in the anticipation of the adventure. Hard would blow
the wind that could chill her, and mighty the wilderness power that
could break her spirit!

The captain was almost ready to start the launch. McNab, the chief
engineer, was testing his engines; Forest, his assistant, stood on the
deck; and the negro cook stood grinning at the window of the galley. But
presently there was an abrupt cessation of the babble of voices in the
group surrounding Ned.

Only Ted Wynham’s voice was left, trailing on at the high pitch he
invariably used in trying to make himself heard in a noisy crowd. It
sounded oddly loud, now that the laughter had ceased. Ted paused in the
middle of a word, startled by the silence, and a secret sense of vague
embarrassment swept all his listeners. A tall man was pushing through
the crowd, politely asking right of way, his black eyes peering under
silver brows. For some inexplicable reason the sound of frolic died
before his penetrating gaze.

But the groups caught themselves at once. They must not show fear of
this stalwart, aged man with his prophet’s eyes. They spoke to him,
wishing him good day, and he returned their bows with faultless
courtesy. An instant later he stood before his son.

“Mother couldn’t get down,” Godfrey Cornet said simply. “She sent her
love and good wishes. A good trip, Ned—but not too good a trip.”

“Why not—too good a trip?”

“A little snow, a little cold—maybe a charging Kodiac bear—fine
medicine for the spirit, Ned. Good luck!”

He gave his hand, then turned to extend good wishes to Mrs. Hardenworth
and Lenore. He seemed to have a queer, hesitant manner when he addressed
the latter, as if he had planned to give some further, more personal
message, but now was reconsidering it. Then the little group about him
suddenly saw his face grow vivid.

“Where’s Miss Gilbert——?”

The group looked from one to another. As always, they were paying the
keenest attention to his every word; but they could not remember hearing
this name before. “Miss Gilbert?” his son echoed blankly. “Oh, you mean
the seamstress——”

“Of course—the other member of your party.”

“She’s right there, talking to her mother.”

A battery of eyes was suddenly turned on the girl. Seemingly she had
been merely part of the landscape before, unnoticed except by such
clandestine gaze as Ted Wynham bent upon her; but in an instant, because
Godfrey Cornet had known her name, she became a personage of at least
some small measure of importance. Without knowing why she did it, Mrs.
Hardenworth drew herself up to her full height.

Cornet walked courteously to the girl’s side and extended his hand.
“Good luck to you, and a pleasant journey,” he said, smiling down on
her. “And, Miss Gilbert, I wonder if I could give you a charge——”

“I’ll do my best—anything you ask——”

“I want you to look after my son Ned. He’s never been away from the
comforts of civilization before—and if a button came off, he’d never
know how to put it on. Don’t let him come to grief, Miss Gilbert. I’m
wholly serious—I know what the North is. Don’t let him take too great a
risk. Watch out for his health. There’s nothing in this world like a
woman’s care.”

There was no ring of laughter behind him. No one liked to take the
chance that he was jesting, and no one could get away from the
uncomfortable feeling that he might be in earnest. Bess’s reply was
entirely grave.

“I’ll remember all you told me,” she told him simply.

“Thank you—and a pleasant voyage.”

Even now the adventurers were getting aboard. Mrs. Hardenworth was
handing her bag to Knutsen—she had mistaken him for a cabin boy—with
instructions to carry it carefully and put it in her stateroom; Lenore
was bidding a joyous farewell to some of her more intimate friends. The
engine roared, the water churned beneath the propeller, the pilot called
some order in a strident voice. The boat moved easily from the dock.

Swiftly it sped out into the Sound. A great shout was raised from the
dock, hands waved, farewell words blew over the sunlit waters. But there
was one of the four seafarers on the deck who seemed neither to hear nor
to see. He stood silent, a profundity of thought upon him never
experienced before.

He was wondering at the reality of the clamor on the shore. How many
were there in the farewell party who after a few weeks would even
remember his existence? If the blond man at the wheel were in reality
Charon, piloting him to some fabled underworld from which he could never
return, how quickly he would be forgotten, how soon they would fail to
speak his name! He felt peculiarly depressed, inwardly baffled, deeply
perplexed.

Were all his associations this same fraud? Was there nothing real or
genuine in all the fabric of his life? As he stood erect, gazing out
over the shimmering waters, Lenore suddenly gazed at him in amazement.

For the moment there was a striking resemblance to his father about his
lips and in the unfathomable blackness of his eyes. Her own reaction was
a violent start, a swift feeling of apprehension that she could not
analyze or explain. Her instincts were sure and true: she must not let
this side of him gain the ascendency. Her very being seemed to depend on
that.

But swiftly she called him from his preoccupation. She had something to
show him, she said,—a parting gift that Ted Wynham had left in her
stateroom. It was a dark bottle of a famous whisky, and it would suffice
their needs, he had said, until they should reach Vancouver.




                                   VI


Mrs. Hardenworth had made it a point to go immediately to her stateroom,
but at once she reappeared on deck. She seemed a trifle more erect, her
gray eyes singularly wide open.

“Ned, dear, I wonder if that fellow made a mistake when he pointed out
my stateroom,” she began rather stiffly. “I want to be sure I’ve got the
right one that you meant for me——”

“It’s the one to the right,” Ned answered, somewhat unhappily. He
followed her along the deck, indicating the room she and her daughter
were to occupy. “Did you think he was slipping something over on you,
taking a better one himself?”

“I didn’t know. You can’t ever tell about such men, Ned; you know that
very well. Of course, if it is the one you intended for me, I’m only too
delighted with it——”

“It’s really the best on the ship. It’s not a big craft, you know; space
is limited. I’m sorry it’s so small and dark, and I suppose you’ve
already missed the running water. I do hope it won’t be too
uncomfortable. Of course, you can have the one on the other side, but
it’s really inferior to this——”

“That’s the only other one? Ned, I want you to have the best one——”

“I’m sorry to say I’m not going to have any. Miss Gilbert has to have
the other. But there’s a corking berth in the pilot house I’m going to
occupy.”

“I’d never let Miss Gilbert have it!” The woman’s eyes flashed. “I
wouldn’t hear of it—you putting yourself out for your servant. Why
can’t she occupy the berth in the pilot house——”

“I don’t mind at all. Really I don’t. The girl couldn’t be expected to
sleep where there are men on watch all night.”

“It’s a shame, just the same. Here she is going to have one of the two
best staterooms all to herself.”

At once she returned to her room; but the little scene was not without
results. In the first place it implanted a feeling of injury in Ned,
whose habits of mind made him singularly open to suggestion; and in the
second it left Mrs. Hardenworth with a distinct prejudice against Bess.
She was in a decided ill-humor until tea time, when she again joined Ned
and Lenore on the deck.

She was not able to resist the contagion of their own high spirits, and
soon she was joining in their chat. Everything made for happiness
to-day. The air was cool and bracing, the blue waters glittered in the
sun, a quartering wind filled the sails of the _Charon_, and with the
help of the auxiliary engines whisked her rollicking northward. None of
the three could resist a growing elation, a holiday mood such as had
lately come but rarely and which was wholly worth celebrating. Soon Ned
excused himself, but reappeared at once with Ted Wynham’s parting gift.

“It’s a rare day,” he announced solemnly.

“And heavens! We haven’t christened the ship!” Lenore added drolly.

“Children, children! Not yet a day out! But you mustn’t overdo it,
either of you!” Mrs. Hardenworth shook her finger to caution them. “Now,
Ned, have the colored man bring three glasses and water. I’d prefer
ginger ale with mine if you don’t mind—I’m dreadfully old-fashioned in
that regard.”

A moment later all three had watered their liquor to their taste, and
were nodding the first “here’s how!” Then they talked quietly, enjoying
the first stir of the stimulant in their veins.

Through the glass window of the cabin whence she had gone to read a
novel Bess watched that first imbibing with lively interest. It was her
first opportunity to observe her social superiors in their moments of
relaxation, and she didn’t quite know what to make of it. It was not
that she was wholly unfamiliar with drinking on the part of women. She
had known unfortunate girls, now and again, who had been brought to
desolation by this very thing, but she had always associated it with
squalor and brutality rather than culture and luxury. And she was
particularly impressed with the casual way these two beautiful women
took down their staggering doses.

They didn’t seem to know what whisky was. They drank it like so much
water. Evidently they had little respect for the demon that dwells in
such poisoned waters,—a respect that in her, because of her greater
knowledge of life, was an innate fear. They were like children playing
with matches. She felt at first an instinct to warn them, to tell them
in that direction lay all that was terrible and deadly, but instantly
she knew that such a course would only make her ridiculous in their
eyes.

But Bess needn’t have felt surprise. Their attitude was only reflective
of the recklessness that had come to be the dominant spirit of her
age,—at least among those classes from whom, because of their culture
and sophistication, the nation could otherwise look for its finest
ideals. She saw them take a second drink, and later, ostensibly hidden
from Mrs. Hardenworth’s eyes, Ned and Lenore have a sma’ wee one
together, around the corner of the pilot house.

With that third drink the little gathering on the deck began to have the
proportions of a “party.” Of course, no one was drunk. Mrs. Hardenworth
was an old spartan at holding her liquor; Lenore and Ned were merely
stimulated and talkative.

The older woman concealed the bottle in her stateroom, but the effects
of what had already been consumed did not at once pass away. Their
recklessness increased: it became manifest, to some small degree, in
speech. Once or twice Ned’s quips were a shade off-color, but always
rollicking laughter was the response: once Mrs. Hardenworth, half
without thinking, turned a phrase in such a way that a questionable
inference could hardly be avoided.

“Why, mama!” Lenore exclaimed, in mock amazement. “Thank heaven you’ve
got the grace to blush.”

“You wicked old woman,” Ned followed up with pretended gravity. “What if
our little needlewoman had heard you!”

In reality Bess Gilbert had overheard the remark, as well as some of
Ned’s quips that had preceded it, and had been almost unable to believe
her ears. It was not that she was particularly ingenuous or innocent. As
an employee in a great factory she had a knowledge of life beyond any
that these two tenderly bred women could have hoped to gain. But always
before she had associated such speech with ill-bred and vulgar people
with whom she would not permit herself to associate, never with those
who in their attitude and thought presumed to be infinitely her
superior.

She was not lacking in good sense; so she gave no sign of having heard.
She wondered, however, just how she would have received such sallies had
she been properly a member of their party. Wholly independent, with a
world of moral courage to support her convictions, she could not have
joined in the laughter that followed, even to avoid being conspicuous.
It would have been a situation of real embarrassment to her.

The conclusion that she came to was that her three months’ journey on
board the _Charon_ would be beset with many complications.

She made the very sensible resolve to avoid Ned’s society and that of
his two guests just as much as possible. She saw at once they were not
her kind of people; and only unpleasantness would result from her
intercourse with them.

She couldn’t explain the darkening of her mood that followed this
resolve. Surely she did not lean on these three for her happiness: the
journey itself offered enough in the way of adventure and pleasure. She
anticipated hours of enjoyment with Knutsen, the Norse pilot and owner
of the boat, with McNab, the freckled, sandy-haired first engineer, and
with Forest, his young assistant. Yet the weight of unhappiness that
descended upon her was only too real. She tried in vain to shake it off.
A sensible, self-mastered girl, she hated to yield to an oppression that
seemingly had its source in her imagination only.

Ned had seemed so fine, so cheery, so companionable the night he had
taken her home, after the accident. Yet he was showing himself a
weakling: she saw the signs of it too plainly to mistake. She saw him
not only on a far different social plane from her own, but some way
fallen in her respect. He was separated from her not only by the
unstable barrier of caste but by the stone wall of standards. She knew
life, this girl of the world of toil, and she seemed to know that all
her half-glimpsed, intangible dreams had come to nothing.

And her decision to avoid the three aristocrats stood her in good stead
before the night was done, saving her as bitter a moment as any that had
oppressed her in all the steep path of her life. Just after the dinner
call had sounded, Lenore, Ned, and Mrs. Hardenworth had had a momentous
conference in the little dining saloon.

The issue was silly and trivial from the first; but even insignificant
things assume dangerous proportions when heady liquor is dying in the
veins. It had been too long since Mrs. Hardenworth had had her drinks.
She was in a doubtful mood, querulous so far as her own assumption of
good breeding would permit, ready to haggle over nothing. The three of
them had come into the dining room together: none of the other occupants
of the little schooner had yet put in an appearance.

“I see the table’s set for four,” she began. “Who’s the other place
for—Captain Knutsen?”

“I’m afraid the captain has to mind his wheel. This isn’t an oceanic
liner. I suppose the place is set for Miss Gilbert.”

Watching the older woman’s face, Ned discerned an almost imperceptible
hardening of the lines that stretched from the nose to the corners of
the lips. Likely he wouldn’t have observed it at all except for the fact
that he had now and then seen the same thing in Lenore, always when she
was displeased.

“Miss Gilbert seems to fill the horizon. May I ask how many more there
are in the crew?”

“Just McNab, Forest, and the cook. Both white men take turns at the
wheel in open water.”

“That’s three for each table, considering one of the men has to stay at
the wheel. Why shouldn’t one of these plates be removed?”

The woman spoke rather softly, but Ned did not mistake the fact that she
was wholly in earnest. “I don’t see why not,” he answered rather feebly.
“Except, of course—they eat at irregular hours——”

“Listen, Ned. Be sensible. When a seamstress comes to our house she
doesn’t eat at the table with us. Not at your house either. Perhaps
you’d say that this was different, thrown together as we are on this
little boat, but I don’t see that it is different. I hope you won’t mind
my suggesting this thing to you. I’ve handled servants all my life—I
know how to get along with them with the least degree of friction—and
it’s very easy to be _too_ kind.”

Ned looked down, his manhood oozing out of him. “But she’s a nice
girl——”

“I don’t doubt that she is,” Lenore interrupted him. “That isn’t the
point. It isn’t through any attempt to assert superiority that mama is
saying what she is. You know we like to be alone, Ned; we don’t want to
have to include any one else in our conversation. We’re a little trio
here, and we don’t need any one else. Tell the man to take away her
plate.”

“Of course, if you prefer it.” Half ashamed of his reluctance, he called
the negro and had the fourth plate removed. “Miss Gilbert will eat at
the second table,” he explained. When the man had gone, Ned turned in
appeal to Lenore. “She’ll be here in a minute. What shall I tell her?”

“Just what you told the servant—that she is to wait for the second
table. Ned, you might as well make it clear in the beginning, otherwise
it will be a problem all through the trip. Wait till she comes in, then
tell her.”

Ned agreed, and they waited for the sound of Bess’s step on the stair.
Mrs. Hardenworth’s large lips were set in a hard line: Lenore had a
curious, eager expectancy. Quietly Julius served the soup, wondering at
the ways of his superiors, the whites, and the long seconds grew into
the minutes. Still they did not see Bess’s bright face at the door.

The soup cooled, and Mrs. Hardenworth began to grow impatient. The girl
was certainly late in responding to the dinner call! And now, because
she was fully aroused, she was no longer willing to accept that which
would have constituted, a few minutes before, a pleasant way out of the
difficulty,—the failure of the seamstress to put in an appearance. The
victorious foe, at white heat, demands more than mere surrender. The two
women, fully determined as to Ned’s proper course, were not willing the
matter should rest.

“Send for her,” Mrs. Hardenworth urged. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t
get this done and out of the way to-night, so we won’t have to be
distressed about it again.” Her voice had a ring of conviction; there
was no doubt that, in her own mind, she had fully justified this affront
to Bess. “You’ve got to face it some time. Tell the man to ask her to
come here—and then politely designate her for the second table. She’s
an employee of yours, you are in real command of the boat, and it’s
entirely right and proper.”

Wholly cowed, anxious to sustain the assumption of caste that their
words had inferred, he called to the negro waiter. “Please tell Miss
Gilbert to come here,” he ordered.

A wide grin cracking his cheeks, failing wholly to understand the real
situation and assuming that “de boss” had relented in his purpose to
exclude the seamstress from the first table, the colored man sped
cheerfully away. Bess had already spoken kindly to him; Julius had
deplored the order to remove her plate almost as a personal affront. And
he failed to hear Ned’s comment that might have revealed the situation
in its true light.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said weakly, after Julius had gone. “But I
feel like a cad, just the same.”

Again they waited for the seamstress to come. The women were grim,
forbidding. And in a moment they heard steps at the threshold.

But only Julius, his face beset with gloom, came through the opened
door. “De lady say she ’stremely sorry,” he pronounced, bowing. “But she
say she’s already promised Mista McNab to eat with him!”




                                  VII


The _Charon_ sped straight north, out of the Sound, through the inside
passage. Days were bright; skies were clear, displaying at night a
marvelous intricacy of stars; the seas glittered from the kindly
September sun. They put in at Vancouver the night following their
departure from Seattle, loaded on certain heavy stores, and continued
their way in the lea of Vancouver Island.

Straight north, day after day! To McNab, a man who had cruised ten years
on Alaskan waters, the air began to feel like home. It was crisp,
surging cool in the lungs, fragrant with balsam from the wooded islands.
Already Ned had begun to readjust some of his ideas in regard to the
North. It was no longer easy to believe that his father had exaggerated
its beauty and its appeal, its desolation and its vastness. It was a
strange thing for a man used to cities to go day upon day without seeing
scarcely a village beside the sea, a single human being other than those
of his own party. Here was one place, it seemed, that the hand of man
had touched but lightly if at all.

The impression grew the farther north he went. Ever there was less sign
of habitation upon the shore. The craft passed through narrow channels
between mountains that cropped up from the sea, it skirted wooded
islands, it passed forgotten Indian villages where the totem poles stood
naked and weather-stained before the forsaken homes of the chiefs. The
glasses brought out a wonderland scene just beyond the reach of their
unaided sight,—glacier and snow-slide, lofty peaks and water-falls. The
mystic, brooding spirit of the North was already over them.

They had touched at Ketchikan, the port of entry to Alaska, and thence
headed almost straight west, across the gulf of Alaska and toward the
far-stretching end of the Alaskan Peninsula. During these days they were
far out of sight of land, surrounded only by an immeasurable ocean that
rolled endlessly for none to see or hear.

They were already far beyond the limits of ordinary tourist travel. The
big boats plied as far as Anchorage at the head of Cook Inlet—to the
north and east of them now—but beyond that point the traffic was
largely that of occasional coastal traders, most of them auxiliary
schooners of varying respectability. They seemed to have the ocean
almost to themselves, never to see the tip of a sail on the horizon, or
a fisherman’s craft scudding into port. And the solitude crept into the
spirits of the passengers of the _Charon_.

It became vaguely difficult to keep up a holiday atmosphere. It was
increasingly hard to be gay, to fight down certain inner voices that had
hitherto been stifled. Some way, life didn’t seem quite the same, quite
the gay dream it had hitherto been. And yet this immeasurable vista of
desolate waters—icy cold for all the sunlight that kissed the
upreaching lips of the waves—was some way like a dream too. The brain
kept clear enough, but it was all somewhat confusing to an inner brain,
a secret self that they had scarcely been aware of before. It was hard
to say which was the more real,—the gay life they had left, the
laughter of which was still an echo in their ears, or these
far-stretching wastes of wintry waters.

They couldn’t help but be thoughtful. Realities went home to them that
they had no desire to admit. A fervent belief in their own
sophistication had been their dominant point of view, a disillusionment
and a realism that was the tone of their generation, denying all they
could not see or hear, holding themselves superciliously aloof from that
gracious wonder and simplicity that still blesses little children; but
here was something that was inscrutably beyond them. They couldn’t laugh
it away. They couldn’t cast it off with a phrase of cheap slang;
demeaning it in order to hold firm to their own philosophy of Self. Here
was something that shook their old attitude of self-love and
self-sufficiency to its foundations. They thought they knew life, these
three; they thought they were bigger than life, that they had mastered
it and found it out and stripped all delusions from it, but now their
unutterable conceit, the pillar of their lives, was threatening to fall.
This sunlit sea was too big for them: too big and too mighty and too
old.

The trouble with Ned’s generation was that it was a godless generation:
the same evil that razed Babylon to the dust. Ned and his kind had come
to be sufficient unto themselves. They had lost the wonder and fear of
life, and that meant nothing less than the loss of their wonder and fear
of the great Author of life. To these, life had been a game that they
thought they had mastered. They had laughed to scorn the philosophies
that a hundred generations of nobler men had built up with wondering
reverence. Made arrogant by luxury and ease, they knew of nothing too
big for them, no mystery that their contemptuous gaze could not
penetrate, no wonder that their reckless hands could not unveil. They
were drunk with their own glories, and the ultimate Source of all things
had no place in their philosophies or their thoughts. It was true that
churches flourished among them, that Charity received her due; but the
old virile faith, the reverent wonder, the mighty urge that has achieved
all things that have been worth achieving were cold and dead in their
hearts. But out here in this little, wind-blown craft, surrounded by an
immensity of desolation beyond the power of their minds to grasp, it was
hard to hold to their old complacency. Their old philosophies were
barrenly insufficient, and they couldn’t repel an ever deepening sense
of awe. The wind, sweeping over them out of the vastness, was a new
voice, striking the laughter from their lips and instilling a coldness
that was almost fear in their warm, youthful blood. The sun shone now,
but soon vast areas, not far off, would be locked tight with ice; never
the movement of a wave, never the flash of a sea-bird’s wing over the
wastes; and the thought sobered them and perhaps humbled them a little
too. Sometimes, alone on the deck at night, Ned was close to the dearest
reality, the most profound discovery that could possibly touch his life:
that the dreadful spirit of God moved upon the face of these desolate
waters, no less than, as is told in Genesis, at creation’s dawn.

Everything would have been different if they had come in a larger boat,
for instance, one of the great liners that plied between Seattle and
Anchorage. In that case, likely they would have had no trouble in
retaining their old point of view. The brooding tone of the North would
have passed them by; the journey could still have remained a holiday
instead of the strange, wandering dream that it was. The reason was
simply that on a liner they would not have broken all ties with their
old life. There would have been games and dancing, the service of
menials, social intercourse and all the superficialities and pretenses
that had until now composed their lives. Their former standards, the
attitudes from which they regarded life, would have been unaltered.
There would have been no isolation, and thus no darkening of their
moods, no haunting uneasiness that could not be named or described, no
whispering voices heard but dimly out of the sea. They could have
remained in their own old ramparts of callousness and scorn. But here
they were alone,—lost and far on an empty sea, under an empty sky.

There was such a little group of them, only eight in all. The ship was a
mere dot in the expanse of blue. Around them endlessly lay the sea,
swept by unknown winds, cursed by the winter’s cold, like death itself
in its infinity and its haunting fear. The life they had left behind was
already shadowed and dim: the farewell shouts, the laughter, the gaiety,
the teeming crowds that moved and were never still were all like
something imagined, unspeakably far off. Only the sea and the sky were
left, and the craft struggling wearily, ever farther into the empty
North.

Lenore found herself oppressed by an unreasoning fear. Realities were
getting home to her, and she was afraid of them. It would have been
wiser not to come, yet she couldn’t have told why. The launch was wholly
comfortable; she was already accustomed to the cramped quarters. The men
of the crew were courteous, Ned the same devoted lover as always. The
thing was more an instinct with her: such pleasure as the trip offered
could not compensate for an obscure uneasiness, a vague but ominous
shadow over her mood and heart that was never lifted. Perhaps a wiser
and secret self within the girl, a subconsciousness which was wise with
the knowledge of the ages before ever her being emerged from the germ
plasm was even now warning her to turn back. It knew her limitations;
also it knew the dreadful, savage realm she had dared to penetrate. The
North would have no mercy for her if she were found unworthy.

Perhaps in her heart she realized that she represented all that was the
antithesis of this far northern domain. She was the child of luxury and
ease: the tone and spirit of these wintry seas were travail and
desolation. She was the product of a generation that knew life only as a
structure that men’s civilization had built; out here was life itself,
raw and naked, stripped and bare. She was lawless, undisciplined,
knowing no code but her own desires; all these seas and the gray
fog-laden shores they swept were in the iron grip of Law that went down
to the roots of time. She had never looked beyond the surface of things;
the heart that pulsed in the breast of this wintry realm lay so deep
that only the most wise and old, devotees to nature’s secrets, could
ever hear it beat. She had the unmistakable feeling that, in an
unguarded moment, she had blundered into the camp of an enemy. Ever she
discerned a malevolence in the murmur of the wind, a veritable threat in
the soft voices of the night.

The nights, her innate sense of artistry told her, were unspeakably
beautiful. She had never seen such stars before. They were so large, so
white, and yet so unutterably aloof. Sometimes the moon rose in a splash
of silver, and its loveliness on the far seas was a thing that words
couldn’t reach. Yet Lenore did not like things she could not put in
words. For all their beauty those magic nights dismayed and disquieted
her. They too were of the realities, and for all her past attitude of
sophistication, she found that realism was the one thing she could not
and dared not accept. Such realities as these, the wide-stretching seas
and the infinity of stars, were rapidly stripping her of her dearest
delusions; and with them, the very strongholds of her being. Heretofore
she had placed her faith in superficialities, finding strength for her
spirit and bolstering up her self-respect with such things as pride of
ancestry, social position, a certain social attitude of recklessness
that she thought became her, and most of all by refusing to believe that
life contained any depth that she had not plumbed, any terrors that she
dared not brave, any situation that she could not meet and master. But
here these things mattered not at all. Neither ancestry nor social
position could save her should the winter cold, hinted at already in the
bitter frost of the dawns, swoop down and find her unprotected. Her own
personal charm would not fight for her should she fall overboard into
the icy waters. Here was a region where recklessness could very easily
mean death; and where life itself was suddenly revealed utterly beyond
her ken. But there was no turning back. Every hour the _Charon_ bore her
farther from her home.

Mrs. Hardenworth, whose habits of thought were more firmly established,
was only made irritable and petulant by the new surroundings. Never good
company except under the stimulation of some social gathering, she was
rapidly becoming something of a problem to Ned and Lenore. She was
irritable with the crew, on the constant verge of insult to Bess,
forecasting disaster for the entire expedition. Unlike Bess, she had
never been disciplined to meet hardship and danger; her only resource
was guile and her only courage was recklessness; so now she tried to
overcome her inner fears with a more reckless attitude toward life. It
was no longer necessary for Ned and Lenore to seek the shelter of the
pilot house for their third whisky-and-soda. She was only too glad to
take it with them. More than once the dinner hour found her glassy-eyed
and almost hysterical, only a border removed from actual drunkenness.
Never possessing any true moral strength or real good breeding, a
certain abandon began to appear in her speech. And they had not yet
rounded the Alaskan Peninsula into Bering Sea.

To Ned, the long north and westward journey had been even more a
revelation. He also knew the fear, the disillusionment, a swift sense of
weakness when before he had been perfectly sure in his own strength; but
there was also a more complex reaction,—one that he could not analyze
or put into words. He couldn’t call it happiness. It wasn’t that, unless
the mood that follows the hearing of wonderful music is also happiness.
Perhaps that was the best comparison: the passion he felt was something
like the response made to great music. There had been times at the
opera, when all conditions were exactly favorable, that he had felt the
same, and once when he had heard Fritz Kreisler play Handel’s “Largo.”
It was a strange reaching and groping, rather than happiness. It was a
stir and thrill that touched the most secret chords of his being.

He felt it most at night when the great, white northern stars wheeled
through the heavens. It was good to see them undulled by smoke; they
touched some side of him that had never been stirred into life before.
At such times the sea was lost in mystery.

The truth was that Ned, by the will of the Red Gods, was perceiving
something of the real spirit of the North. A sensitive man to start
with, he caught something of its mystery and wonder of which, as yet,
Lenore had no glimpse. And the result was to bring him to the verge of a
far-reaching discovery: that of his own weakness.

He had never admitted weakness before. He had always been so sure of
himself, so complacent, so self-sufficient. But curiously these things
were dying within him. He found himself doubting, for the first time,
the success of this northern adventure. Could he cope with the realities
that were beginning to press upon him? Would not this northern
wilderness show him up as the weakling he was?

For the first time in his life Ned Cornet knew what realism was. He
supposed, in his city life, that he had been a realist: instead he had
only been a sophist and a mocker in an environment that was never real
from dawn to darkness. He had read books that he had acclaimed among his
young friends as masterpieces of realism—usually works whose theme and
purpose seemed to be a bald-faced portrayal of sex—but now he saw that
their very premise was one of falsehood. Here were the true
realities,—unconquerable seas and starry skies and winds from off the
waste places.

Unlike Lenore, Ned’s regrets were not that he had ever launched forth
upon the venture. Rather he found himself regretting that he was not
better fitted to contend with it. Perhaps, after all, his father had
been right and he had been wrong. For the first time in his life Ned
felt the need of greater strength, of stronger sinews.

What if his father had told the truth, and that strict trials awaited
him here. It was no longer easy to disbelieve him. Almost any disaster
could fall upon him here, in these wastes of sunlit water, in the very
shadow of polar ice. The sun itself had lost its warmth. It slanted down
upon them from far to the south, and it seemed to be beguiling them,
with its golden beauty on the waters, into some deadly trap that had
been set for them still farther north. It left Ned some way apprehensive
and dismayed. He wished he hadn’t been so sure of himself, that he had
taken greater pains, in his wasted years, to harden and train himself.
Perhaps he was to be weighed in the balance, and it was increasingly
hard to believe that he would not be found wanting.

In such a mood he recalled his father’s words regarding that dread realm
of test and trial that lay somewhere beyond the world: “some bitter,
dreadful training camp for those that leave this world unfitted to go on
to a higher, better world.” He had scorned the thought at first, but now
he could hardly get it out of his mind. It suggested some sort of an
analogy with his present condition. These empty seas were playing tricks
on his imagination; he could conceive that the journey of which his
father had spoken might not be so greatly different than this. There
would be the same desolation, the same nearness of the stars, the
emptiness and mystery, the same sense of gathering, impending trial and
stress. The name of the craft was the _Charon_! The thought chilled him
and dismayed him.

For all his boasted realism, Ned Cornet had never got away from
superstition. Man is still not far distant from the Cave and the
Squatting Place, and superstition is a specter from out the dead
centuries that haunts all his days. The coincidence that their craft,
plying through these deathly waters, should bear such a name as the
_Charon_ suddenly suggested a dark possibility to Ned. All at once this
man, heretofore so sure, so self-sufficient, so incredulous of anything
except his own continued glory and happiness and life, was face to face
with the first fear—the simple, primitive fear of death.

Was that his fate at the journey’s end? Not mere trial, mere hardship
and stress and adventure, but uncompromising death! Was he experiencing
a premonition? Was that training camp soon to be a reality, as terribly
real as these cold seas and this sky of stars, instead of a mere figment
of an old man’s childish fancy?

The thought troubled and haunted him, but it proved to be the best
possible influence for the man himself. For the first time in his life
Ned Cornet was awake. He had been dreaming before: for the first time he
had wakened to _life_. Fear, disaster, the dreadful omnipotence of fate
were no longer empty words to him: they were stern and immutable
realities. He knew what the wolf knows, when he howls to the winter moon
from the snow-swept ridge: that he was a child in the hands of Powers so
vast and awful that the sublimest human thought could not even reach to
them! He could see, dimly as yet but unmistakably, the shadow of that
travail that haunts men’s days from the beginning to the end.

His father’s blood, and in some degree his father’s wisdom, was
beginning to manifest itself in him. It was only a whispered voice as
yet, wholly to be disregarded in the face of too great temptation, yet
nevertheless it was the finest and most hopeful thing in his life. And
it came particularly clear one still, mysterious night, shortly after
the dinner hour, as he faced the North from the deck of the _Charon_.

The schooner’s auxiliary engines had pumped her through Unimak Pass by
now, the passage between Unimak and Akun Islands, and now she had
launched forth into that wide, western portal of the Arctic,—Bering
Sea. Still the wonderful succession of bright days had endured, no less
than marvelous, along the mist-swept southern shore of the peninsula,
but now the brisk, salty wind from the northwest indicated an impending
weather change. It had been a remarkably clear and windless day, and the
night that had come down, so swiftly and so soon, was of strange and
stirring beauty. The stars had an incredible luster; the sea itself was
of an unnamed purple, marvelously deep,—such a color as scientists
might find lying beyond the spectrum. And Ned’s eyes, to-night, were not
dulled by the effects of strong drink.

For some reason that he himself could not satisfactorily explain he
hadn’t partaken of his usual afternoon whiskies-and-sodas. He simply
wasn’t in a drinking mood, steadfastly refusing to partake. Lenore,
though she had never made it a point to encourage Ned’s drinking habits,
could not help but regard the refusal as in some way a slight to
herself, and was correspondingly downcast and irritable. Wholly out of
sorts, she had let him go to the deck alone.

The night’s beauty swept him, touching some realm of his spirit deep and
apart from his mere love of pleasing visual image. His imagination was
keenly alive, and he had a distinct feeling that the North had a
surprise in store for him to-night. Some stress and glory was impending:
what he did not know.

Facing over the bow he suddenly perceived a faint silver radiance close
to the horizon. His first impression was that the boat had taken a
south-easternly course, and this argent gleam was merely the banner of
the rising moon. Immediately he knew better: except by the absolute
disruption of cosmic law, the moon could not rise for at least four
hours. He knew of no coast light anywhere in the region, and it was hard
to believe that he had caught the far-off glimmer of a ship’s light.
Seemingly such followers of the sea had been left far behind them.

But as he watched the light grew. His own pulse quickened. And presently
a radiant streamer burst straight upward like a rocket, fluttered a
moment, and died away.

A strange thrill and stir moved through the intricacy of his nerves. He
knew now what this light portended; it was known to every wayfarer in
the North, yet the keenest excitement took hold of him. It moved him
more than any painted art had ever done, more than any wonderful maze of
color and light that a master stage director could effect. The streamer
shot up again, more brightly colored now, and then a great ball of fire
rolled into the sky, exploded into a thousand flying fragments, and left
a sea of every hue in the spectrum in its wake.

“The Northern Lights!” he told himself. A quiver of exultation passed
over him.

There could be no mistake. This was the radiance, the glory that the Red
Gods reserve for those who seek the far northern trails. Ever the
display increased in wonder and beauty. The streamers were whisking in
all directions now, meeting with the effect of collision in the dome of
the sky, remaining there to shiver and gleam with incredible beauty; the
surging waves of light spread ever farther until, at times, the sky was
a fluttering canopy of radiance.

He thought of calling Lenore and Mrs. Hardenworth; but some way the idea
slipped out of his mind. In a moment he was too deep in his own mood
even to remember that they existed. But not only his exterior world
faded from his consciousness. For the moment he forgot _himself_; and
with it the old self-love and self-conceit that had pervaded every
moment of his past life, colored all his views, and shaped the ends of
his destiny. All that was left was that incredible sky and its weird,
reflected glamor in the sea.

This was _Aurora Borealis_, never to be known, in its full glory, to
those that shun the silent spaces of the North. Suddenly he felt glad
that he was here. The moment, by measure of some queer balance beyond
his sight, was worth all the rest of his past life put together. Great
trials might lie ahead, temptations might tear him down, his own
weakness and folly of the past might lay him low in some woeful disaster
of the future; yet he was glad that he had come! It was the most
profound, the most far-reaching moment of his life.

Always he had lived close to and bound up in a man-made civilization. In
his heart he had worshipped it, rather than the urge and the inspiration
that had made it possible: he had always judged the Thing rather than
the Source. But for the first time in his life he was close to nature’s
heart. He had seen a glory, at nature’s whim, that transcended the most
glorious work of man ever beheld in his native city. He was closer to
redemption than at any time in his life.

A few feet distant on the deck Bess’s eyes turned from the miracle in
the skies to watch the slowly growing light in Ned Cornet’s face. It was
well enough for him to find his inspiration in the majesty of nature.
Bess was a woman, and that meant that man that is born of woman was her
work and her being. She turned her eyes from God to behold this man.

And it was well for her that Lenore was not near enough to see her face
in the wan, ghostly radiance of the Northern Lights. Her woman’s
intuition would have been quick to lay bare the secret of the girl’s
wildly leaping heart. Bess’s eyes were suddenly lustrous with a light no
less wonderful than that which played in glory in the sky. Her face was
swiftly unutterably beautiful in its tenderness and longing.

And had she not fought against this very thing? She had not dreamed for
a moment but that she had conquered and shut away the appeal that this
man made to her heart. It would have been easy enough to conquer if he
had only remained what he had been,—selfish, reckless, self-loving,
inured to his tawdry philosophy of life. But to-night a new strength had
come into his face. Perhaps it would be gone to-morrow, but to-night his
manhood had come to him. And she couldn’t resist it. It swept her heart
as the wind sweeps a sea-bird through the sky.




                                  VIII


Before ever that long night was done, clouds had overswept the sky and a
cold rain was beating upon the sea. It swept against the ports of the
little craft and brought troubled dreams to Lenore and Mrs. Hardenworth.
Bess, who knew life better than these two, to whom the whole journey had
been a joyous adventure, did not wholly escape a feeling of uneasiness
and dismay. At this latitude and season the weather was little to be
trusted.

The drizzle changed to snow that lay white on the deck and hissed softly
in the water. As yet, however, it was nothing to fear. Snow was common
in these latitudes in September. The sudden break of winter might lead
to really serious consequences—perhaps the unpleasant prospect of being
ice-bound in some island harbor—but in all probability real winter was
still several weeks distant. The scene looked wintry enough to Lenore
and Ned, however. The air and the sky and the sea seemed choked with
snow.

Lenore found herself wishing she had not been so contemptuous of the
North. Perhaps it would have been better not to have taken so many
worn-out dresses to trade, but to have filled her chests with woolens
and furs. Even in her big coat she couldn’t stay warm on the deck. The
wind was icy out of the Arctic seas.

Once more the craft plied among islands; but now that they had passed
into Bering Sea the character of the land had changed. These were not
the dull-green, wooded isles met with on first entering Alaskan waters.
Wild and inhospitable though the latter had seemed, they were fairy
bowers compared to these. Nor did the mossy mainland continue to show a
marvelous beryl green through mist.

In the first place, even the prevailing color scheme had undergone an
ominous change from blue to gray. The sun kissed the sea no more: under
the sifting snow it stretched infinitely bleak and forbidding. Gray were
the clouds in the sky that had been the purest, most serene blue. And
now even the islands had lost their varied tints.

Evergreen forests almost always look blue at a distance,—bluish-green
when the sun is bright, bluish-black under clouds. But these voyagers
saw, with a dim, haunting dread, that the forests mostly had been left
far behind them. The islands they passed now were no longer heavily
wooded; only a few of the sheltered valleys and the south slopes of the
hills bore thickets of stunted aspen, birch, and Sitka spruce. Mostly
these too were gray, gray as granite, merely a different shade of gray
from that of the sea from which they rose.

The truth was that these islands were far-scattered fragments of the
Barrens, those great wastes of moss and tundra between the timber belt
and the eternal ice cap of the pole. Largely treeless, wind-swept,
mostly unpeopled except for a few furtive creatures of the wild, they
seemed no part of the world that Ned and Lenore had previously known.
They were all so gray, so bleak, swept with an unearthly sadness, silent
except for the weary beat of waves upon their craggy shores.

Mostly the islands were mere snow-swept mountains protruding above the
waters, at a distance seemingly as gray as the rest of the toneless
landscape. Only the less mountainous of the islands had human occupants,
and these were in small, far-scattered Indian villages. Seemingly they
had reached the dim, gray limits of the world: surely they must soon
turn back. Indeed, these were the Skopins, the group that comprised
Ned’s first trading ground, and Muchinoff Island, the northern-most land
in the group and the point selected as his first stopping place, from
which he would begin the long homeward journey from island to island,
was only a few days’ journey beyond.

Yet they sped northward a while more, nothing changing except day and
night. Indeed, day and night itself seemed no longer the unvarying
reality that it used to be. Between the dark clouds and the dark sea,
night never seemed to go completely away. Day after day they caught no
glimpse of the sun.

The islands were seen but dimly through mist, as might the outlying
shores of a Twilight Land, a place where souls might come but never
living men,—a gray and eerie training camp like that of which Ned’s
father had spoken. It was all real enough, truly, remorselessly real;
yet Ned couldn’t escape from the superstitious fear he had known at
first. The gray, desolate character of the islands seemed to bear it
out. It grew on him, rather than lessened.

Yet his standards were changing. Things that had not concerned him a few
weeks before mattered terribly now. For instance, the bareness of the
islands oppressed him, and he found himself longing for the sight of
trees. Just trees,—bending in the wind, shaking off their leaves in the
fall. They hadn’t mattered before: he had regarded them as mere
ornaments that nature supplied for lawns and parks, if indeed he had
ever consciously regarded them at all; but now they were ever so much
more important than a hundred things that had previously seemed
absolutely essential to his life and happiness. Had his thought reached
further, he could have understood, now, the joy of Columbus—journeying
in waters scarcely less known than these—at the sight of the floating
branch; or the exultation in the Ark when the dove returned with its
sprig of greenery.

Lately the ship had taken a northeastern turn, following the island
chain, and the cloudy, windy, rainy days found them not far from the
mainland, in a region that would be wholly ice-bound in a few weeks
more. And when they were still a full day from their turning point,
Knutsen sought out Ned on the deck.

“Mr. Cornet, do you know where we’re getting?” he asked quietly.

Unconsciously startled by his tone, Ned whirled toward him. “I don’t
know these waters,” he replied. “I suppose we’re approaching Muchinoff
Island.”

“Quite a sail between here and der, yet. Mr. Cornet, we’re getting into
de most unknown and untraveled waters in all dis part of the Nort’. De
boats to Nome go way outside here, and de trut’ is I’m way out of my old
haunts. I’m traveling by chart only; neither me nor McNab, nor very many
oder people know very much the waterways between dese islands. You’re up
here to trade for furs, and you haven’t got all winter. You know dat
dese waters here, shut off from the currents, are going to be tighter
dan a drum before very many weeks. Why don’t you make your destination
Tzar Island, and start back from dere?”

“You think it’s really dangerous?”

“Not really dangerous, maybe, but mighty awkward if anyt’ing should go
wrong wit’ de old brig. You understan’ dat not one out of four of dese
little islands is inhabited. Some of de larger islands have only a
scattered village or two; some of ’em haven’t a living human being.
Der’s plenty and plenty of islands not even named in dis chart, and I’d
hate to hit the reefs of one after dark! Der’s no one to send S. O. S.
calls to, in case of trouble, even if we had wireless. De only boat I
know dat works carefully through dis country is anot’er trader, the
_Intrepid_—and dat won’t be along till spring. Mr. Cornet, it’s best
for you to know dat you’re in one of the most uninhabited and barren
countries——”

“And the most dreary and generally damnable,” Ned agreed with
enthusiasm. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Muchinoff Island isn’t
anything in my young life. I picked it out as a starting point simply
because it was the farthest north of the Skopins, but since there seems
to be plenty of territory——”

“It will make you hump some to cover all de good territory now,
including some of the best of de Aleuts, and get around Alaskan
Peninsula before winter sets in, in earnest. Tzar Island is yust to our
nort’east. Shall I head toward it?”

“How long will it take——”

“Depends on de wind. Dis is a ticklish stretch of water in here, shallow
in spots, but safe enough, I guess. I think we can skim along and make
it in long before dawn.”

“Then do it!” Ned’s face suddenly brightened. “The sooner I can shake my
legs on shore, the better I’ll like it.”

The seaman left him, and for a moment Ned stood almost drunk with
exultation on the deck. Even now they were nearing the journey’s end. A
few hours more, and they could turn back from this dreary, accursed
wintry sea,—this gray, unpeopled desolation that had chilled his heart.
It was true that the long journey home, broken by many stops, still lay
before, but at least he would face the south! Once on his native shores,
forever out of this twilight land and away from its voice of reproach,
he could be content with his old standards, regain his old
self-confidence. He could take up his old life where he had left it,
forgetting these desolate wastes as he would a dream.

He was a fool ever to regret his wasted days! He laughed at himself for
ever giving an instant’s thought to his father’s doleful words. The
worst of the journey was over, they had only to go back the way they had
come; and his puzzling sense of weakness, his premonition of disaster,
most of all his superstitious fear of death had been the veriest
nonsense. His imagination had simply got out of bounds.

The old _Charon_! He had been afraid of her name. Seemingly he had
forgotten, for the time, that he was a man of the twentieth century, the
product of the most wonderful civilization the world had ever seen. He
had been frightened by old bogeys, maudlin with time-worn sentiments.
And now his old egotism had returned to him, seemingly unshaken.

Presently he turned, made his way into the hold, and opened one of a
pile of iron-bound wooden cases. When he returned to the dining saloon
he carried a dark bottle in each hand.

“All hands celebrate to-night!” he cried. “We’re going to go home!”

Out of the sea the wind seemed to answer him. It swept by, laughing.




                                   IX


Ned’s news was received with the keenest delight by Lenore and Mrs.
Hardenworth. The latter regained her lost amiability with promptness.
Lenore’s reaction was not dissimilar from Ned’s; in her native city she
could come into her own again.

The bottles were greeted with shouts of delight. Ned went immediately to
the sideboard and procured half a dozen glasses.

“All hands partake to-night,” he explained. “It’s going to be a _real_
party.”

He mixed whiskies-and-sodas for Lenore and Mrs. Hardenworth; then
started to make the rounds of the crew with a bottle and glasses. He did
not, however, waste time offering any to Bess. The latter had already
evinced an innate fear of it, wholly apart from sentimentality and
nonsense. She had lived in a circle and environment where strong drink
had not been merely a thing to jest over and sing songs about, to drink
lightly and receive therefrom pleasant exhilaration; but where it was a
living demon, haunting and shadowing every hour. She had no false
sophistication—her knowledge of life was all too real—and she had no
desire to toy with poison and play with fire. Both were realities to
her. She knew that they had blasted life on life, all as sturdy and
seemingly as invincible as her own. Her abstinence was not a moral issue
with her. It was simply that she knew here was a foe that met men in
their pleasant hours, greeted them in friendly ways, and then, by
insidious, slow attack, cast them down and left them miserably to die;
and she was simply afraid for her life of it. Ned, on the other hand,
would have laughed at the thought of its ever mastering him. He felt
himself immune from the tragedies that had afflicted other men. It was
part of the conceit of his generation.

But Ned found plenty of customers for his whisky. McNab, at the wheel,
wished him happy days over two fingers of straight liquor in the glass,
and Knutsen, his pale eyes gleaming, poured himself a staggering
portion. “Go ahead,” Ned encouraged him when the seaman apologized for
his greediness. “The sky’s the limit to-night.” And Forest in the engine
room, and Julius in the kitchen absorbed a man’s-size drink with right
good will.

Ned was able to make the rounds again before the call for dinner; and
the attitude of his guests was changed in but one instance. McNab seemed
to be measuring his liquor with exceeding care. He was a man who knew
his own limits, and he apparently did not intend to overstep them. He
took a small drink, but Knutsen, his superior, consumed as big a portion
as before.

It was an elated, spirited trio that sat down at the little table in the
saloon. Not one of them could ever remember a happier mood. Julius
served the dinner with a flourish; and they had only laughter when a
sudden lurch of the craft slid the sugar bowl off the table to the
floor.

“Hello, the ship’s drunk too,” Ned commented gaily.

They were really in too glad a mood to see anything but sport in the
suddenly rocking table. The truth was that the wind had suddenly sprung
into a brisk gale, rolling heavy seas and bobbing the little craft about
like a cork. The three screamed with laughter, holding fast to their
slipping chairs, and Lenore rescued the bottle that was tipping
precariously on the buffet.

“We’d better have a little extra one,” she told them. “I’ll be seasick
if we don’t.”

She had to speak rather loudly to make herself heard. The wind was no
longer laughing lightly and happily at their port bows. It had suddenly
burst into a frantic roar, swelling to the proportions of a thunder clap
and dying away on a long, weird wail that filled the sky and the sea.
Instantly it burst forth loudly again, and the snow whipped against the
glass of the ports.

Ned stood up, braced himself, and immediately poured the drinks. But it
was not only to save Lenore an attack of sea-sickness. He was also
swayed by the fact that the heat of the room seemed to be swiftly
escaping. Fortunately, there was still warmth in plenty in the bottle,
so he need not be depressed by a mere fall of temperature. He glanced
about the room, rather suspecting that one of the ports had been left
open. The saloon, however, was as tightly closed as was possible for it
to be.

He turned at once, made his way through the gale that swept the deck,
and procured Lenore’s and Mrs. Hardenworth’s heaviest coats. He noticed
as he passed that Bess had sought refuge in the engine room. Ned waved
to her then returned to his guests.

The room was already noticeably colder, not so much from the drop in
temperature—a thermometer would have still registered above
freezing—as from the chilling, penetrating quality of the wind that
forced an entrance as if through the ship’s seams. There seemed no
pause, now, between the mighty, roaring gusts. The long, weird wail they
had heard at first was only an overtone, in some way oppressive to the
imagination. The rattle at the window was loud for the soft sweep of
snow. Ned saw why in a moment: the snow had changed to sleet.

There was no opportunity to make comment before Knutsen lurched into the
room. “It’s tough, isn’t it?” he commented. “Mr. Cornet, I want another
shot of dat stuff before I take de wheel.”

Ned, not uninfluenced by his cups, extended the bottle with a roar of
laughter. “You know what’s good for you,” he commented. “Where’s McNab?
Let him have one too.”

“He’s still at de wheel, but I don’t think he’d care for one. He’s a
funny old wolf, at times. Mrs. Hardenworth, how do you like dis
weat’er?”

“I don’t like it very well.” She held fast to the slipping table. “Of
course, you’d tell us if there was any danger——”

“Not a bit of danger. Yust a squall. Dis isn’t rough—you ought to see
what it would be outside dis chain of islands. But it’s mighty chilly.”
He poured the stiff drink down his great throat, then buttoned his coat
tight.

Ned, for a moment secretly appalled by the storm, felt his old
recklessness returning. The captain said it was only a squall,—and were
they not soon to turn south? In fact, their direction now was no longer
north, but rather in an easternly direction toward Tzar Island. He was
warm now, glowing; the rocking of the boat only increased his
exhilaration.

“There’s only three or four shots left in this bottle,” he said, holding
up the second of the two quarts he had taken from the case. “You’d
better have one more with us before you go. A man burns up lots of
whisky without hurting him any on a night like this. Then take the
bottle in with you to keep you warm at the wheel.”

Knutsen needed no second urging. He was of a race that yields easily to
drink, and he wanted to conquer the last, least little whisper of his
fear of the night and the storm. He drank once more, pocketed the
bottle, then made his way to the pilot house.

“You’re not going to try to ride her through?” McNab asked, as he
yielded the wheel.

“Of course. You’re not afraid of a little flurry like dis.”

His voice gave no sign of the four powerful drinks he had consumed. A
tough man physically, the truth was he was still a long way from actual
drunkenness. But even a small amount of liquor had a distressing effect
upon him,—a particularly unfortunate effect for one who habitually has
the lives of other human beings in his charge. He always lost the fine
edge of his caution. With drink upon him, he was willing to take a
chance.

McNab stared into his glittering eyes, and for a moment his lips were
tightly compressed. “This isn’t a little flurry,” he answered at last
coldly. “It’s a young gale, and God knows what it will be by morning.
You know and I know we shouldn’t attempt things here that we can do with
safety in waters we’re familiar with. Right now we can run into the lea
of Ivan Island and find a harbor. There’s a good one just south of the
point.”

“We’re not going to run into Ivan Island. I want to feel dry land. We’re
going to head on toward Tzar Island.”

“You run a little more of that bottle down your neck and you’ll be
heading us into hell. Listen, Cap’n.” McNab paused, deeply troubled.
“You let me take the wheel, and you go in and celebrate with the party.
You won’t do any damage then.”

“And you get back to your engine and mind your own business.” Little
angry points of light shot into Knutsen’s eyes. “And if you see Cornet,
tell him to bring up anoder bottle. Dis one’s almost empty.”

McNab turned to the door, where for a moment he stood listening to the
wild raging of the wind. Then he climbed down into the engine room.

There was nothing in his face, as he entered, to reveal the paths of his
thought. He was wholly casual, wholly commonplace, seemingly not in the
least alarmed. He stepped to Bess’s side, half smiling.

“I wonder if you can help me?” he asked.

The girl stood up, a straight, athletic figure at his side. “I’ll try,
of course.”

“It depends—have you any influence with young Cornet?”

Bess slowly shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she told him,
very gravely. “I have no influence with him at all. What is it you
wanted me to do?”

“I wanted you to tell him to put up the booze. Particularly to keep the
captain from getting any more. This is a bum night. It’s against the
rules of the sea to scare passengers, but somehow, I figure you’re the
stuff that can stand it and maybe hold out. This isn’t a night to have a
shipload of drunks. There may be some tight places before the morning.

“There’s only one way.” The girl’s lips were close to his ear, else he
couldn’t have heard in the roar of the storm and the flapping of the
sails. “Listen, McNab. How much has he got in the dining saloon?”

“None, now, I don’t think. He only brought up two bottles, and Knutsen’s
got one of ’em—not much in it, though. They must have emptied the
other.”

“Then we’re all clear.” She suddenly straightened, a look of unswervable
intent in her face. “McNab, it’s better to make some one—violently mad
at you—isn’t it, if maybe you can save him from trouble? If you want to
see him get ahead and make a success of a big venture—it isn’t wrong,
is it, to do something against his will that you know is right?”

McNab looked at her as before now he had looked at strong men with whom
he had stood the watch. “What are you gettin’ at?”

His voice was gruff, but it didn’t offend her. She felt that they were
on common ground.

“If may be human lives are the stake, a person can’t stand by for one
man’s anger,” she went on.

“Human lives are the first consideration,” the man answered. “That’s the
rule of the sea. Most sea rules are good rules—built on sense—all
except the one that you can’t take the wheel away from a drunken
captain. What’s your idea?”

“You know as well as I do. I promised his father before I left that I’d
look after Ned. He was in earnest—and Ned needs looking after now if he
ever did. Mr. Cornet won’t blame me, either. Show me how to get down in
the hold.”

McNab suddenly chuckled and patted her on the back with rough
familiarity, yet with fervent companionship. “You’ve got the stuff,” he
said. “But you can’t lift them alone. I’m with you till the last dog is
hung.”




                                   X


On the exposed deck the storm met the two adventurers with a yell. For
the first time Bess knew its full fury, as the wind buffeted her, and
the sleet swept like fine shot into her face. They clung to the railing,
then fought their way to the hold.

Hidden by the darkness and the sleet, no one saw them carry up the heavy
liquor cases and drop them into the sea. The noise of the storm
concealed the little sound they made. Finally only two bottles remained,
the last of a broken case.

“You take one of those and ditch it in your room,” McNab advised. “I’ll
keep the other. There might come a time when we’ll find real need for
’em—as a stimulant for some one who is freezing.”

“Take care of both of them,” Bess urged. “I’m not sure I could keep
mine, if any one asked for it.”

“I don’t know about that. I believe I’d bet on you. And now it’s
done—forget about it.”

Soon they crept back along the deck, McNab to his work, Bess to her
stateroom. The latter ignited the lantern that served to light her room,
and for a moment stood staring into the little mirror that hung above
her washstand. She hadn’t escaped the fear of the night and the storm
and of the bold deed she had just done. Her deep, blue eyes were wide,
her face was pale, the childlike appeal Ned had noticed long ago was
more pronounced than ever. Presently she sat down to await developments.

They were not long in coming. She and McNab had all but encountered Ned
on his way to the hold. His bottles were empty, and the desire for
strong drink had not left him yet. In the darkness under the deck he
groped blindly for his cases.

They seemed to evade him. Breathing hard, he sought a match, scratching
it against the wall. Then he stared in dumb and incredulous
astonishment.

His stock of liquor was gone. Not even the cases were left. Thinking
that perhaps some shift in the position of the stores had concealed
them, he made a moment’s frantic search through the hold. Then, raging
like a child, and in imminent danger of slipping on the perilous deck,
he rushed to the pilot house.

“Captain, do you know what became of my liquors?” he demanded. “I can’t
find them in the hold.”

The binnacle light revealed the frenzy and desperation on his drawn
face; the mouth was no longer smiling its crooked, boyish smile. Knutsen
glanced at him once, then turned his eyes once more over his wheel. For
the moment he did not seem to be aware of Ned’s presence. He made,
however, one significant motion: his brown hand reached out to the
bottle beside him, in which perhaps two good drinks remained, and softly
set it among the shadows at his feet.

“I say!” Ned urged. “I tell you my liquor’s gone!”

The captain seemed to be studying the yellow path that his searchlight
cut in the darkness. The waves were white-capped and raging; the sleet
swept out of the gloom, gleamed a moment in the yellow radiance, then
sped on into the night.

“I heard you,” Knutsen answered slowly. “I was thinking about it. I
haven’t any idea who took it—if he’s still got it, I’ll see that he
gives it back. It was a dirty trick——”

“You don’t know, then, anything about it?” As he waited, Ned got the
unmistakable idea that the captain neither knew nor really cared. He was
more interested in retaining the two remaining drinks in his own bottle
than in helping Ned regain his lost cases. These two were enough for
him. It was wholly in keeping with that strange psychology of drunkards
that he should have no further cares.

“Of course I don’t know anything about ’em—but I’ll help you
investigate in the morning,” he answered. “I’m very sorry, Mr.
Cornet—that it should happen aboard my ship——”

“To hell with your ship! I’m going to investigate to-night.”

Ned started out, but he halted in the doorway, arrested by a sudden
suspicion. Presently he whirled and made his way to Bess’s stateroom.

He knocked sharply on the door. Bess opened it wide. Then for a long
second he stared into her deep-blue, appealing eyes.

“I suppose you did it?” he demanded.

She nodded. “I did it—to save you—from yourself. Not to mention
perhaps saving the ship as well.”

His lip drew up in scorn. Angry almost to the verge of childish tears,
he could not at first trust himself to speak. “You’ve certainly taken
things into your own hands,” he told her bitterly. His wrath gathered,
breaking from him at last in a flood. “You ill-bred prude, I wish I
could never lay eyes on you again!”

His scornful eyes saw the pain well into her face. Evidently he had gone
the limit: he couldn’t have hurt her worse with a blow of his hand.
Touched a little in spite of himself, he began to feel the first prick
of remorse. Perhaps it had done no good to speak so cruelly. Certainly
the whiskies could not be regained. Probably the fool thought she was
acting for his own good. He turned, slammed the door, and strode back to
the dining saloon.

It was by far the most bitter moment in Bess’s life. She had done right,
but her payment was a curse from the man she had hoped to serve. All her
castles had fallen: her dreams had broken like the bubbles they were.
This was the answer to the calling in her heart and the longing in her
soul,—the spoken wish that she might pass from his sight forever.

For the last few days, since they had entered this strange, snowy,
twilight region, she had had dreams such as she had never dared admit
into her heart before. Anything could happen up here. No wonder was too
great. It was the kind of place where men found themselves, where all
things were in proper balance, and false standards fell away. Some way,
she had been on the lookout for a miracle. But the things which had been
proven false, which could not live in this bitter world of realities,
were her own dreams! They had been the only things that had died. She
had been a fool to hope that here, at the wintry edge of the world, she
might find the happiness she had missed in her native city. The world
was with her yet, crushing her hopes as its rocky crust crushes the
fallen nestling before it learns to fly!

But at his post McNab had already forgotten the episode of the liquor
cases. Indeed, he had forgotten many other matters of much greater
moment. At the present his mind was wholly occupied by two stern
realities,—one of them being that the storm still raged in unabated
fury, and the other that a drunken captain was driving his craft at a
breakneck speed over practically uncharted waters.

The danger lay not only in the fact that Knutsen had disregarded McNab’s
good advice to seek shelter in one of the island harbors. Even now he
was disregarding the way of comparative safety, was not pausing to take
soundings, but was racing along before the wind instead of heading into
it with the power of the auxiliary engines. With wind and wave hurling
her forward, there would be no chance to turn back or avoid any island
reef that might suddenly loom in their path. Knutsen was trusting to his
sea gods over waters he had never sailed before, torn by storms and
lighted only by a feeble searchlight.

Once more McNab lifted his head through the hatch into the pilot house;
and for long seconds he studied intently the flushed face over the
wheel. They hadn’t really helped matters, so far as Knutsen was
concerned, by throwing the cases overboard. Seemingly his watch would be
over before the fumes of the liquor he had already consumed died in his
brain. At present he was in its full flush: wholly reckless, obstinate,
uncertain of temper. Was there any possible good in appealing to him
further?

“What now?” Knutsen asked gruffly.

“You’ve forgotten all the seamanship you ever knew,” McNab returned
angrily. “There’s no hurry about reaching Tzar Island. And you’re
risking every body’s life on board, sailing the way you are.”

“Are you captain of dis boat?” Knutsen demanded angrily.

“No, but——”

“Den get out of here. I know exactly what I’m doing. You’re just as safe
as——”

But it came about that Captain Knutsen did not finish the sentence.
McNab was never to find out, from Knutsen’s lips, just how safe he was.
All at once he cried sharply in warning.

Before ever Knutsen heard that sharp cry, he knew what lay ahead. Dulled
though his vision was, slow the processes of his brain, he saw that
curious ridge of white foam in front,—an inoffensive-looking trail of
white across their bows. At the same instant his keen ears caught a new
sound, one that was only half-revealed in the roar and beat of the
storm.

There was not the pause of an instant before his great, muscular arms
made response. At the same instant Forest tried to apply the power of
his engines in obedience to the sharp gong from above. And then both
Knutsen and McNab braced themselves for the shock they knew would come.

The craft seemed to leap in the water, shuddered like a living thing,
and the swath of the searchlight described a long arc into the sleet and
the storm. It may have been that Knutsen shouted again—a meaningless
sound that was lost quickly in the wind—but for seconds that seemed to
drag into interminable centuries he sat absolutely without outward sign
of motion. His great hands clutched his wheel, the muscles were set and
bunched, but it was as if the man had died and was frozen rigid in an
instant of incredible tension. His face utterly without expression,
Forest crouched beside his engines.

There was nothing that either of them could do. The waves and wind were
a power no man could stay. All their efforts were as useless as
Knutsen’s shout; already the little ship was in the remorseless grasp of
a great billow that was hurling her toward the ridge of white foam in
front. For another instant she seemed to hang suspended, as if suddenly
taken wing, and then there was a sheer drop, a sense of falling out of
the world. A queer ripping, tearing sound, not loud at all, not half so
terrifying as the bluster of the wind, reached them from the hold.

Cold sober, Knutsen turned in his place and gonged down certain orders
to Forest. In scarcely a moment, it seemed, they were pulling the
battens from the two little lifeboats on the deck.




                                   XI


Knutsen’s brain was entirely clear and sure as he gave his orders on the
deck. His hand was steady as iron. His failure to master himself had
brought disaster, but he knew how to master a ship at a time like this.
From the instant the _Charon_ had struck the reef, he was the power upon
that storm-swept deck, and whatever hope McNab had lay in him.

In the lantern light, blasted by the wind and in the midst of the
surging waves, the scene had little semblance to reality. It was a mad
dream from first to last, never to be clearly remembered by the
survivors: a queer, confused jumble of vivid images that could never be
straightened out. The head-light still threw its glare into the
sleet-filled night. The biting, chill wind swept over the deck and into
the darkness. The ship settled down like a leaden weight.

Almost at once the four passengers were on deck, waiting to take their
meager chance in the lifeboats. The stress, the raging elements, those
angry seas that ever leaped higher and nearer, as if coveting their
mortal lives, most of all the terror such as had never previously
touched them, affected no two of them alike. Of the three women, Bess
alone moved forward, out of the shelter of the cabin, to be of what aid
she could. Her drawn, white face was oddly childlike in the lantern
light. Mrs. Hardenworth had been stricken and silenced by the nearing
visage of death; Lenore, almost unconscious with terror, made
strangling, sobbing sounds that the wind carried away. And in this
moment of infinite travail Ned Cornet felt his manhood stirring within
him.

Perhaps it was merely instinct. It is true that men of the most
abandoned kind often show startling courage and nobility in a crisis.
The reason is simply that the innate virtue of the race, a light and a
glory that were implanted in the soul when the body was made in the
image of its Maker, comes to the surface and supersedes the base
impulses of degeneracy. There is no uneven distribution of that virtue:
it is as much a part of man as his hands or his skull; and the
difference between one man and another lies only in the degree in which
it is developed and made manifest and put in control over the daily
life. Perhaps the strength that rose in Ned was merely the assertion of
an inner manhood, wholly stripped of the traits that made him the
individual he was,—nothing that would endure, nothing that portended a
change and growth of character. But at least the best and strongest side
of him was in the ascendency to-night. The danger left him cool rather
than cost him his self-control. The seeming imminence of death steadied
him and nerved him.

Bess saw him under the lantern light, and he was not the man who had
cursed her at the door of her room. For the moment all things were
forgotten except this. Likely the thing he had spoken would come true,
now. Perhaps he would get his wish. For one interminable instant in
which her heart halted in her breast—as in death—sea and wind and
storm ceased to matter.

Ned came up, and Knutsen’s cold gaze leaped over his face. “Help me
here,” he commanded. “McNab, you help Forest and Julius launch the
larger boat.”

There was not much launching to do. Waves were already bursting over the
deck. Knutsen turned once more.

“We want four people in each boat,” he directed sharply. “Cornet, you
and I and Miss Hardenworth in this one. The other girl will have to get
in here too. The other boat’s slightly larger—Mrs. Hardenworth, get in
with McNab, Forest, and Julius.”

Bess shook herself with difficulty from her revery. This was no time for
personal issues, to hearken to the voices of her inmost heart when the
captain was shouting through the storm. The only issues remaining now
were those of deliverance or disaster, life or death. Even now the white
hands of the waves were stretching toward her. Yet this terrible reality
did not hold her as it should. Instead, her thoughts still centered upon
Ned: the danger was always Ned’s instead of her own; it was Ned’s life
that was suspended by a thread above the abyss. It was hard to remember
herself: the instinct of self-preservation was not even now in the
ascendency.

There is a blasting and primitive terror in any great convulsion of the
elements. These are man’s one reality, the eternal constant in which he
plights his faith in a world of bewildering change: the air of heaven,
the sky of stars, the unutterable expanse of sea. His spirit can not
endure to see them in tumult, broken forth from the restraint of law.
Such sights recall from the germ-plasm those first almighty terrors that
were the title page of conscious life; and they disrupt quickly the
mastery that mind, in a thousand-thousand years, has gained over
instinct. Yet for herself Bess was carried out from and beyond the
terror of the storm. She had almost forgotten it: it seemed already part
of the natural system in which she moved. She was scarcely aware that
the captain had shouted to make himself heard; that she must needs shout
to answer him: it was as if this were her natural tone of voice, and she
was no more conscious of raising it above the bellow of the storm than
are certain fisherfolk, habitants of wave-swept coasts, when they call
one to another while working about their nets.

The reason was simply that she was thinking too hard about Ned to
remember her own danger, and thus terror could not reach her. It can
never curse and blast those who have renounced self for others; and
thus, perhaps, she had blundered into that great secret of happiness
that wise men have tried to teach since the world was new. Perhaps, in
the midst of stress and travail, she had glimpsed for an instant the
very soul of life, the star that is the hope and dream of mankind.

But while she had forgotten her own danger, she was all too aware of the
promptings of her own heart. The issue went farther than Ned’s life. It
penetrated, in secret ways, the most intimate depths of her relations
with him. It was natural at such a time that she should remember Ned’s
danger to the exclusion of her own. The strangeness of that moment lay
in the fact that she also remembered his wishes and his words. She could
not forget their last scene together.

“Put Mrs. Hardenworth in your boat, so she and Lenore can be together,”
she told Captain Knutsen. “I’ll get in the other.”

The captain did not seem to hear. He continued to shout his orders. In
the work of lowering the lifeboat he had cause to lift his lantern high,
and for a moment its yellow gleam was bright upon Bess’s drawn, haggard
face. Farther off it revealed Ned, white-faced but erect in the beat of
the storm.

In one instant’s insight, a single glimpse between the storm and the
sea, he understood that she was taking him at his word. For some reason
beyond his ken—likely beyond hers, too—she had asked to be put in
McNab’s boat so that his wish he had spoken in anger at the door of her
stateroom might come true. How silly, how trivial he had been! Those
angry words had not come from his heart: only from some false,
superficial side of him that was dying in the storm. He had never
dreamed that she would take them seriously. They were the mere spume of
a child that had not yet learned to be a man.

“Get in with us,” he said shortly. “Don’t be silly—as I was.” Then,
lest she should mistake his sentiment: “Mrs. Hardenworth is twice your
weight, and this boat will be overloaded as it is.”

The girl looked at him quietly, nodding her head. If he had expected
gratitude he was disappointed, for she received the invitation as merely
an actuality of her own, immutable destiny. Indeed the wings of destiny
were sweeping her forward, her life still intertwined with his, both
pawns in the vast, inscrutable movement of events.

He helped her into the dory. Julius, who at the captain’s orders had
been rifling the cabins, threw blankets to her. Then tenderly, lending
her his strength, Ned helped Lenore over the wind-swept deck into the
bow seat of the lifeboat, nearest to the seat he would take himself.
“Buck up, my girl,” he told her, a deep, throbbing note in his voice.
“I’ll look after you.”

Already the deck was deserted. The dim light showed that the larger
dory, containing McNab, Forest, Julius, and Mrs. Hardenworth, had
already been launched. There was no sign of them now. The darkness and
the storm had already dropped between. They could not hear a shout of
directions between the three men, not a scream of fear from the
terrified woman who was their charge.

It was as if they had never been. Only the _Charon_ was left—her decks
awash and soon to dive and vanish beneath the waves—and their little
group in the dim gleam of the lantern. Knutsen and Ned took their places
at the oarlocks, Ned nearer the bow, Knutsen just behind. A great wave
seemed to catch them and hurl them away.

Could they live in this little boat on these tumultuous seas? Of course
the storm was nothing compared to the tempests weathered successfully by
larger lifeboats, but it held the utmost peril here. Any moment might
see them overwhelmed. The least of those great waves, catching them just
right, might overturn them in an instant.

Already the _Charon_ was lost in the darkness, just as the other
lifeboat had been lost an instant before. Not even Knutsen could tell in
what direction she lay. Still the waves hurried them along. The chill
wind shrieked over them, raging that they should have dared to venture
into its desolate domains.

Could they live until the morning? Wouldn’t cold and exposure make an
end to them in the long, bitter hours to come? The odds looked so
uneven, the chances so bitterly long against them. Could their little
sparks of being, the breath of life that ever was so wan and feeble, the
little, wondering moment of self-knowledge that at best seemed only the
fabric of a dream—could these prevail against the vast, unspeakable
forces of the North? Wouldn’t the spark go out in a little while, the
breath be blown away on the wings of the wind, the self-light burn down
in the gloom? At any moment their fragile boat might strike another
submerged reef. There was no light to guide them now. They were lost and
alone in an empty ocean, helpless prey to the whims of the North.

The pillars of their strength had fallen. Man’s civilization that had
been their god was suddenly shown as an empty idol, helpless to aid them
now. The light, the beauty, the strong cities they had loved had no
influence here: seemingly death itself could not make these things
farther distant, less availing. For the first time since they were born
Ned and Lenore were face to face with _life_, and also with the death
that shadows life. For the first time they knew the abject terror of
utter helplessness. There was nothing they could do. They were impotent
prey to whatever fate awaited them. Captain Knutsen, mighty of frame,
his blood surging fiercely through the avenues of his veins, and Bess,
schooled to hardship, were ever so much better off than they. They were
better disciplined, stronger in misfortune, better qualified to meet
danger and disaster. For no other reason than that—holding respect for
these northern seas—they were more warmly dressed, their chances were
better for ultimate survival.

But what awaited them when the night was done? How slight was the chance
that, in this world of gray waters, they would ever encounter an
inhabited island. It was true that islands surrounded them on all sides,
but mostly they were but wastes of wind-swept tundra, not one in four
having human habitations. Mostly the islands were large, and such
habitations as there might be were scattered in sheltered valleys along
the shore, and it was wholly probable that the little boat could pass
and miss them entirely. They couldn’t survive many days on these wintry
waters. The meager supplies of food and the jugs of water in the
lifeboats would soon be exhausted, and who could come to their aid?
Which one of Ned’s friends, wishing him such a joyous farewell at the
docks, would ever pause in his play one moment to investigate his fate?

A joy-ride! There was a savage irony in the thought of the holiday
spirit with which he had undertaken the expedition. And the voices he
had heard out of the sea had evidently told him true when they had
foretold his own death. For all his natural optimism, the odds against
him seemed too great ever to overcome. And there was but one redeeming
thought,—a thought so dimly discerned in the secret mind of the man
that it never fully reached his conscious self; so bizarre and strange
that he could only attribute it to incipient delirium. It was simply
that he had already fortified himself, in some degree, to meet the
training camp thereafter!

The journey through the gray, mysterious seas, the nearing heart of
nature, most of all to-night’s disaster had, in some small measure,
given him added strength. It was true that his old conceit was dying in
his body. His old sense of mastery over himself and over life was shown
as a bitter delusion: rather he was revealed as the helpless prey of
forces beyond even his power to name. This self-centered man, who once
had looked on life from the seats of the scornful, felt suddenly
incompetent even to know the forces that had broken him down. Yet in
spite of all this loss, there was something gained. Instead of false
conceit he began to sense the beginnings of real self-mastery. For all
his terror, freezing his heart in his breast, he suddenly saw clear; and
he knew he had taken an upward step toward Life and Light.

There would not be quite so long a course of training for him, in the
Hereafter. He could go through and on more quickly on account of these
past days. There _was_ a way through and out—his father had told him
that—and it wasn’t so far distant as when he had first left home. With
death so close that he could see into its cavernous eyes, such was Ned’s
one consolation as the craft drifted before the wind.

The terror that was upon him lifted, just an instant, as he bent to hear
what Lenore was trying to tell him. Lenore was his love and his life,
the girl to whom he had plighted his troth, and his first obligation was
to her. He must see to her first.

“I’m cold,” she was sobbing. “I’m freezing to death. Oh, Ned, I’m
freezing to death.”

Of course it wasn’t true. Chill though the night was, the temperature
was still above freezing, and the blankets about her largely protected
her from the biting winds. She was chilled through, however, as were the
other three occupants of the craft; and the fear and the darkness were
themselves like ice in her veins. Ned’s hands were stiff, but he managed
to remove one of his own blankets and wrap it about the shoulders of the
girl. The boat lurched forward, sped by the waves and the wind.

The night hours passed over the face of the sea. The wind raged through
the sky, biting and bitter for all their warm wraps. It was abating,
now, the waves were less high; but if anything its breath was more chill
as the hour drew toward dawn. The wind-blown sleet swept into their
faces.

Both girls sought refuge in troubled sleep. Ned sat with his arms about
Lenore, giving her what warmth he could from his own body. Bess was
huddled in her seat. Could their less rugged constitutions stand many
hours of such cold and exposure? It was a losing game, already. The
North was too much for them. Life is a fragile thing at best: a few
hours more might easily spell the end.

But that hour saw the return of an ancient mystery, carrying back the
soul to those gray days when the earth was without form, and void.
Darkness had been upon the face of the waters, but once more it was
divided from the day.

Even here, seemingly at the edge of the world, the ancient miracle did
not fail. A grayness, like a mist, spread slowly; and the curtains of
darkness slowly receded. The storm was abating swiftly now; and the dawn
broke over an easily rolling sea.

Captain Knutsen, who had sat so long in one position—his gaze fastened
on one point of the horizon—that he gave the impression of being
unconscious, suddenly started and pointed his hand. His voice, pitched
to the noise of the storm, roared out into the quiet dawn.

“Land!” he shouted. “We’re coming to land!”




                                  XII


None of the other three in the lifeboat could make out the little, gray
line on the horizon that Captain Knutsen identified as land. Ned, who
had been wide awake, prayed that he was not mistaken, yet could not find
it in his heart to believe him. Bess and Lenore both started out of
their sleep, and the former turned her head wearily, a wan smile about
her drawn lips.

“Row, man, row!” Knutsen called happily to Ned. “The only way we can
save that girl from collapse is to get her to a fire.” His own oars
dipped, and his powerful back bent to the task.

So the issue had got down to that! Ned knew perfectly well that Lenore
was the girl meant; in spite of the added blanket, she had fared worse
than Bess. Perhaps she had less vitality: perhaps she had not met the
night’s adversity with the same spirit. Ned was not an expert oarsman,
but it was ever to his credit that he gave all his strength to the oars.
And he found to his joy that the night’s adventure had left it largely
unimpaired.

With the waves and the wind behind them, Knutsen saw the gray line that
was the island slowly strengthen. The time came at last, when his weaker
arms were shot through with burning pain, that Ned could also make it
out. It was still weary miles away. And there was still the dreadful
probability—three chances out of four—that it was uninhabited by human
beings.

And death would find them quickly enough if they failed to find human
habitations. For all Knutsen’s prowess, for all that he was so obviously
a man of his hands, Ned couldn’t see any possibility of sustaining life
on one of the barren, wind-swept deserts for more than a few days at
most. They had no guns to procure meat from the wild: their little
stores of food would not last long. The cold itself, though not now
severe, would likely master them quickly. Even if they could find fuel,
they had no axe to cut it up for a fire. In all probability, they
couldn’t even build a fire in the snow and the sleet.

The stabbing pain in his arms was ever harder to bear. He was paying the
price for his long pampering of his muscles. The time soon came when he
had to change his stroke, dipping the oars at a cheating angle. Even if
it were a matter of life and death to Lenore he couldn’t hold up. He
couldn’t stand the pace. Knutsen, however, still rowed untiringly.

Soon the island began to take shape, revealing itself as of medium size
in comparison with many of the islands of Bering Sea, yet seemingly
large enough to support a kingdom. The gray line they had seen first
revealed itself as a low range of mountains, bare and wind-swept,
extending the full length of the island. What timber there was—meager
growths of Sitka spruce and quivering aspen—appeared only on some of
the south slopes of the hills and in scattered patches on the valley
floor.

In the gray light of dawn the whole expanse was one of unutterable
desolation. Even the rapture that they had felt at deliverance from the
sea was some way stifled and dulled in the brooding despair that seemed
to be its very spirit. They had passed many bleak, windy islands on the
journey; but none but what were gardens compared to this. Ned tried to
rouse himself from a strange apathy, a sudden, infinite hopelessness
that fell like a shadow over him.

Likely enough it was just a mood with him, nothing innate in the island
itself. Probably his own fatigue was playing tricks on his imagination.
Yet the solid earth seemed no longer familiar. It was as if he had
passed beyond his familiar world, known to his five senses and firm
beneath his feet, and had come to an eerie, twilight land beyond the
horizon. It was so still, lying so bleak and gray in the midst of these
endless waters, seemingly so eternally isolated from all he had known
and seen. The physical characteristics of the island enhanced, if
anything, its mysterious atmosphere. The mossy barrens that comprised
most of the island floor, the little, scattered clumps of timber, the
deep valleys through which the shining streams ran to the sea, the
rugged, shapeless hills beyond, each real in itself, combined to convey
an image of unreality. Over it all lay the snow. The whole land was
swept with it.

It was evidently the kingdom of the wild. It was the home of caribou and
bear, fox and wolverine rather than men. And the dreadful probability
was ever more manifest that the island contained not a single hearth, a
single Indian igloo in which they might find shelter.

The place seemed to be utterly uninhabited by human beings. The white
shore was nearing now, the craft had reached the mouth of a large harbor
formed by the emptying waters of a small river; and as yet the voyagers
could not make out a single roof, a single canoe on the shore. Knutsen
peered with straining eyes.

“It looks bad,” he said tonelessly. “If there was a village here it
ought to be located at the mouth of that river. It’s the logical place
for a camp. They always stay near the salmon.”

Straining, Ned suddenly saw what seemed to him a manifestation of human
inhabitants. There were clearly pronounced tracks, showing dark against
the otherwise unbroken snow, leading from the sea to a patch of heavy
forest a quarter of a mile back on the island. He pointed to them, his
eye kindling with renewed hope.

But Knutsen shook his head. “I can’t tell from here. They might be
animal tracks.”

The canoe pushed farther into the harbor. The roll of the waves was ever
less, and the boat rode evenly on almost quiet water. They would know
soon now. They would either find safety, or else their last, little hope
would go the way of all the others. Surely they could not live a day
unaided in this bleak, desolate land.

But at that instant Bess, who had sat so quiet that her companions had
thought her asleep, uttered a low cry. For all its subdued tone, its
living note of hope and amazement caused both men to turn to her. Her
white face was lifted, her blue eyes shining, and she was pointing to
the fringe of timber at the end of the trail in the snow.

“What is it?” she asked in a low tone. “Isn’t it a man?”

Her keen eyes had beheld what Knutsen’s had missed—a dark form half in
shadow against the edge of the scrub timber. For all that it was less
than a quarter of a mile distant, both men had to strain to make it out.
The explanation lay partly in the depths of the surrounding shadows;
partly in the fact that the form was absolutely without motion. It is an
undeniable fact that only moving figures are quickly discernible in the
light and shadow of the wild places: thus the forest creatures find
their refuge from their enemies simply by standing still and so
remaining unobserved. The thing at the timber edge had evidently learned
this lesson. In its dimness and obscurity it suggested some furtive
creature native to the woods.

Yet, for all its lack of motion, this was unmistakably a living being.
It was not just an odd-shaped stump, a dark shadow under tree limbs such
as so often misleads a big-game hunter. The brain seemed to know it,
without further verification by the senses. Bess had said it was the
form of a man, and the more intent their gaze, the more probable it
seemed that she was right. The fear that had oppressed Knutsen that it
might be merely the form of some one of the larger forest
creatures—perhaps a bear, standing erect, or a caribou facing them—was
evidently groundless. It was a man, and he was plainly standing
motionless, fully aware of and watching their approach.

Yet the atmosphere of vagueness prevailed. He was so like a woods
creature in the instinctive way he had taken advantage of the
concealment of the shadows. It was a wonder that Bess had ever observed
him. And now, drawing closer, his proportions seemed to be considerably
larger than is customary in the human species. Now that his outline grew
plain, he loomed like a giant. There is nothing so deceptive, however,
as the size of an object seen at a distance in the wilderness. The
degree of light, the clearness of the atmosphere, the nature of the
background and surroundings all have their effect: often a snow-hare
looks as big as a fox or a porcupine as large as a bear. Ned, sharing
none of Knutsen’s inner sense of unrest, yielding at last to the rapture
of impending deliverance, raised his arms and shouted across the waters.

“I want to be sure he sees us,” he explained quickly.

Knutsen strove to rid himself of the unwonted dismay that took hold of
him. A deep-buried subconsciousness had suddenly manifested itself
within him, but the messages it conveyed were proven ridiculous by his
own good sense. It was the first time, however, that this inner voice
had ever led him astray. Surely this was deliverance, life instead of
what had seemed certain death, yet he was oppressed and baffled as he
had never been in his life before.

It was soon made plain that the man had caught Ned’s signal. He lifted
his arm, then came walking down toward the water’s edge. Then Knutsen,
who until now had rowed steadily, paused with his paddles poised in the
air.

“It’s not an Indian,” he breathed quickly. Ned turned to look at him in
amazement, yet not knowing at what he was amazed. “It’s a white man!”

“Isn’t that all the better?” Ned demanded. “God knows I’m glad to see
any kind of a man.”

After all, wasn’t that good sense? Trapping, fox-farming, any one of a
dozen undertakings took white men into these northern realms. Conquering
his own ridiculous fears—fears that partook of the nature of actual
forewarnings—Knutsen drove his oars with added force into the water.
The boat leaped forward: in a moment more they touched the bank.

Their deliverer, a great blond man seemingly of Northeastern Europe, was
already at the water’s edge, watching them with a strange and
inexplicable glitter in gray, sardonic eyes. He was a mighty, bearded
man, clothed in furs; already he was bent, his hands on the bow of the
boat. Already Ned was climbing out upon the shore.

Partly to remove the silly dismay that had overwhelmed him, partly
because it was the first thought that would come to the mind of a
wayfarer of the sea, Knutsen turned with a question. “What island is
dis?” he asked.

The stranger turned with a grim, meaning smile. “Hell,” he answered
simply.

Both Ned and Knutsen stood erect to stare at him. The wind made curious
whispers down through the long slit of the river valley. “Hell?” Knutsen
echoed. “Is dat its name——”

“It’s the name I gave it. You’ll think it’s that before you get away.”




                                  XIII


The stranger’s voice was deep and full, so far-carrying, so masterful,
that it might have been the articulation of the raw elements among which
he lived, rather than the utterance of human vocal chords. It held all
his listeners; it wakened Lenore from the apathy brought by cold and
exposure. They had wondered, at first, that a member of the white race
should make his home on this remote and desolate isle, but after they
had heard his voice they knew that this was his fitting environment. If
any man’s home should be here, in this lost and snowy desert, here was
the man.

The background of the North was reflected in his voice. It was as if he
had caught its tone from the sea and the wild, through long acquaintance
with them. It was commanding, passionate, and yet, to a man of rare
sensitiveness, it would have had an unmistakable quality of beauty; at
least, something that is like beauty and which can be heard in many of
Nature’s voices: the chant of the wolf pack on the ridge, or even
certain sounds of beating waves. The explanation was simply that he had
lived so long in the North, he was so intrinsically its child in nature
and temperament, that it had begun to mold him after its own raw forces.
The fact that his voice had a deeply sardonic note was wholly in
character. The North, too, has a cruel, grim humor that breaks men’s
hearts.

His accent was plainly not that of an American. He had not been born to
the English tongue; very plainly he had learned it, thoroughly and
laboriously. His own tongue still echoed faintly in the way he mouthed
some of his vowels, and in a distinct purring note, as of a giant cat,
in his softer sounds.

Ned observed these things more in an inner mind, rather than with his
conscious intelligence. Outwardly he was simply listening to what the
man said. The note of dimness and unreality was wholly gone now. The
voice was indescribably vivid; the man himself was compellingly vivid
too. It was no longer to be wondered at that he had appeared of such
gigantic proportions when they had seen him across the snow. In reality
he was a giant of a man, about six feet and a half in height, huge of
body, mighty of arm and limb, weighing, stripped down to muscle and
sinew, practically three hundred pounds. Beside him, Knutsen no longer
gave the image of strength.

Even in his own city, surrounded by the civilization that he loved, Ned
couldn’t have passed this man by with a casual glance. In the first
place there is something irresistibly compelling about mere physical
strength. The strength of this man beside the sea seemed resistless. It
was to be seen in his lithe motions; his great, long-fingered,
big-knuckled hands; in the lurch of his shoulders; in his great thighs
and long, powerful arms. He was plainly, as far as age went, at the apex
of his strength,—not over forty-one, not less than thirty-eight. He
drew up the boat with one hand, reaching the other to help Lenore out on
to the shore.

It came about, because he reached it toward Lenore, that Ned noticed his
hand before ever he really took time to study his face. It was a mighty,
muscular hand,—a reaching, clasping, clenching, killing hand. It
crushed the lives from things that its owner didn’t like. On the back
and extending almost to the great, purple nails was blond, coarse hair.

But it wasn’t mere brute strength that made him the compelling
personality that he was. There was also the strength of an iron purpose,
a self-confidence gained by battle with and conquest of the raw forces
of his island home. Here was a man who knew no law but his own. And he
was as remorseless as the snow that sifted down upon him.

If Lenore’s thought processes had been the same as when she had left her
city home, she would have been stirred to envy by his garb. There was
little about him that suggested intercourse with the outside world. He
was dressed from head to foot in furs and skins of the most rare and
beautiful kinds. His jacket and trousers seemed to be of lynx, his cap
was unmistakably silver fox. But it came about that neither she nor Ned
did more than casually notice his garb: both were held and darkly
fascinated by the great, bearded face.

The blond hair grew in a great mat about his lips and jowls. His nose
was straight, his eyebrows heavy, all his features remarkably even and
well-proportioned. But none of these lesser features could be noticed
because of the compelling attraction of his gray, vivid eyes.

Ned didn’t know why he was startled, so carried out of himself when he
looked at them. In the first place they were the index of what was once,
and perhaps still, a lively and penetrating intelligence. This island
man, however mad he might be, was not a mere physical hulk,—an ox with
dull nerves and stupid brain. The vivid orbs indicated a nervous system
that was highly developed and sensitive, though heaven knew what slant,
what paths from the normal, the development took. They were not the eyes
of a man blind to beauty, dull to art. He was likely fully sensitive to
the dreadful, eerie beauty of his own northern home; if anything, it got
home to him too deeply and invoked in him its own terrible mood. They
were sardonic eyes too,—the eyes of a man who, secure in his own
strength, knew men’s weaknesses and knew how to make use of them.

Yet none of these traits got down to the real soul of the man. They
didn’t even explain the wild and piercing glitter in the gray orbs.
Whatever his creed was, he was a fanatic in it. An inhuman zeal marked
every word, every glance. There is a proper balance to maintain in life,
a quietude, most of all a temperance in all things; and to lose it means
to pass beyond the pale. This island man was irremediably steeped in
some ghastly philosophy of his own; a dreadful code of life outside the
laws of heaven and earth. Some evil disease, not named in any work on
medicine, had distilled its dire toxin into his heart.

There is no law of God or man north of sixty-three,—and the thing held
good with him. But there is devil’s law; and it was the law on which his
life was bent.

It was the most evil, the most terrible face that any one of these four
had ever seen. The art that touched him was never true art, the art of
the soul and the heart, but something diseased, something uncanny and
diabolical, beyond the pale of life. His genius was an evil genius: they
saw it in every motion, in every line of his wicked face.

There was no kindly warmth, no sympathy, no human understanding either
in his voice or his face. Plainly he was as remorseless as the
remorseless land in which he lived. Now, as they looked, his hairy hands
might have been the rending paws of a beast.

Perhaps it was madness, perhaps some weird abnormality that only a great
psychologist could trace, perhaps merely wickedness without redemption,
but whatever the nature of the disease that was upon him it had had a
ghastly and inhuman influence. The heart in his breast had lost the
high, human attributes of mercy and sympathy. They knew in one glance
that here was a man that knew no restraints other than those prompted by
his own desires. In him the self-will and resolution that carries so
many men into power or crime was developed to the _nth_ power; he was a
fitting child of the savage powers of nature among which he lived.

“Pardon me for not making myself known sooner,” he began in his deep,
sardonic voice. “My name is Doomsdorf—trapper, and seemingly owner of
this island. At least I’m the only living man on it, except yourselves.”
His speech, though careless and queerly accented, had no mark of
ignorance or ill-breeding. “I told you the island’s name—believe me, it
fits it perfectly. Welcome to it——”

Ned straightened, white-faced. “Mr. Doomsdorf, these girls are chilled
through—one of them is near to collapse from exposure. Will you save
that till later and help me get them to a fire?”

For all the creeping terror that was possessing his veins, Ned made a
brave effort to hold his voice steady. The man looked down at him, his
lip curling. “Pardon my negligence,” he replied easily. “Of course she
isn’t used to the cold yet—but that will come in time.” He bowed
slightly to the shivering girl on the shore. “If you follow my tracks up
to the wood, you’ll find my shack—and there’s a fire in the stove.” He
looked familiarly into her face. “You’re not really cold, you know—you
just _think_ you are. Walk fast, and it will warm you up.”

Ned bent, seized an armful of blankets from the boat, then stepped to
Lenore’s side. “The captain will help you, Miss Gilbert,” he said to
Bess. Then he and the golden-haired girl he loved started together
through the six-inch snowfall toward the woods. Bess, stricken and
appalled, but yet not knowing which way to turn, took the trail behind
them. But Knutsen still waited on the shore, beside the boat.

He came of a strong breed, and he was known in his own world as a strong
man. It was part of the teaching of that world, and always the instinct
of such men as he to look fate in the face, never to evade it, never to
seek shelter in false hope. He knew the world better than any of the
three who had come with him; the menace that they sensed but dimly but
which dismayed and oppressed them was only too real to him. Even now,
out of his sight, Ned was trying to make himself believe that the man
was likely but a simple trapper, distorted into a demon by the delirium
brought on by the dreadful night just passed; but Knutsen made no such
attempt. He saw in Doomsdorf a perfect embodiment of the utter
ruthlessness and brutality that the Far North sometimes bestows on its
sons.

Knutsen knew this north country. He knew of what it was capable,—the
queer, uncanny quirks that it put in the souls of men. Doomsdorf,
incredible to Ned and Bess, was wholly plausible to him. He feared him
to the depths of his heart, yet in some measure, at least, these three
were in his charge, and if worst came to worst, he must stand between
them and this island devil with his own life. He had stayed on the shore
after the others had gone so that he might find out the truth.

He was not long in learning. Through some innate, vague, almost
inexplicable desire to shelter his three charges and to spare them the
truth, he wanted to wait until all three of them had disappeared in the
wood; but even this was denied him. Lenore and Ned, it is true, had
already vanished into the patch of forest; but Bess seemed to be walking
slowly, waiting for him. Doomsdorf was bent, now, unloading the stores
and remaining blankets from the canoe; but suddenly, with one motion, he
showed Knutsen where he stood.

With one great lurch of his shoulders he turned over the empty boat and
shoved it off into the sea. The first wave, catching it, drove it out of
reach. “You won’t need that again,” he said.

With a half-uttered, sobbing gasp that no man had heard from his lips
before, Knutsen sprang to rescue it. It was the greatest error of his
life. Even he did not realize the full might and remorselessness of the
foe that opposed him, or he would never have wasted precious seconds,
put himself at a disadvantage by entering the water, in trying to
retrieve the boat. He would have struck instantly, in one absolute,
desperate attempt to wipe the danger forever from his path. But in the
instant of need, his brain did not work true. He could not exclude from
his thought the disastrous fallacy that all hope, all chances to escape
from hell lay only in this flimsy craft, floating a few feet from him in
shallow water.

In an instant he had seized it, and standing hip-deep in the icy water,
he turned to face the blond man on the shore. The latter roared once
with savage mirth, a sound that carried far abroad the snowy desolation;
then he sobered, watching with glittering eyes.

“Let it go,” he ordered simply. His right arm lifted slowly, as if in
inadvertence, and rested almost limp across his breast. His blond beard
hid the contemptuous curl of his lips.

“Damn you, I won’t!” Knutsen answered. “You can’t keep us here——”

“Let it go, I say. You are the one that’s damned. And you fool, you
don’t know the words that are written over the gates of the hell you’ve
come to—‘Abandon hope, ye who enter here!’ You and your crowd will
never leave this island till you die!”

Knutsen’s hand moved toward his hip. In the days of the gun fights, in
the old North, it had never moved more swiftly. In this second of need
he had remembered his pistol.

But he remembered it too late. And his hand, though fast, was infinitely
slow. The great arm that lay across Doomsdorf’s breast suddenly flashed
out and up. The blue steel of a revolver barrel streaked in the air, and
a shot cracked over the sea.

Knutsen was already loosed from the bonds that held him. Deliverance had
come quickly. His face, black before with wrath, grew blank; and for a
long instant he groped impotently, open hands reaching. But the lead had
gone straight home; and there was no need of a second shot. The late
captain of the _Charon_ swayed, then pitched forward into the gray
waters.




                                  XIV


Bess had followed the trail through the snow clear to the dark edge of
the woods when the sound of voices behind her caused her to turn.
Neither Doomsdorf nor Knutsen had spoken loudly. Indeed, their tones had
been more subdued than usual, as is often the way when men speak in
moments of absolute test. Bess had not made out the words: only the deep
silence and the movements of the wind from the sea enabled her to hear
the voices at all. Thus it was curious that she whirled, face blanching,
in knowledge of the impending crisis.

Thereafter the drama on the shore seemed to her as something that could
not possibly be true. She saw in the deep silence Doomsdorf overturn and
push off the boat, Knutsen’s desperate effort to rescue it, the flash of
light from the former’s upraised pistol. And still immersed in that
baffling silence, the brave seaman had groped, swayed, then toppled
forward into the shallow water.

It was a long time after that the report of the pistol reached her ears,
and even this was not enough to waken her to a sense of reality. It
sounded dull, far-off, conveying little of the terrible thing it was,
inadequate to account for the unutterable disaster that it had
occasioned. Afterward the silence closed down again. The waves rolled in
through the harbor mouth with never a pause. The dark shadow that lay
for an instant on the face of the waters slowly sank beneath. The boat
drifted ever farther out to sea.

Except for the fact that Doomsdorf stood alone on the shore, it might
have been all the factless incident of a tragic dream. The blond man
walked closer to the water, peering; then the pistol gleamed again as he
pocketed it. The wind still brushed by, singing sadly as it went; and
the sleet swept out of the clouds. And then, knowing her need, she
strove to waken the blunted powers of her will.

She must not yield herself to the horror that encroached upon her. Only
impotence, only disaster lay that way. She must hold steady, not break
into hopeless sobs, not fall kneeling in impotent appeal. Bess Gilbert
was of good metal, but this test that had been put upon her seemed to
wrench apart the fibers of her inmost being. But she won the fight at
last.

Slowly she stiffened, rallying her faculties, fighting off the apathy of
terror. Presently her whole consciousness seemed to sharpen. In an
instant of clear thought she guessed, broadly, the truth of that tragedy
beside the sea; that Knutsen had died in a desperate attempt to break
free from an unspeakable trap into which he and his charges had fallen.
He had preferred to take the chance of death rather than submit to the
fate that Doomsdorf had in store for him.

Just what that fate was and how it concerned herself, Bess dared not
guess. She had known a deadly fear of Doomsdorf at the first glance; she
had instinctively hated him as she had never hated any living creature
before; and now she knew that this was the most desperate moment of her
life. He had shown himself capable of any depth of crime; and that meant
there must be no limit to her own courage. She too must take any chance
of freedom that offered, no matter how desperate; for no evil that could
befall her seemed as terrible as his continued power over her.

It meant she must work quick. She must not lose a single chance. The
odds were desperately long already: she must not increase them. In an
instant more he would be glancing about to see if his crime were
observed. If she could conceal the fact that she had witnessed it, he
would not be so much on guard in the moment of crisis that was to come.
Her body and soul seemed to rally to mighty effort.

She was already at the edge of the timber. Stooping down, she made one
leap into its shelter. She was none too soon: already Doomsdorf had
looked back to see if the coast were clear.

Everything depended on Ned, henceforth. She couldn’t work alone. With
his aid, perhaps, they could destroy this evil power under which they
had fallen before it could prepare to meet them. Doomsdorf’s cabin—a
long, log structure on the bank of a dark little stream—was only a
hundred feet distant in the wood. Now that she was out of sight of the
shore, she broke into a frenzied run.

She had no desperate plan as yet. In Ned’s manhood alone lay her hope:
perhaps in the moment or two before Doomsdorf appeared Ned could
conceive of some plan to meet him. Perhaps there was a rifle in the
cabin!

She fought back the instinct to scream out her story from the doorway.
At the bidding of an instinct so sure and true that it partook of a
quality of infallibility, she checked her wild pace before she crossed
the threshold. Everything depended on Ned and the cool, strong quality
of Ned’s nerves. She must not jeopardize his self-control by bursting in
upon him in frenzy, perhaps exciting him to such an extent that he would
be rendered helpless to aid her. She must keep him cool by being cool
herself. She caught her breath in a curious deep gasp, then stepped into
the room.

Then that gasp became very nearly a sob. The way of deliverance was not
clear. A wrinkled native woman, an Aleut or an Eskimo, who was evidently
Doomsdorf’s wife, looked up at her with dark inscrutable eyes from the
opposite side of the room.

It was a heart-breaking blow to Bess’s hopes. The presence of the woman
increased, to a dread degree, the odds against her. She was ugly, brown
as leather, heavily built; her face gave no sign that human emotion had
ever touched her heart, yet she was likely a staunch ally of their foe.

The whole picture went home to her in a glance. Lenore was huddled in a
chair before the stove, yielding herself to the blessed warmth, already
shaking off the semi-apathy induced by the night’s chill. But as yet
there was no hope in her. She was shivering, helpless, impotent. Ned
bent over her, his arms about her, now and then giving her sips from a
cup of hot liquid that he held in his hand. His care, his tender
solicitude, struck Bess with a sense of unutterable irony. Evidently he
had no suspicion of the real truth.

He looked up as Bess entered. Partly because the light was dim, partly
because he was absorbed in the work of caring for Lenore to the
exclusion of all other thought, he failed to see the drawn look of
horror on Bess’s face. “I’ll need a little help here, Miss Gilbert,” he
said. “I want to get this girl to bed. The night seemed to go harder
with her than with the rest of us, and rest is the best thing for her.”

Bess almost sobbed aloud. The sound caught in her throat, but quickly
she forced it back. Ned was already himself again; the danger and stress
of the night had seemingly affected him only so far as to enscribe his
face with tired lines, to leave him somewhat hollow-eyed and drawn. In
reality, he was the man of cities come again. He was on solid earth;
food and shelter and warmth were his once more; his old self-confidence
was surging through him with the glow from the stove. He had no inkling
of the truth. His mind was far from danger.

At that instant she knew she must work alone. She must give no sign of
her own desperation before this stolid squaw. And yet she almost
screamed with horror when she realized that any second she might hear
Doomsdorf’s step on the threshold. She glanced about till she located
the Russian’s rifle, hung on the wall almost in front of the squaw’s
chair.

“Did you hear a shot?” she asked. With all the powers of her spirit, she
kept her voice commonplace, casual.

“Yes,” Ned answered. “It wasn’t anything—was it?” His tone became cold.
“Will you please give me a little help with Miss Hardenworth?”

“It was a bear—Mr. Doomsdorf shot at it with his pistol,” she went on
in the same casual way. She thought it incredible that they would not
take alarm from the wild beating of her heart. She turned easily to the
squaw. “He wants me to bring his rifle so he can shoot at it again,” she
said. “That’s it—on the wall?”

She stepped toward the weapon. Even in her own heart she did not know
what was her plan of action after that gun was in her hands: she had not
yet given thought to the stress and desperate deed that lay before her.
She only knew that life, honor, everything that mattered in this world
depended on the developments of the next few seconds. Later, perhaps,
resistance would be crushed out of her; her cruel master would be
constantly on guard: in this little moment lay her one chance. She knew
vaguely that if she could procure the weapon, she could start down to
the shore and meet Doomsdorf on the way. Perhaps her nerve would break
soon; it could not keep up forever under such a strain. Thus her whole
universe depended on immediate action. She must not hesitate now. She
must go any lengths. Her eyes were cold and remorseless under her
straight brows.

“Sure—take him gun,” the squaw answered her.

She was vaguely aware that Ned was watching her in amazement. He was
speaking too, his voice coming from infinitely far off. “I’m surprised,
Miss Gilbert,” he was saying with grave displeasure. “You don’t seem to
realize that Miss Hardenworth is still in a serious condition. Perhaps
you will be willing to forget Mr. Doomsdorf’s sport for a moment——”

But Bess hardly heard. Her hands were trembling, waiting for the feel of
the steel. Now the Indian was getting up and presently was lifting down
the weapon. But she did not put it at once into Bess’s hands. She pushed
back the lever, revealing the empty breech. Then Bess saw a slow drawing
of her lips—a cruel upturning that was seemingly as near as she could
come to a smile.

“Sure—take him gun,” she said. “Got any shells——?”

Bess shook her head. Her heart paused in her breast.

“Maybe him got shells. He took ’em all out when he saw your canoe come
in.”




                                   XV


If, like her husband, the brown squaw was a devotee of cruelty, she must
have received great satisfaction from the sight of that slender, girlish
figure standing in the gloom of the cabin. The fact that there were no
shells in the rifle—otherwise a desperate agent of escape—seemed
nothing less than the death of hope. The strength born of the crisis
departed swiftly from her, and her only impulse was to yield to bitter
tears. Her erect body seemed to wilt, her sensitive lips, so straight
and firm before, drooped like those of a child in some utter,
unconsolable tragedy of childhood. It was a curious thing how the light
died in her eyes. All at once they seemed to be at some strange,
below-zero point of darkness,—like black wounds in the utter whiteness
of her face. Yet the squaw gave no sign that she had seen. Her face was
impassive, that of an imperturbable Buddha that sits forever in a far
temple.

Great terror is nothing more or less than temporary loss of hope. In
that moment Bess was finding out what real hopelessness meant, so far as
it is ever possible for human beings to know. For that moment she
couldn’t see a rift in the darkness that enfolded her. In the first
place she felt infinitely alone: Knutsen was dead; Lenore still sat
yielding to self-pity; Ned still extended to her his solicitous care.
The thing went beyond mere fear of death. She could conceive of
possibilities now wherein death would be a thing desired and prayed for;
a deliverance from a living hell that was infinitely worse. The terror
that was upon her was incomparable with any previous experience of her
life.

Yet her eyes remained dry. Some way, she was beyond the beneficence of
tears; partly because of her terror, partly, perhaps, because the
instinct was with her yet to hide the truth from Ned and Lenore so long
as possible. Thus she was not, in the last analysis, absolutely bereft
of hope. It might be, since Ned was a man and she a woman, he would
never become the prey of Doomsdorf to such a degree as she herself. And
now there was no time to try to formulate other plans; to seek some
other gateway of escape; no time more to listen to Ned’s complaints of
her inattention to Lenore. She heard Doomsdorf’s heavy step at the door.

The man came in, for an instant standing framed by the doorway, the
light of morning behind him. Ned looked up, expecting some inquiry as to
his own and Lenore’s condition, some word of greeting on his lips. It
came about, however, that his thought fell quickly into other channels.
Doomsdorf closed the door behind him.

The man turned contemptuously to Ned. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Startled and indignant at the tone, Ned instinctively straightened. “I
didn’t say anything was the matter. Where’s Knutsen?”

“Knutsen—has gone on. Hell didn’t suit him. He went against its
mandates the first thing. I hope it doesn’t happen again—I would hate
to lose any more of you. I’ve other plans in mind.”

Ned hardly understood, yet his face went white. Partly it was anger
because of the unmistakable insult and contempt in Doomsdorf’s tone.
Partly it was a vague fear that his good sense would not permit him to
credit. “I don’t—I don’t understand, I’m afraid,” he remarked coldly.
“We’ll talk it over later. At present I want to know where we can put
this girl to bed. She’s in a serious condition from her last night’s
experience.”

The lips curled under the great blond beard. “I may put her to bed, all
right—if I like her looks,” he answered evenly. “It won’t be your bed,
either.”

Appalled, unbelieving, yet obeying a racial instinct that goes back to
the roots of time, Ned dropped the girl from his arms and leaped to his
feet. His eyes blazed with a magnificent burst of fury, and a mighty
oath was at his lips. “You——” he began.

Yet no second word came. Doomsdorf’s great body lunged across the room
with the ferocity and might of a charging bear. His arm went out like a
javelin, great fingers extended, and clutched with the effect of a
mighty mechanical trap the younger man’s throat. He caught him as he
might catch a vicious dog he intended to kill, snatching him off his
feet. Ned’s arm lashed out impotently, and forcing through with his own
body, Doomsdorf thrust him into the corner. For a moment he battered him
back and forth, hammering his head against the wall, then let him fall
to a huddled heap on the floor.

Lenore’s voice raised in a piercing scream of terror; but a fiercer
instinct took hold of Bess. The impulse that moved her was simply that
to fight to the death, now as well as later. A heavy hammer, evidently a
tool recently in use by Doomsdorf, lay on the window sill, and she
sprang for it with the strength of desperation. But her hand had hardly
touched it before she herself was hurled back against the log wall
behind her.

The squaw had not sat supine in this stress. With the swiftness and
dexterity of an animal, she had sprung to intercept the deadly blow,
hurling the girl back by her hand upon the latter’s shoulder. If she
made any sound at all, it was a single, chattering sentence that was
mostly obliterated in the sound of battle. And already, before seemingly
a second was past, Doomsdorf was standing back in his place in the
center of the room.

Except for the huddled heap in the blood-spattered corner of the cabin,
it was as if it had never happened. The squaw was again stolid, moving
slowly back to her chair; Doomsdorf breathed quietly and evenly. The two
girls stood staring in speechless horror.

“I hope there won’t be any more of that,” Doomsdorf said quietly. “The
sooner we get these little matters straightened out, the better for all
concerned. It isn’t pleasant to be hammered to pieces, is it?”

He took one step toward Ned, and Lenore started to scream again. But he
inflicted no further punishment. He reached a strong hand, seized Ned’s
shoulder, and snatched him to his feet.

“Don’t try it again,” he advised. “Here in this cabin—on this island—I
do and say what I like. I don’t stand for any resentment. The next time
it won’t be so easy, and that will be too bad for everybody. You
wouldn’t be able to do your work.”

Racked by pain but fully conscious, Ned looked into the glittering eyes.
It was no longer possible to disbelieve in this hairy giant before him.
The agony in his throat muscles was only too real. And the only recourse
that occurred to him was one of pitiful inadequacy.

It was a moment of test for Ned, and he knew of no way to meet it except
as he met such little crises as sometimes occurred to him in his native
city. The only code of life he knew was that he practiced in his old
life: now was its time of trial. His own blood on his hands; the grim,
wicked face before him should have been enough to convince a man less
inured in his own creed of self-sufficiency and conceit; yet Ned would
not let himself believe that he had found his master.

As a child has recourse to senseless threats, he tried to take refuge in
his old attitude of superiority. “I don’t know what you mean, and I
don’t care to,” he said at last. In pity for him Bess’s eyes filled with
tears. “I only know we won’t accept the hospitality of such men as you.
We’ll go—right now.”

Doomsdorf’s answer was a roaring laugh of scorn. Presently he walked to
the door and threw it wide.

But he wasn’t smiling when he turned back to face them, the morning
light on his bearded face. The sight of the North through the open door
had sobered and awed him, as it awes all men who know its power. Beyond
lay only the edge of the forest and the snow-swept barrens, stretching
down to a gray and desolate sea.

“It’s snowing a little, isn’t it?” he said. “Just the North—keeping its
tail up and letting us know it’s here. Where, my young friend, do you
think of going?”

“It doesn’t matter——”

“There’s snow and cold out there.” His voice was deeply sober. “Death
too—sure as you’re standing here. A weakling like you can’t live in
that, out there. None of your kind can stand it—they’d die like so many
sheep. And as a result you have to bow down and serve the man that can!”

Ned had no answer. The greatest fear of his life was clamping down upon
him.

“That’s the law up here—that the weak have to serve the strong. I’ve
beat the North at its own game, and it serves me, just as you’re going
to serve me now. You’re not accepting any hospitality from me. You’re
going to pay for the warmth of this fire I’ve grubbed out of these
woods—you’ll pay for the food you eat. You can go out there if you
like—if you prefer to die. There’s no boat to carry you off. There
never will be a boat to carry you off.”

Ned’s breath caught in a gasp. “My God, you don’t mean you’ll hold us
here by force!”

“I mean you’re my prisoners here for the rest of your natural lives. And
you can abandon hope just as surely as if this island was the real hell
it was named for.”

Quietly, coldly he told them their fate, these three who had been cast
up by the sea. He didn’t mince words. And for all the strangeness of the
scene—the gray light of the dawn and the snow against the window and
the noise of the wind without—they knew it was all true, not merely
some shadowed vista of an eerie dream.

“You might as well know how you stand, first as last,” he began. “When
you once get everything through your heads, maybe we won’t have any more
trouble such as we had just now. You ought to be glad that the
seaman—Knutsen, you called him?—is sliding around on the sea bottom
instead of being here with you; he’d be a source of trouble from
beginning to end. He’d have been hard to teach, hard to master—I saw
that in the beginning—and he’d never give in short of a fight every
morning and every night. None of you, fortunately, are that way. You’ll
see how things stack up, and we’ll all get along nicely together.”

He paused, smiling grimly; then with an explosive motion, pulled back
the lid of the stove and threw in another log. “Sit down, why don’t
you?” he invited. “I don’t insist on my servants standing up always in
my presence. You’ll have to sit down sometime, you know.”

Lenore, wholly despondent, sank back in her seat. To show that he was
still her protector, Ned stood behind her, his hands resting on the back
of her chair. Bess stole to a little rough seat between them and the
squaw.

A single great chair was left vacant, almost in the middle of the
circle. Doomsdorf glanced once about the room as if guarding against any
possibility of surprise attack by his prisoners, then sat down easily
himself. “Excuse me for not making you known to my woman,” he began. “In
fact, I haven’t even learned your own names. She is, translating from
the vernacular, ‘Owl-That-Never-Sleeps.’ You won’t be expected to call
her that, however—although I regret as a general thing that the
picturesque native names so often undergo such laceration on the tongues
of the whites. When I took her from her village, they gave her to me as
‘Sindy.’ You may call her that. It will do as good as any—every other
squaw from Tin City to Ketchikan is called Sindy. It means nothing, as
far as I know.

“‘Owl-That-Never-Sleeps,’ however, fits her very well. You might make a
point of it. And if you are interested in the occult sciences, perhaps
you might explain to me how, when she was a pappoose, her parents could
understand her character and nature well enough to give her a name that
fits her so perfectly. I notice the same thing happens again and again
through these northern tribes. But I’m wandering off the point. Sindy,
you must know, speaks English and is second in command. What she says
goes. Get up and do it on the jump.

“You’ll be interested to know that you are on one of the supposedly
uninhabited islands of the Skopin group. Other islands are grouped all
around you, making one big snow field when the ice closes down in
winter. I could give you almost your exact longitudinal position, but it
wouldn’t be the least good to you. The population consists of we five
people—and various bear, caribou, and such like. The principal
industry, as you will find out later, is furs.

“There is no need to tell in detail how and why I came here—unlike
Caliban, I am not a native of the place. I hope you are not so deficient
as to have failed to read ‘Tempest.’ I find quite an analogy to our
present condition. Shakespeare is a great delight on wintry nights; he
remains real, when most of my other slim stock of authors fades into
air. I like ‘Merry Wives’ the best of the comedies, though—because we
have such fine fun with Falstaff. Of the tragedies I like Macbeth the
best and Lear, by far the worst; and it’s a curious paradox that I
didn’t like the ending of the first and did like the second. Macbeth and
his lady shouldn’t have fallen. They were people with a purpose, and
purpose should be allowed to triumph in art as well as in life. In life,
Macbeth would have snipped off Macduff’s head and left a distinguished
line. Lear, old and foolish, got just what was coming to him—only it
shouldn’t have been dragged over five acts.

“But I really must get down to essentials. It’s so long since I’ve
talked to the outside world that I can’t help being garrulous. To begin
with—I came here some years ago, not entirely by my own choice. Of
course, not even the devil comes to such a hell as this from his own
choice. There’s always pressure from above.”

He paused again, hardly aware of the horrified gaze with which his
hearers regarded him. A startling change had come over him when he spoke
again. His eyes looked red as a weasel’s in the shadowed room; the tones
of his voice were more subdued, yet throbbing with passion.

“I remember gray walls, long ago, in Siberia,” he went on slowly and
gravely. “I was not much more than a boy, a student at a great
university—and then there were gray walls in a gray, snow-swept land,
and gray cells with barred doors, and men standing ever on watch with
loaded rifles, and thousands of human cattle in prison garb. It was
almost straight west of here, far beyond Bering Sea; and sometimes
inspectors would come, stylish people like yourselves, except that they
were bearded men of Petrograd, and look at us through the bars as at
animals in a zoo, but they never interfered with the way things were
run! How I came there doesn’t matter; what I did, and what I didn’t do.
There I found out how much toil the human back can stand without
breaking, one day like another, years without end. I knew what it was to
have a taskmaster stand over me with a whip—a whip with many tails,
with a shot and wire twisted into each. I can show you my back now if
you don’t believe me. I found out all these things, and right then there
came a desire to teach them to some one else. I was an enemy of society,
they said—so I became an enemy of society in reality. Right then I
learned a hate for such society and a desire to burn out the heart of
such weak things as you!”

He turned to them, snarling like a beast. His voice had begun to rumble
like lavas in the bowels of the earth. There could be no question as to
the reality of this hatred. It was a storm cloud over his face; it
filled his gray eyes with searing fire, it drew his muscles till it
seemed that the arms of his chair, clutched by his hands, would be torn
from the rounds. To his listeners it was the most terribly vivid moment
of their lives.

“I swore an oath then, by the devil himself, that if the time ever came
that I’d have opportunity, I’d show society just what kind of an enemy I
was. Sometime, I thought, that time would come. What made me think so I
can’t tell. Sometime I’d pay ’em back for all they had done to me.

“One day the chance came to escape. While more cowardly men would have
hesitated, I pushed through and out. On the way I learned a little
lesson—that none of the larger creatures of the wild die as easily as
men. I found out that there is nothing more to killing a man that is in
your way than killing a caribou I want to eat. I didn’t feel any worse
about it afterward. After that I decided I would never compromise with a
man who was in my way. The other method was too easy. Remember it in all
our relations to come.

“I had to come across here. I couldn’t forever escape the hue and cry
that was raised. Ultimately I landed on this little island—with Sindy
and a few steel traps.

“In this climate we can trap almost the whole year round. We can start
putting them out in a few days more—keep them out clear till June.
Every year a ship—the _Intrepid_ that you’ve likely heard of—touches
here to buy my furs—just one trip a year—and it leaves here supplies
of all kinds in exchange. But don’t take hope from that. Hope is one
thing you want to get out of your systems. The captain of the _Intrepid_
and his Japanese crew are the only human beings that know I live here,
except yourself—that know there’s a human occupant on this island. On
their yearly visit I’ll see to it that none of them get a sight of you.

“Once I was used to working all day from dawn to dark, with an armed
master on guard over me. It isn’t going to be that way from now on. I’m
going to be the armed master. The next few days you’re going to spend
building yourselves a shack and cutting winter fuel. Then each of you
will have a trap line—a good stiff one, too. Every day you’ll go out
and follow your line of traps—baiting, skinning and fleshing, drying
the skins when you get to the cabins. You’ll know what it really is to
be cold, then; you’ll know what work means, too. With you three I expect
to triple my usual season’s catch, building up three times as fast the
fortune I need.

“All my life I’ve looked forward to a chance to give society the same
kind of treatment it gave to me—and when that fortune is large enough
to work with, there will be a new dynasty arise in Russia. In the
meantime, you’re going to get the same treatment I did—hard labor for
life! You’re going to have an armed guard over you to shoot you down if
you show the least sign of mutiny. You’ll obey every command and lick my
boots if I tell you to. I said then, when the chance came, I’d grind
society down—or any representatives of society that came into my
power—just as it ground me down. This is the beginning of my triumph.
You, you three—represent all I hated. Wealth—constituted
authority—softness and ease and luxury. I’ll teach you what softness
is! You’ll know what a heaven a hard bed can be, after a day in the wind
off Bering Straits. You’ll find out what luxury is, too.” His wild laugh
blew like a wind through the room. “And incidentally, my fur output will
be increased by three, my final dream brought three times nearer.

“What I want from you I’ll take. You’re in hell if there is such a
place—and you’ll know it plenty soon.” He turned to Ned, his lip curled
in scorn. “Your feeble arms over the chair back won’t protect that girl
if I make up my mind I want her. At present you may be safe from
that—simply because some conquests aren’t any pleasure if they’re made
with force. If I want either of you,” his gaze flashed toward Bess, “I’m
not afraid that I’ll have to descend to force to get you.

“When I said to abandon hope I meant it. You have no boat, and I’ll give
you no chance to make one. The distance is too great across the ice ever
to make it through; besides, you won’t be given a chance to try. No
ships will come here to look for you. No matter what wealth and power
you represented down there, you’ll be forgotten soon enough. Others will
take your place, other girls will reign at the balls, and other men will
spend your money. You will be up here, as lost and forgotten as if you
were in the real hell you’ll go to in the end.

“Even if your doting fathers should send out a search party, they will
overlook this little island. It was just a freak of the currents that
you landed here—I don’t see yet why you weren’t blown to Tzar Island,
immediately east of here. When they find you aren’t there, and pick up
any other lifeboats from your ship that in all probability landed there,
they’ll be glad enough to turn around and go back. Especially if they
see your lifeboat floating bottom upward in the water!

“You should never have come to the North, you three! Society should
never move from the civilization that has been built to protect
it—otherwise it will find forces too big and too cruel to master.
You’re all weaklings, soft as putty—without the nerve of a ptarmigan.
Already I’ve crushed the resistance out of you. All my life I’ve dreamed
of some such chance as this, and yet you can’t fight enough to make it
interesting for me. You’ll be docile, hopeless slaves until you die.”

He paused, scanning their pale, drawn faces. He turned to Ned first, but
the latter was too immersed in his own despair ever to return his stare.
Lenore didn’t raise her golden head to meet his eyes. But before his
gaze ever got to her, Bess was on her feet.

“Don’t be too sure of yourself,” she cautioned quickly. He looked with
sudden amazement into her kindling eyes. “Men like you have gone in the
face of society before. You’re not so far up here that the arm of the
law can’t reach you.”

The blond man smiled into her earnest face. “Go on, my dear,” he urged.

“It’s got you once, and it’ll get you again. And I warn you that if you
put one indignity on us, do one thing you’ve said—you’ll pay for it in
the end—just as you’ll pay for that fiendish crime you committed
to-day.”

As her eyes met his, straight and unfaltering, the expression of
contemptuous amazement died in his face. Presently his interest seemed
to quicken. It was as if he had seen her for the first time, searching
eyes resting first on hers, then on her lips, dropping down over her
athletic form, and again into her eyes. He seemed lost in sinister
speculations.

Something seemed strained, ready to break. The four in the little circle
made no motion, all of them inert and frozen like characters in a dream.
And then, before that speculative, searching gaze—a gaze unlike any
that he had bent on Lenore—her eyes faltered from his. Ned felt a wild,
impotent fury like live steam in his brain.

Bess’s little mutiny was already quelled. Her blue eyes were black with
terror.




                                  XVI


Doomsdorf had seemingly achieved his purpose, and his prisoners lay
crushed in his hands. A fear infinitely worse than that of toil or
hardship had evidently killed the fighting spirit in Bess; Lenore had
been broken by Doomsdorf’s first words. And now all the structure of
Ned’s life had seemingly toppled about him.

The lesson that Doomsdorf taught had gone deep, not to be forgotten in
any happier moment that life might have in store for him. There was no
blowing into flame the ashes of his old philosophy. It was dead and cold
in his breast; no matter what turn fate should take, his old conceit and
self-sufficiency could never come again. He was down to earth at last.
The game had been too big for him. The old Ned Cornet was dead, and only
a broken, impotent, hopeless thing was left to dwell in his battered
body.

He had found the training camp, but it was more bitter than ever his
father had hinted that it could be. Indeed Godfrey Cornet, in those
brooding prophecies at which his son had laughed, had been all too
hopeful regarding it. He had said there was a way through and on, always
there was a way through and on; but here the only out-trail was one of
infinite shadow to an unknown destination. Death—_that_ was the way
out. _That_ was the only way.

It was curious how easy it was to think of death. Formerly the word had
invoked a sense of something infinitely distant, nothing that could
seemingly touch him closely, a thought that never came clearly into
focus in his brain. All at once it had showed itself as the most real of
all realities. It might be his before another night, before the end of
the present hour. It had come quick enough to Knutsen. The least
resistance to Doomsdorf’s will would bring it on himself. Many things
were lies, and the false was hard to tell from the true, but in this
regard there was no chance for question. Doomsdorf would strike the life
from him in an instant at the first hint of revolt.

It was wholly conceivable that such a thing could occur. Ned could
endure grinding toil till he died; even such personal abuse as he had
received an hour or so before might find him crushed and unresisting,
but yet there remained certain offenses that could not be endured. Ned
could not forget that both Lenore and Bess were wholly in Doomsdorf’s
power. A brutal, savage man, it was all too easy to believe that the
time would come soon when he would forget the half-promise he had given
them. The smoky gaze that he had bent toward Bess meant, perhaps, that
he was already forgetting it. In that case would there be anything for
him but to fight and die? No matter how great a weakling he had been,
the last mandate of his honor demanded that. And a bitterness ineffable
descended upon him when he realized that even such bravery could not in
the least help the two girls,—that his death would be as unavailing and
impotent as his life.

How false he had been to himself and his birthright! He had been living
in a fool’s paradise, and he had fallen from it into hell! Esau sold his
birthright for a mess of pottage: for less return Ned had sold himself
into slavery. He had been a member of a dominant race, the son of a
mighty breed that wrested the soil from the wilderness and built strong
cities on the desolate plains; but he had wasted his patrimony of
strength and manhood. A parlor knight, he had leaned upon his father’s
sword rather than learning to wield his own; and he had fallen
vanquished the instant that he had left its flashing ring of steel.

For in this moment of unspeakable remorse, he found he could blame no
one but himself for the disaster. Every year men traversed these
desolate waters to buy furs from the Indians; he had been in a staunch
boat, and with a little care, a little foresight, the journey could have
been made in perfect safety. It was a man’s venture, surely; but he
could have carried through if he had met it like a man instead of a
weakling. He knew perfectly that it was his own recklessness and folly
that set the cups of burning liquor before Captain Knutsen as he stood
at his wheel. It was his own unpardonable conceit, his own
self-sufficiency that made him start out to meet the North half
prepared, daring to disturb its ancient silences with the sound of his
wild revelry; and to live, in its grim desolation, the same trivial life
he lived at home. He hadn’t even brought a pistol. Sensing his weakness
and his unpreparedness, Doomsdorf hadn’t even done him the honor of
searching him for one.

Knutsen’s death was on his own head: the life of utter wretchedness and
hopelessness and insult that lay before Lenore and Bess was his own
doing, too. It wouldn’t compensate to die in their defense, merely
leaving them continued helpless prey to Doomsdorf. He saw now, with this
new vision that had come to him, that his only possible course was to
live and do what he could in atonement. He mustn’t think of himself any
more. All his life he had thought of nothing but himself; self-love had
been his curse to the end of the chapter,—and now he could not make
himself believe but that it had been some way intertwined in his love
for Lenore. He would have liked to give himself credit for that, at
least—unselfish devotion, these past years, to Lenore—but even this
stuck in his throat. But his love for her would be unbiased by self-love
now. He would give all of himself now—holding nothing back.

In spite of his own despair, his own bitter hopelessness, he must do
what he could to keep hope alive in Lenore and Bess. It was the only
chance he had to pay, even in the most pitiful, slight degree for what
he had done to them. He must always try to make their lot easier, doing
their work when he could, maintaining an attitude of cheer, living the
lie of hope when hope seemed dead in his breast.

Ned Cornet was awake at last. He knew himself, his generation, the full
enormity of his own folly, the unredeemed falsehood of his old
philosophy. Better still, he knew what lay before him, not only the
remorselessness of his punishment but also his atonement: doing
willingly and cheerfully the little he could to lighten the burdens of
his innocent victims. He could have _that_ to live for, at least, doing
the feeble little that he could. And that is why, when Doomsdorf looked
at him again, he found him in some way straightened, his eyes more
steadfast, his lips in a firmer, stronger line.

“Glad to see you’re bucking up,” he commented lightly.

Ned turned soberly. “I _am_ bucking up,” he answered. “I see now that
you’ve gone into something you can’t get away with. Miss Gilbert was
right; in the end you’ll find yourself laid out by the heels.”

It can be said for Ned, for the reality of his resolve, that his words
seemed to ring with conviction, giving no sign of the utter despair that
was in his heart. Of course he was speaking them for the ears of Lenore
and Bess, in order to encourage them.

“You think so, eh?” Doomsdorf yawned and stretched his arms. “Just try
something—that’s all. And since you’re feeling so good, I don’t see why
you shouldn’t get to work. You can still put in a fairly good morning.
And you”—he turned, with the catlike swiftness that marked so many of
his movements, toward Bess—“what’s your name?”

“You just heard him say. Miss Gilbert——”

“You can forget you are a ‘Miss.’ You’re a squaw out here—and can do
squaw’s work. What’s your first name?”

Bess, in her misery, looked at him with dread. “Bess Gilbert,” she
answered quietly.

“Bess it will be. Lenore, I think you call the other—and Ned. Good
thing to know first names, since we’ve got an uncertain number of years
before us. Well, I suggest that all three of you go out and see what you
can do about wood. You’ll have to cut some and split it. I’ve been lazy
about laying in a winter store.”

Much to his amazement, Ned stood erect, pulled down his cap over his
brown curls, and buttoned his coat. “I’ll see what we can do,” he
answered straightforwardly. “I have, though, one thing to ask.”

“What is it——”

“That you let the two girls take it easy to-day—and get warmed through.
If you sent them out now, weakened as they are, it might very easily
mean pneumonia and death. It’s to your interest to keep them alive.”

“It’s to my interest, surely—but don’t rely on that to the extent of
showing too much independence. The human body can stand a lot before it
gives up the ghost. The human voice can do a lot of screaming. I know,
because I’ve seen. I don’t mind running a little risk with human life to
get my way, and I know several things, short of actual killing, that go
toward enforcing obedience and quelling mutiny.”

Lenore, staring wildly at him, caught her breath in a sob. “You don’t
mean——”

Doomsdorf did not look at her. He still smiled down at Ned. “You’ve
never felt a knout, have you, on the naked back?” he asked sweetly. “I
found out what they were like in Siberia, and with the hope of showing
some one else, I took one out—in my boot. It’s half-killed many a
man—but I only know one man that it’s completely killed. He was a
guard—and I found out just how many blows it takes. You can stop a
hundred—fifty—perhaps only ten before that number, and life still
lingers.” The man yawned again. “But your request is granted—so far as
Lenore is concerned. You can leave her here for me to entertain. Bess
has spirit enough to talk—she has undoubtedly spirit enough to work.”

Ned, deeply appalled and unspeakably revolted, looked to Lenore for
directions. Her glorious head was on her arms, and she shook it in utter
misery. “I can’t go out there now,” she said. “I’ll just die if I
do—I’m so cold still, so weakened. I wish I had died out there in the
storm.”

Ned turned once more to Doomsdorf. “She’s telling the truth—I think she
simply can’t stand to go,” he urged gravely. “But though she’s
absolutely in your power, there are some things even a beast can’t do.
You just the same as gave me your word——”

“There are things a beast can’t do, but I’m not a beast. There’s nothing
I can’t do that I want to do. I make no promises—just the same, for
this time, I don’t think you need be afraid. I don’t take everything
that comes along in the way of a woman. I want a woman of thews!”

Bess dared not look at him, but she felt the insult of his searching
gaze. She buttoned her coat tight, then stood waiting. An instant later
Doomsdorf was holding the door open for her as she went to her toil.




                                  XVII


There were a number of axes in the little work-room that comprised one
end of the long cabin, and Doomsdorf flung three of them over his
shoulder. “Right up through here,” he urged, pointing to the little
hillside behind the cabin. “Of course I can’t let you cut fuel from
these trees so close to the house. You, as city people, surely know
something about house beautifying. You’ll have to carry the wood a
little farther—but you won’t mind, when you know it’s for the sake of
beauty.”

The snow was noticeably deeper in the two hours since they had come. It
clung to Ned’s trouser legs almost to the knees, soaking through his
thin walking shoes; and both he and Bess found it some degree of labor
just to push through it. Doomsdorf halted them before one of the
half-grown spruce.

“Here’s a good one,” he commented. “Just beyond is another. You can each
take one—cut them down with your axes and then hack them into two-foot
lengths for the stove. Better split each length into three pieces—the
larger ones, anyway. If you have time, you can carry it down to the
cabin.”

He swung his axes down from his shoulder. He seemed to be handling them
with particular care, but several seconds elapsed before Ned realized
that the moment had some slight element of drama. Heretofore he had been
unable to observe that Doomsdorf was in the least on guard against his
prisoners. He had seemingly taken no obvious precautions in his own
defense. It was plain to see, however, that he did not intend to put
axes into the hands of these two foes until he had one ready to swing
himself.

He took the handle of the largest axe in his right hand; with his left
he extended the other two implements, blades up, to Ned and Bess. “I
suppose you know we’ve had no experience——” Ned began.

“It doesn’t matter. Just be careful the trees don’t fall on you. They
sometimes do, you know, on amateur woodsmen. The rest is plain brute
strength and awkwardness.” He handed them each, from his pocket, a piece
of dried substance that looked like bark. “Here’s a piece of jerked
caribou each—it ought to keep life in your bodies. And the sooner you
get your wood cut and split, the sooner you see any more.”

Then he turned and left them to their toil.

Thus began a bitter hour for Ned. He found the mere work of biting
through the thick trunk with his axe cost him his breath and strained
his patience to the limit. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. He did not
strike true; the blade made irregular white gashes in the bark; his
blows seemed to lack power. The great, ragged wound deepened but slowly.

Finally it was half through the trunk, and yet the tree stood seemingly
as sturdy as ever. Reckless from fatigue, he chopped on more fiercely
than ever. And suddenly, with the grinding noise of breaking wood, the
tree started to fall.

And at that instant Ned was face to face with the exigency of leaping
for his life. The tree did not fall in the direction planned. An instant
before, weary and aching and out of breath, Ned would have believed
himself incapable of swift and powerful motion. As that young spruce
shattered down toward him, like the club of a giant aimed to strike out
his life, a supernatural power seemed to snatch him to one side. Without
realization of effort, the needed muscles contracted with startling
force, and he sprang like a distance jumper to safety.

But he didn’t jump too soon or too far. The branches of the tree lashed
at him as it descended, hurling him headlong in the snow. And thereafter
there were three things to cause him thought.

One of them was the attitude of Bess,—the girl to whom, in weeks past,
he had shown hardly decent courtesy: the same girl whom in childish fury
he had cursed the bitter, eventful night just gone. Above the roar of
the falling tree he heard her quick, half-strangled gasp of horror.

The sound seemed to have the qualities that made toward a perfect
after-image; because in the silence that followed, as he lay in the soft
snow, and the crash of the fallen tree echoed into nothingness, it still
lingered, every tone perfect and clear, in his mind’s ear. There was no
denying its tone of ineffable dismay. Evidently Bess was of a forgiving
disposition; in spite of his offense of the past night she had evidently
no desire to see him crushed into jelly under that giant’s blow. Some
way, it had never occurred to him that the girl would harbor a kind
thought for him again. She had been right and he had been wrong; in an
effort to serve him she had received only his curse, and her present
desperate position, worse perhaps than either his own or Lenore’s, was
due wholly to his own folly. She had not taken part in the orgy of the
night before, so not the least echo of responsibility could be put on
her. Yet she didn’t hate him. She had cried out in real agony when she
thought he was about to die.

He thought upon this matter as he lay in the soft snow whence the
descending branches of the tree had hurled him. He didn’t have many
seconds to think about it. Further eccentricity on the part of Bess
swiftly gave him additional cause for reflection. She had not only cried
out, but she ran to him with the speed of a deer. She was by his side
almost before he was aware of the scope of the accident.

The sobbing cry he had heard could very likely be attributed merely to
that instinctive horror that a sensitive girl would feel at an impending
tragedy, wholly apart from personal interest in the victim; but for a
few seconds Ned was absolutely at a loss to explain that drawn, white,
terrified face above him. In fear for him, Bess was almost at the point
of absolute collapse herself. Nor could mere impersonal horror explain
her flying leap to reach his side,—like a snowbird over the drifts. It
meant more than mere forgiveness for the terrible pass to which he had
brought her. In a few seconds of clear thinking he thought he saw the
truth: that even after all that was past Bess still looked to him for
her hope, that she regarded him still as her defense against Doomsdorf;
and that his death would leave her absolutely bereft. He was a man, and
she still dreamed that he might save her.

The result was a quick sense of shame of his own inadequacy. It is not
good to know oneself a failure in the face of woman’s trust. Yet the
effect of the little scene was largely good, for it served to strengthen
Ned’s resolve to spare the girls in every way he could, and by his own
feigned hope to keep them from despair. Above all, he found an increased
admiration for Bess. Instead of a silly prude, a killjoy for the party,
she had shown herself as a sportswoman to the last fiber. She had been a
friend when she had every right to be an enemy; she had shown spirit and
character when women of lesser metal would have been irremediably
crushed. He was far away now from the old barriers of caste. There was
no reason, on this barren, dreadful isle, why he shouldn’t accept all
the friendship she would give him and give his own in return.

But this subject was only one of three that suddenly wakened him to
increased mental activity. If he were amazed at Bess, he was no less
amazed at himself. He had been tired out, hopeless, out of wind, hardly
able to swing his arms, and yet he had managed to leap out of seeming
certain death. The unmistakable inference was that the body in which his
spirit had dwelt for thirty years had strength and possibilities of
which hitherto he had been unaware. In the second of crisis he had shown
a perfect coördination of brain and muscle, an accuracy of transmission
of the brain-messages that were conducted along his nerves, and a
certain sureness of instinct that he had never dreamed he possessed. It
would have been very easy to have jumped the wrong way. Yet he had
jumped the right way—the only possible way to avoid death—choosing
infallibly the nearest point of safety and hurling himself directly
toward it. Perhaps it would have been better to have stayed where he
was, to have let the tree crush the life out of him and be done with
Hell Isle for good, yet a power beyond himself had carried him out of
danger. The point offered interesting possibilities. Could it be that he
had had the makings of a man in him all these years and had never been
aware of it? Could he dare hope that this side of him might be
developed, in the hard years to come, so that he might be better able to
endure the grinding toil and hardship? The thought wasn’t really
_hope_—he didn’t believe that _hope_ would ever visit him again—it was
only an instant’s rift, dim as twilight, in the gloom of his despair.
The most he could ever hope to do was to fortify himself in order to
take more and more of the girl’s hardship upon his shoulders.

Thirdly he gave some thought to the matter of felling trees. It was a
more complex matter than he had at first supposed. Evidently he had gone
about it in the wrong way. It would pay to have more respect for the
woodsman’s science if he did not wish to come to an early end beneath a
falling tree. He might not be so quick to dodge again.

Bess was staring wide-eyed into his face; and he smiled quietly in
reassurance. “Not hurt at all,” he told her. Quickly he climbed to his
feet. “See that you don’t do the same thing that I did.”

Delighted that he had not been hurt but a little aghast at what heart’s
secret she might have revealed in running to his aid, she started to go
back to her toil. But Ned had already reached some conclusions about
tree-felling. He walked with her to her fallen axe, then inspected the
deep cut she had already made in her tree.

“You’re doing the same thing I did, sure enough,” he observed. “The tree
will fall your way and crush you. Let me think.”

A moment later he took his axe and put in a few more strokes in the same
place. It was the danger point, he thought: a deeper cut might fell the
tree prematurely. Presently he crossed to the opposite side, signaled
Bess out of danger, and began to hack the tree again, making a cut
somewhat above that started on the other side of the trunk. He chopped
sturdily; and in a moment the tree started to fall, safely and in an
opposite direction.

He uttered some small sound of triumph; but it was a real tragedy to
have the tree fall against a near-by tree and lodge. Again he had failed
to exercise proper foresight.

There was nothing to do but climb into the adjoining tree with his axe
and laboriously cut the lodged tree away. In the meantime Bess went to
work on the first tree felled, trimming it of its limbs so to cut it
into lengths.

Ned joined her at the work, but long before the first tree was cut into
fuel, both were at the edge of utter exhaustion. The point of fatigue he
had reached that morning in rowing, when he had rested from the sheer
inability to take another stroke, was already far past. There had been a
point, some time back, when every muscle of his body had throbbed with a
burning ache, when pain crept all over him like a slow fire, but that
too was largely passed now. His brain was dulled; he felt baffled and
estranged as if in a dream. It was more like a nightmare now,—his axe
swinging eternally in his arms, the chips flying, one after another.

He seemed to move so slowly. Hours were passing, one after another, and
still great lengths of the trees remained to cut and split. But they
couldn’t stop and rest. They dared not return to the cabin till the work
was done: the brute that was their master would be glad of an excuse to
lay on the lash. They had been taught what mercy to expect from him.
Here was one reality that their fatigue could not blunt: their cruel
master waiting in the cabin. As the rest of their conscious world faded
and dimmed he was ever more vivid, ever more real. The time soon came
when he filled all the space in their thoughts.

For Ned life was suddenly immensely simplified. All the complexities of
his old life had suddenly ceased to matter: indeed that had perished
from his consciousness. The world was forgotten, he had no energy to
waste in remembering how he had come hence, even who he was. From the
supreme egoist, knowing no world but that of which his own ego was the
orbit, to a faltering child hardly aware of his own identity: thus had
Ned changed in a single night. The individual who had been Ned Cornet
had almost ceased to be; and in his place was a helpless pawn of a cruel
and remorseless fate.

He knew Fate now. Through the mists of this nightmare that was upon him
he saw the Jester with his bells. And as he looked, the sharp, ironic
face grew savage, brutal, half-covered with blond hair; the motley
became a cap of silver fox. But this changed too, as his axe swung in
the air. Once more the face was sharp, but still unutterably terrible to
see; but it was livid now, as if sulphurous flames were playing upon it.
And the foot—he saw the foot plain against the snow. It was
unspeakable, filling him with cold horror all his length. It was some
way cloven and ghastly.

The vision passed, broken and dissolved by the noise of the axe on the
tough wood. He knew Fate now. He had seen him in all his forms. In his
folly he had scorned him, taunted him by his insolence, had dared to
dream that he was greater than Fate, immune from his persecution. If
this torment ended now, he had paid the price. He had atoned for
everything already if he did not lift the axe again. Yet only eternity
lay ahead.

Doomsdorf had seemed almost incredible to him at first. It was as if he
couldn’t possibly be true: a figment of nightmare that would vanish as
soon as he wakened. But he was real enough now. Nothing was left to him
but the knowledge how real he was.

He must not rest, he must not pause till the work was done. The fact
that Bess had fallen, fainting, in the snow, did not affect him; he must
swing his axe and hew the wood. Day was dying. Grayness was creeping in
from the sea. It was like the essence of the sea itself, all gray, gray
like his dreams, gray like the ashes of his hopes. He must finish the
two trees before the darkness came down and kept him from seeing where
to sink the blade. Otherwise it wouldn’t matter—day or night, one year
or another. Time had ceased to count; seemingly it had almost ceased to
move. But the _knout_ would be waiting, hardened and sharp with wire, if
he didn’t do his work. Cold fear laid hold of him again.

He did not know that this cold that was upon him was not only that of
fear. His clothes had been wet through by perspiration and melted snow,
and now the bitter winds off the sea were getting to him. Still he swung
his axe. It was always harder to strike true; the tough lengths took
ever more blows to split. The time soon came when he was no longer aware
of the blows against the wood. The axe swung automatically in his arms;
even sense of effort was gone from him. The only reality that lived in
him now, in that misty twilight, was the knowledge that he must get
through.

It was too dark to see, now, how much of the work remained. The night
was cheating him, after all. He struck once more at the tough length
that lay at his feet—a piece at which he had already struck uncounted
blows. He gave all his waning strength to the effort.

The length split open, but the axe slipped out of his bleeding hands,
falling somewhere in the shadows beyond. He must crawl after it; he
didn’t know how many more lengths there were to split. It was strange
that he couldn’t keep his feet. And how deep and still was the night
that dropped over him!

How long he groped for the axe handle in the snow he never knew. But he
lay still at last. Twilight deepened about him, and the wind wept like a
ghost risen from the sea. The very flame of his life was burning down to
embers.

Thus it came about that Doomsdorf missed the sound of his axe against
the wood. Swinging a lantern, a titantic figure among the snow-laden
trees, he tramped down to investigate. Bess, semi-conscious again,
wakened when the lantern light danced into her eyes. But it took him
some little time to see Ned’s dark form in the snow.

The reason was, it was lying behind a mighty pile of split fuel. The
light showed that only green branches, too small to be of value,
remained of the two spruce. And Doomsdorf grunted, a wondering oath,
deep in his throat.

They had been faithful slaves. Putting his mighty arm around them, each
in turn, he half carried, half dragged them into the warmth of the
cabin.




                                 XVIII


Ned was spared the misery and despair that overswept Doomsdorf’s cabin
the first night of his imprisonment. His master dropped him on the floor
by the stove, and there he lay, seemingly without life, the whole night
through. Even the sound of the wind could not get down into that dim
region of half-coma where he was: he heard neither its weird chant on
the cabin roof, or that eerie, sobbing song that it made to the sea,
seemingly the articulation of the troubled soul of the universe. He did
not see the snow piling deeper on the window ledge; nor sit straining in
the dreadful, gathering silence of the Arctic night. The promised reward
of food was not his because he could not get up to take it.

Yet he was not always deeply insensible. Sometimes he would waken with a
knowledge of wracking pain in his muscles, and sometimes cold would
creep over him. Once he came to himself with the realization that some
one was administering to him. Soft, gentle hands were removing his wet,
outer garments, rolling him gently over in order to get at them,
slipping off his wet shoes and stockings. A great tenderness swept over
him, and he smiled wanly in the lantern light.

Since he was a child, before the world was ever too much with him, no
living human being had seen him smile in quite this way. It was a smile
of utter simplicity, childishly sweet, and yet brave too,—as if he were
trying to hearten some one who was distressed about him. He didn’t feel
the dropping tears that were the answer to that smile, nor feel the
heart’s glow, dear beyond all naming, that it wakened. To the girl who,
scarcely able herself to stand erect, had crept from her warm cot to
serve him, it seemed almost to atone for everything, to compensate for
all she had endured.

“Lenore?” the man whispered feebly.

But there was no spoken answer out of the shadow at the edge of the
lantern light. Perhaps there was the faint sound, like a gasp, almost as
if a terrible truth that was for an instant forgotten had been recalled
again; and perhaps the administering hands halted in their work for one
part of an instant. But at once they continued to ply about him, so
strong and capable, and yet so ineffably gentle. It couldn’t be Lenore,
of course. No wonder,—Lenore had suffered grievously from the events of
the past night. In his half-delirium it occurred to him that it might be
his mother. There had been times in the past, when his mother had come
to his bedside in this same way, with this same gentleness, during his
boyhood sicknesses. But he couldn’t remain awake to think about it. His
wet, clinging clothes had been removed, and blankets, already warmed,
were being wrapped about him. He fell into deep, restful sleep.

But it ended all too soon. A great hand shook him, snatching him into a
sitting position, and a great, bearded face, unspeakably terrible in the
weird, yellow light of the lantern, showed close to his own. “Up and
out,” he was shouting. “It’ll be light enough to work by the time you
have breakfast. Out before I boot you out.”

He meant what he said. Already his cruel boot was drawn back. Ned’s
conscious world returned to him in one mighty sweep, like a cruel, white
light bursting upon tired eyes. The full dreadfulness of his lot,
forgotten in his hours of sleep, was recalled more vividly than ever. It
wasn’t just a dream, to be dispersed on wakening. Even yesterday’s
blessed murk of unreality, dimming everything and dulling all his
perceptions, was gone now that he was refreshed by sleep. His brain
worked clear, and he saw all things as they were. And the black wall of
hopelessness seemed unbroken.

Yet instantly he remembered Lenore. At least he must continue to try to
shelter her—even to make conditions easy as possible for Bess. His love
for the former was the one happiness of his past life that he had left;
and he didn’t forget his obligation to the latter. Bess was already up,
building up the fire at Doomsdorf’s command, but Lenore, with whom she
had slept, still lay sobbing on her cot.

Ned pulled on his clothes, scarcely wondering at the fact that they were
hanging, miraculously dry, back of the stove; and immediately hurried to
Lenore’s side. He forgot his own aching muscles in distress for her; and
his arms went about her, drawing her face to his own.

“Oh, my girl, you mustn’t cry,” he told her, with a world of compassion
in his tone. “I’ll take care of you. Don’t you know I will——?”

But with tragic face Lenore drew back from his arms. “_How_ can you take
care of me?” she asked with immeasurable bitterness. “Can you stand
against that brute——?”

“Hush——!”

“Of course you can’t. You’re even afraid to speak his name.”

“Oh, my dear! Don’t draw away.” The man’s voice was pleading. “I was
just afraid he’d take some awful punishment from you. Of course I’m
helpless now——”

“Then how can you take care of me?” she demanded again, for a moment
forgetting her despair in her anger at him. “Can you make him let me
stay in bed, instead of going out to die in this awful snow?
Death—that’s all there’s here for me. And the quicker it comes the
better.”

She sobbed again, and he tried in vain to comfort her. “We’ll come
through,” he whispered. “I’ll make everything as light as I can——”

But she thrust off his caressing hands. “I don’t want you to touch me,”
she told him tragically. “You can’t make things light for me, in this
living hell. And until you can protect me from that man, and save me,
you can keep your kisses. Oh, why did you ever bring me here?”

“I suppose—because I loved you.”

“You showed it, in taking me into this awful land in an unsafe boat. You
can keep your love. I wish I’d never seen you.”

Just a moment his hands dropped to his sides, and he showed her the
white, drawn visage of utter despair. Yet he must not hold these words
against her. Surely she had cause for them; perhaps she would find him
some tenderness when she saw how hard he had tried to serve her, to ease
her lot. Her last words recalled his own that he had spoken to Bess
aboard the _Charon_: if he had railed as he had to Bess for such little
cause, at least he must not blame Lenore, even considering the fact of
their love, in such a moment as this. He _had_ brought her from her home
and to this pass. Save for him, she would be safe in her native city,
not a slave to an inhuman master on this godless island.

He looked down at her steadfastly. “I can’t keep my love,” he told her
earnestly. “I gave it to you long ago, and it’s yours still. That love
is the one thing I have left to live for here; the one thing that’s left
of my old life. I’m going to continue to watch over you, to help you all
I can, to do as much of your work as possible; to stand between you and
Doomsdorf with my own life. I’ve learned, in this last day, that love is
a spar to cling to when everything else is lost, the most important and
the greatest blessing of all. And I’m not going to stop loving you,
whether you want me to or not. I’m going to fight for you—to the end.”

“And in the end I’ll die,” she commented bitterly.

Doomsdorf reëntered the room then, gazing at them in amused contempt,
and Ned instinctively straightened.

“I trust you’re not hatching mutiny?” the sardonic voice came out.

“Not just now,” Ned answered with some spirit. “There’s not much use to
hatch mutiny, things being as they are.”

“You don’t say! There’s a rifle on the wall——”

“Always empty——”

“But the pistol I carry is always loaded. Why don’t you try to take it
away from me?” Then his voice changed, surly and rumbling again. “But
enough of that nonsense. You know what would happen to you if you tried
anything—I’ve told you that already. There’s work to do to-day. There’s
got to be another cabin—logs cut, built up, roof put on—a place for
the three of you to bunk. That’s the work to-day. The three of you ought
to get a big piece of it done to-day——”

“Miss Hardenworth? Is she well enough? Couldn’t she help your wife with
the housework to-day?”

“It will take all three of you to do the work I’ll lay out. Lenore can
learn to do her stint with the others. And hereafter, when you address
me, call me ‘Sir.’ A mere matter of employer’s discipline——”

Because he knew his master, Ned nodded in agreement. “Yes, sir,” he
returned simply. “One thing else. I can’t be expected to do real work in
this kind of clothes. You’ve laid out furs and skins for the girls; I
want to get something too that will keep me warm and dry.”

“I’m not responsible for the clothes you brought with you. You should
have had greater respect for the North. Besides, it gives me pleasure, I
assure you, to see you dressed as you are. It tones up the whole party.”

Stripped of his late conceit that might otherwise have concealed it from
him, Ned caught every vestige of the man’s irony. “Do I get the warm
clothes?” he demanded bluntly.

“When you earn them,” was the answer. “In a few days more you’ll be
running out your traps, and everything you catch, at first, you can
keep. You’ve got to prove yourself smarter than the animals before you
get the right to wear their skins.”




                                  XIX


The previous day and night had been full of revelation for Ned; and as
he started forth from the cabin with his axe, there occurred a little
scene that tended even further to illustrate his changing viewpoint.
Gloating with triumph at the younger man’s subjection, Doomsdorf called
sardonically from the cabin doorway.

“I trust I can’t help you in any way?” he asked.

Discerning the premeditated insult in his tone, Ned whirled to face him.
Then for an instant he stood shivering with wrath.

“Yes,” he answered. His promise to say “sir” was forgotten in his rage.
“You can at least treat me with the respect deserved by a good workman.”

The words came naturally to his lips. It was as if they reflected a
thought that he had considered long, instead of the inspiration of the
moment. The truth was that, four days before, he had never known that
good work and good workmen were entitled to respect. The world’s labor
had seemed apart from his life; the subject a stupid one not worth his
thought and interest. In one terrible day Ned had found out what the
word work meant. He had learned what a reality it was. All at once he
saw in it a possible answer to life itself.

He stood aghast at the magnitude of his discovery. Why, _work_ was the
beginning and the end of everything. Reaching back to the beginnings of
creation, extending clear until the last soul in heaven had passed on
and through the training camp of the last hereafter, it was the thing
that counted most. He had never thought about it in particular before.
Strangely it had not even occurred to him that the civilization that he
worshipped, all the luxury and richness that he loved, had been possible
only through the toil of human hands and brains.

Suddenly he knew that his father had been right and he had been wrong.
The life of the humblest worker had been worth more than his. It would
have been better for him to die, that long-ago night of the automobile
accident, than for Bess to lose one of her working hands! He had been
contemptuous of work and workers, but had not his own assumption of
superiority been chiefly based upon the achievements of working men who
had gone before him? What could he claim for himself that could even put
him on the par with the great mass of manhood, much less make him their
superior? He had played when there was work to do, shirked his load when
the backs of better men were bent.

In his heart Ned had been a little ashamed of his father. He had felt it
would have been more to his credit if the wealth that sustained him
should have originated several generations farther back, instead of by
the sole efforts of Godfrey Cornet. It had made Ned himself feel almost
like one of the _nouveaux riches_. The more the blood of success was
thinned, it seemed, the bluer it was; and it wasn’t easy to confess,
especially to certain young English bloods, that the name emblazoned in
electric lights across a great house of trade was, but one generation
removed, his own. He had particularly deplored his father’s tendency to
mention, in any company, his own early struggles, the poverty from which
he sprung. But how true and genuine was the shame he felt now at that
false shame! In this moment of revelation he saw his father plainly and
knew him for the sturdy old warrior, the man of prowess, most of all for
the sterling aristocrat that he was. He was a good workman: need
anything more be said?

Ever since his college days he had snubbed him, patronized him,
disregarded his teachings whereby he might have come into his own
manhood. He had never respected good work or good workmen; and now it
was fitting retribution that he should spend his natural life in the
most grinding, bitter work. Even now he was making amends for his folly
at the hands of the most cruel, ironical fate that could befall him. His
axe was in his arms; his savage taskmaster faced him from the cabin
doorway.

All these thoughts coursed through Ned’s keenly wakened brain in an
instant. They seemed as instantaneous as the flood of wrath that had
swept through him at Doomsdorf’s irony. And now would he suffer some
unspeakable punishment for insolence to his master?

But little, amused lines came about Doomsdorf’s fierce eyes. “A good
workman, eh?” he echoed. “Yes, you did work fair enough yesterday. Wait
just a minute.”

He turned into his door, in a moment reappearing with a saw and several
iron wedges from among his supplies of tools. He put them in Ned’s
hands, and the latter received them with a delight never experienced at
any favor of fortune in the past. The great penalty of such a life as he
had lived, wherein almost every material thing came into his hands at
his wish, is that it costs the power to feel delight, the simple joy and
gratitude of children; but evidently Ned was learning how again. Just a
saw of steel and wedges of iron for splitting! Workmen’s tools that he
once regarded with contempt. But oh, they would save him many a weary
hour of labor. The saw could cut through the fallen logs in half the
time he could hack them with his axe; they could be split in half the
number of strokes with the aid of the wedges.

He went to his toil; and he was a little amazed at how quickly he felled
the first of the tall spruce. Seemingly his yesterday’s toil had
bestowed upon him certain valuable knowledge. His strokes seemed to be
more true: they even had a greater degree of power for the same amount
of effort. There were certain angles by which he could get the best
results: he would learn them, too—sooner or later.

As he worked, the stiffness and pain that yesterday’s toil had left in
his muscles seemed to pass away. The axe swung easily in his arms. When
the first tree was chopped down, he set Lenore and Bess at trimming off
the branches and sawing twelve-foot logs for the hut.

It came about that he chopped down several trees before the two girls
had finished cutting and trimming the first. Seemingly Lenore had not
yet recovered from the trying experience of two nights before, for she
wholly failed to do any part of the work. What was done at this end of
the labor Bess did alone. The unmistakable inference was that Ned would
have to double his own speed in order to avoid the lash at night.

Yet he felt no resentment. Lenore was even more inured to luxury and
ease than he himself: evidently the grinding physical labor was
infinitely beyond her. Bess, however, still toiled bravely with axe and
saw.

The day turned out to be not greatly different from the one preceding.
Again Ned worked to absolute exhaustion: the only apparent change seemed
to be that he accomplished a greater amount of work before he finally
fell insensible in the snow. This was the twilight hour, and prone in
the snow he lay like a warrior among his fallen. About him was a ring of
trees chopped down and, with Bess’s aid, trimmed of their limbs, notched
and sawed into lengths for the cabin. They had only to be lifted, one
upon another, to form the cabin walls.

Bess had collapsed too as the twilight hour drew on; and Lenore alone
was able to walk unaided to the shack. Again Ned lay insensible on the
floor beside the stove, but to-night, long past the supper hour, he was
able to remove his own wet clothes and to devour some of the unsavory
left-overs from the meal. Again the night fell over Hell Island,
tremulous and throbbing with all the mighty passions of the wild, and
again dawn came with its gray light on the snow. And like some
insensible, mechanical thing Ned rose to toil again.

The third day was given to lifting the great logs, one upon another, for
the walls of the cabin. It was, in reality, the hardest work he had yet
done, as to shift each log into place took every ounce of lifting power
the man had. The girls could help him but little here, for both of them
together did not seem to be able to handle an end of the great logs. He
found he had to lift each end in turn.

Yet he was able to drag to the cabin to-night, and torpid with fatigue,
take his place at the crude supper table. He was hardly conscious that
he was eating—lifting the food to his mouth as mechanically as he had
lifted the great logs into place toward the end of the day—and the
faces opposite him were as those seen in a dream, never in the full
light, vague and dim like ghosts. Sometimes he tried to smile at one of
them—as if by a long-remembered instinct—and sometimes one of the
assembled group—a different face than that to which he addressed his
smiles—seemed to be smiling at him, deep-blue eyes curiously lustrous
as if with tears. Then there was a brown, inscrutable face that just now
and then appeared out of the shadow, and a stealing, slipping, silent
some one that belonged to it,—some one that now and then brought food
and put it on the table.

But none of these faces went home to him like the great, hairy visage of
the demon that sat opposite. Ned eyed him covertly throughout the meal,
wondering every time he moved in his chair if he were getting up to
procure his whip, flinching every time the great arm moved swiftly
across the table. He didn’t remember getting up from his chair,
stripping off part of his wet clothes and falling among the blankets
that Doomsdorf had left for his use on the floor. Almost at once it was
dawn again.

A new, more vivid consciousness was upon him when he wakened. The
stabbing ache in his legs and arms was mostly worn off now; but there
was a sharp pain in the small of his back that at first seemed
absolutely unendurable. But it wailed, too, as he went to the work of
finishing the cabin, laying the roof and hanging the crude door. To-day
he was conscious of greater physical power, of more prolonged effort
without fatigue. The whole island world was more vivid and clear than
ever before.

It was with a certain vague quality of pleasure that he regarded this
cabin he had built with his own hands, finished now, except for the
chinking of the logs. It was the first creative work he had ever done,
and he looked at it and saw that it was good.

He could forget, now, the dreadful, heart-breaking toil he had put into
it. It had almost killed him, but he was no worse for it now. Indeed his
arms were somewhat stronger, he was even better equipped to meet the
next, greater task that Doomsdorf appointed him. It was curious that,
slave of a cruel taskmaster that he was, he experienced a dim echo of
something that was akin to a new self-respect.

These logs, laid one upon another, were visible proof that so far he had
stood the gaff! He had done killing work, yet he still lived to do more.
The fear that his spirit would fly from his exhausted frame at the end
of one of these bitter days could soon be discarded; seemingly he could
toil from dawn to dark, eat his fill, and in a night’s sleep build
himself up for another day of toil. More and more of Lenore’s work could
be laid on his ever-strengthening shoulders.

The cabin itself was roomy and snug: here he could find seclusion from
Doomsdorf and his imperturbable squaw. It was blessing enough just to be
out of his sight in the long winter nights after supper, no more to
watch every movement of his arm! Besides, he was down to realities, and
it was a mighty satisfaction to know that here was a lasting shelter
from the storm and the cold. The Arctic winter was falling swiftly, and
here was his defense.

Doomsdorf gave him a rusted, discarded stove; and it was almost joy to
see it standing in its place! With Doomsdorf’s permission, he devoted a
full day to procuring fuel for it.

Four days more the three of them worked at the task of laying in
fuel,—Ned doing the lion’s share of the work, of course; Bess toiling
to the limit of her fine, young strength; Lenore making the merest
pretense. The result of the latter’s idleness was, of course, that her
two companions had to divide her share of work between them. Every day
Doomsdorf allotted them certain duties,—so many trees to cut up into
stove wood, or some other, no less arduous duty; and he seemed to have
an uncanny ability to drive them just short of actual, complete
exhaustion. The fact that Lenore shirked her share meant that at the
close of every day, in order to complete the allotment provided, Ned and
Bess had to drive themselves beyond that point, practically to the
border of utter collapse. The short rests that they might otherwise have
allowed themselves, those blessed moments of relaxation wherein the
run-down batteries of their energy were recharged, they dared not take.
The result was hour upon hour of such sustained toil that it seemed
impossible that human frames could bear the strain.

But the seemingly impossible came to pass, and every day found them
stronger for their tasks. Evidently the human body has incredible powers
of adaptation to new environment. While, at the end of the day’s toil,
it seemed beyond all possibility that they could ever stagger back to
the cabins, when the only wish they had left was to lie still in the
snow and let the bitter cold take its toll, yet a few minutes’
relaxation in the warmth of the stove always heartened them and gave
them strength to take their places at the supper table. As the days
passed, it was no longer necessary to seek their cots the instant they
left the table. They took to lingering a little while in the crude
chairs about the stove, mostly sitting silent in absolute dejection, but
sometimes exchanging a few, primitive thoughts. Very little mattered to
them now but food and shelter and sleep. They were down to the absolute
essentials. As the days passed, however, they began to take time for
primitive, personal toilets. They took to washing their faces and hands:
Bess and Lenore even combed out the snarls in their hair with
Doomsdorf’s broken comb. Then the two girls dressed their tresses into
two heavy braids, to be worn Indian fashion in front of the shoulders,
the method that required the least degree of care.

They consumed great quantities of food,—particularly Bess and Ned. What
would have been a full day’s rations in their own home, enough
concentrated nutriment to put them in bed with indigestion, did not
suffice for a single meal. Never before had Ned really known the love of
food—red meat, the fair, good bread, rice grains white and fluffed—but
it came upon him quickly enough now. Before, his choice had run toward
women’s foods, exotic sauces, salads and ices and relishes, foods that
tickled the palate but gave no joy to the inner man; but now he wanted
inner fuel, plenty of it and unadorned. He cared little how it was
cooked, whether or not it had seasoning. The sweet taste of meat was
loved by him now,—great, thick, half-done steaks of nutritious caribou.
He didn’t miss butter on his bread. He would eat till he could hold no
more, hardly chewing his food; and as he lay asleep, the inner agents of
his body would draw from it the stuff of life with which was built up
his shattered tissue.

The physical change was manifest in a few days. His spare flesh went
away as if in a single night, and then hard muscle began to take its
place. His flesh looked firmer; sagging fat was gone from his face; his
skin—pasty white before—was brownish-red from the scourge of the wind.
Now the manly hair began to mat about his lips and jowls. A hardening
manifested itself in his speech. The few primitive sentences, spoken in
the tired-out sessions about the stove, became him more than hours of
his former chatter. He no longer gabbled lightly like a girl, his speech
full of quirks and affectations: he spoke in blunt, short sentences,
with blunt, short words, and his meaning was immediately plain.

He was standing the gaff! Every day found him with greater physical
mastery. Yet it was not altogether innate strength, or simple chemical
energy derived from the enormous quantities of food he consumed that
kept him on his feet. More than once, as the bitter night came down to
find him toiling, a strange, wan figure in the snow, he was all but
ready to give up. The physical side of him was conquered; the primitive
desire for life no longer manifested itself in his spirit. Just to fall
in the snow, to let his tired legs wilt under him, perhaps to creep a
little way back into the thicket where Doomsdorf’s lantern would fail to
reveal him: then he would be free of this dreadful training camp for
good! The sleep that would come upon him then would not be cursed with
the knowledge of a coming dawn, as gray and hopeless as the twilight
just departed! He would be safe then from Doomsdorf’s lash! The Arctic
wind would convey his wretched spirit far beyond the madman’s power to
follow; his aching, bleeding hands would heal in some Gentleness far
away. The fear of which psychologists speak, that of the leap into
darkness that is glibly said to be the last conscious instinct, was
absolutely absent. Death was a word to conjure with no more. It was no
harder for him to think of than the fall of a tree beneath his axe. The
terror that surrounded it was ever only a specter: and in the clear
vision that came to him in those terrible twilights, only realities were
worth the effort of thought. The physical torture of staggering through
the snow back to the cabin was so infinitely worse than any conception
that he could retain of death; the life that stretched before him was so
absolutely bereft of hope that the elemental dread of what lay beyond
would not have restrained him an instant. The thing went deeper than
that. The reason why he did not yield to the almost irresistible desire
to lie down and let the North take its toll had its fount in the secret
places of the man’s soul. He was beyond the reach of fear for himself,
but his love for Lenore mastered him yet.

He must not leave Lenore. He had given his love to her, and this love
was a thousand times more compelling than any fear could possibly be. He
must stand up, he must go on through,—for the sake of this dream that
counted more than life. Was not her happiness in his whole charge? Did
he not constitute her one defense against Doomsdorf’s persecutions? He
must live on, carrying as many of her burdens as he could.

Bess too knew an urge beyond herself; but she would not have found it so
easy to get it into concrete thought. Perhaps women care less about
_cause_ and more about _effect_, willing to follow impulse and scarcely
feeling the need of justifying every action with a laborious thought
process. In her own heart Bess knew she must not falter, she must not
give up. Whence that knowledge came she had no idea, and she didn’t
care. There was need of her too on this wretched, windy island. She had
her place here; certain obligations had been imposed upon her. She
didn’t try to puzzle out what these obligations were. Perhaps she was
afraid of the heart’s secret that might be revealed to her. Her instinct
was simply to stay and play her part.

The only one of the three to whom the fear of death was still a reality
was Lenore, simply because the full horror of the island had not yet
gone home to her. She thought she knew the worst; in reality, she had no
inkling of it. So far Ned had succeeded in sheltering her from it.

How long he could continue to do so, in any perceptible degree, he did
not know. In the first place he had the girl herself to contend with:
now that she was recovering, Lenore would likely enough insist on doing
her own share of the work. Besides, the problem was greatly complicated,
now that the winter’s supply of fuel was laid by, and the real season’s
activities about to begin. Could he spare her such bitter, terrible
hours that he and Bess must endure, following the trap lines over the
wild? Must she be cursed and lashed and tortured by the cold, know the
torment of worn-out muscles, only to be rewarded by the knout for
failing to bring in a sufficient catch of furs? Doomsdorf would be more
exacting, rather than more lenient, in these months to come. He had been
willing enough for Ned to do Lenore’s share in the work of laying in
winter fuel; but the size of the fur catch was a matter of greater
moment to him. It was unthinkable that Ned could handle to the best
advantage both Lenore’s trap line and his own. Work as hard as he might,
long into the night hours, one man couldn’t possibly return two men’s
catch. For Lenore’s sake Ned regarded the beginning of the trapping
season with dread, although for himself he had cause to anticipate it.

He hadn’t forgotten that the first furs taken would be his, and he
needed them sorely enough. Indeed, the matter was beginning to be of
paramount importance to his health and life. The clothes he had worn
from the _Charon_, flimsy as the life of which they had been a part,
were rapidly wearing out. They didn’t turn the rain, and they were not
nearly warm enough for the bitter weather to come. Ned did not forget
that the month was only October; that according to Doomsdorf, real
winter would not break over them for a few weeks, at least. The snow
flurries, the frost, the bitter nights were just the merest hint of what
was to come, he said: the wail of the biting wind at night just the
far-off trumpet call of an advancing enemy. A man could go thinly garbed
on such days as this and, except for an aching chill throughout his
frame, suffer no disagreeable consequences; but such wouldn’t hold true
in the forty-below-zero weather that impended. Only fur and the thickest
woolens could avail in the months to come.

Besides, the trapper’s life offered more of interest than that of the
woodchopper. It would carry him through those gray valleys and over the
rugged hills that now, when he had time to look about him, seemed to
invite his exploration. Best of all, the work would largely carry him
away from Doomsdorf’s presence. If only he could spare Lenore, not only
by permission of Doomsdorf but by the consent of the girl herself.

The matter came up that night while Doomsdorf was sorting out some of
his smaller traps. “We’ll light out to-morrow,” he said. “The sooner we
get these things set, the better. The water furs seem to be absolutely
prime already—I’m sure the land furs must be too. I wonder if you three
have any idea what you’re going to do.”

Ned saw an opportunity to speak for Lenore, but Doomsdorf’s speech ran
on before he could take it. “I don’t suppose you do,” he said. “Of
course, I’m going to show you—nevertheless it would help some if any of
you knew an otter from a lynx. You may not know it, but this island
contains a good many square miles—to trap it systematically requires
many lines and hundreds of traps. I’ve already laid out three
lines—sometimes I’ve trapped one, and sometimes another. Two of ’em are
four-day lines, and one a five-day line—that is, they take four and
five days respectively to get around. On each one I’ve built series of
huts, or shacks, all of them with a stove and supplies of food, and you
put up in them for the night. They are a day’s march apart, giving you
time to pick up your skins, reset, and so on, as you go. Believe me, you
won’t have any time to loaf. After you get into the cabins at night, eat
your supper and get some of the frost out of your blood, you’ll enjoy
thawing out and skinning the animals you’ve caught in your trap. If it’s
a big animal, dead and frozen and too big to carry, you’ll have to make
a fire out in the snow and thaw him out there. So you see you’ll have
varied experience.

“You’ll be away from me and this cabin for days at a time, but if you’re
figuring on any advantage from that, just put it out of your mind, the
sooner the better. Maybe you think you can sneak enough time to make a
boat, smuggle it down to the water, and cast off. Let me assure you
you’ll have no time to sneak. Besides, this patch of timber right here
is nearer to the shore than any other patch on the island—you’d simply
have no chance to get away with it. If you think you could cross the ice
to Tzar Island, after winter breaks, you’re barking up the wrong tree
too. In my daily hunts I’ll manage to get up on one of these ridges, and
I can keep a pretty fair watch of you over these treeless hills. You’d
never get more than a few hours’ start; and they wouldn’t help you at
all on the ice fields! I trust there’s no need to mention penalties. You
already know about that.

“And maybe you are thinking it will be easy enough to slack—not trying
to catch much, so you won’t have many skins to flesh and stretch—maybe
hiding what you do catch. I’ll just say this. I have a pretty good idea
how this country runs—just how many skins each line yields with fair
trapping. I’m going to increase that estimate by twenty per cent.—and
that’s to be your minimum. I won’t say what that amount is now. But if
at the end of the season you’re short—by one skin—look out! It means
that you’ll have to be about twenty per cent. smarter and more
industrious than the average trapper.”

“But man——” Ned protested. “We’re not experienced——”

“You’ll learn quick enough. Aren’t you the dominant race? And I warn you
again—you’d better drop bitter tears every time you find where a
wolverine has been along and eaten an ermine out of a trap!”

The man was not jesting. They knew him well enough by now; the piercing
glitter of his keen, gray eyes, the odd fixation about his pupils that
was always manifest when he was most in earnest, was plainly in evidence
now. Thus it was with the most profound amazement that Lenore’s
companions suddenly saw her beautiful mouth curling in a smile.

For themselves they were lost in despair. All too plainly Doomsdorf had
merely hinted at the cruel rigors of the trapper’s trail. Yet Lenore was
smiling.

Then Ned saw, with a queer little tug of his heart, that the smile was
not meant for him. It was not a gracious signal of her love, meant to
encourage him in his despair. A woman herself, and understanding women,
Bess never dreamed for an instant that it was; she knew only too well
the thought and the aim behind that sudden, dazzling sunshine in
Lenore’s face. Yet her only reaction, beyond amazement, was a swift
surge of tenderness and pity for Ned.

Lenore was smiling at Doomsdorf. She was looking straight into his gray
eyes. Her cheeks were flushed a lovely pink; her eyes were smiling too;
she presented an image of ineffable beauty. That was what hurt
worse,—the fact that her beauty had never seemed more genuine than now.
It was the mask of falsehood, yet her smile was as radiant as any he
remembered of their most holy moments together. He had not dreamed that
any emotion except her love for him could call such a light into her
face. It had been, to him, the lasting proof that she was his, the very
symbol of the ideal of integrity and genuineness that he made of her;
yet now he saw her use it as a wile to win some favor from this beast in
human form. The very sacredness of their relations was somehow
questioned. The tower of his faith seemed to be tottering.

Yet he forced away the dismay that seemed to cloud him, then began to
watch with keenest interest. Not even this man of iron could wholly
resist her smile. In a single instant she had captured his mood: he was
not so fixed in his intent.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much good to you, as a trapper,” she began
quietly, her voice of cloying sweetness. “I’m afraid I’d only get in the
way and scare the little—ermines, you call them?—out of the country.
Mr. Doomsdorf, do you know how well I can keep house?”

Doomsdorf looked at her, grinning in contempt, yet not wholly
unresponsive to the call she was making to him. “Can’t say as I do——”

“You don’t know how I can cook, either,—make salads, and desserts, and
things like that. You’d better let me stay here and help your wife with
the housework. I’d really be of some value, then.”

For an instant the wind seemed to pause on the roof; and all of them sat
in startled silence. The only movement was that of Sindy, imperturbable
as ever, rocking back and forth in her chair; and the sound she made had
a slow and regular cadence, as of a great clock. Ned sat staring at his
hands; Bess’s gaze rested first on him, then on the two principals of
the little drama who still sat smiling as if in understanding. Ned
needn’t have worried about Lenore insisting on doing her share of the
rigorous, outdoor work. The difficulty that he had anticipated in
persuading her to let him lighten her burdens had not been serious,
after all.

And really there was little cause for his own depression. Lenore meant
exactly what she said. After all, this was his own plan,—that she
should remain and help Sindy with the housework and the caring for such
skins as Doomsdorf himself took, thus avoiding the heart-breaking
hardship of the trap lines. Nor could he hold against her the lie in her
smile. It was her whole right to use it in her own behalf: to use any
wile she could to gain her ends. He was a fool to suppose that there was
a moral issue involved! The old moral teaching against compromise with
the devil didn’t hold here. Perhaps Bess and himself could get farther,
make their toil easier, if they also fawned on Doomsdorf. The fact that
he would sooner wear his hands to the bone or die beneath the lash did
not imply moral superiority. It simply showed that he was of different
make-up. The same with Bess; she was simply of a different breed.

And the wile was not without results. The usual scoffing refusal did not
come at once to the bearded lips. Perhaps her master was flattered that
Lenore was so tamed, perhaps he wished to reward her attitude of
friendliness so that Bess might take example. Lenore had never moved him
with the same fire as Bess: perhaps by showing leniency now, the latter
could be brought to this same pass! Besides, Lenore was the weakest of
the three and he had thus less desire to break what little spirit she
had, rather preferring, by complying with her request, to heap fresh
burdens of toil and hardship on these two proud-spirited ones before
him.

“You want to stay here with Sindy and me, eh?” he commented at last.
“Well, Sindy might like some help. I’m willing—but I’ll leave it up to
your two friends. They’ll have to work all the harder to make up for
it—especially Bess. I was going to have you two girls work together.”

He watched Ned’s face with keenest interest. The younger man flushed in
his earnestness, his adoring gaze on Lenore.

“I’m only too glad to make it easier for you,” he said, his crooked,
boyish smile dim at his lips. “That’s the one thing that matters—to
help you all I can. In this case, though—Bess is the one to say.”

Lenore perceptibly stiffened as Ned’s gaze turned to Bess. It didn’t
flatter her that her lover should even take Bess into his consideration.
She had grown accustomed to receiving his every duty.

But it came about that Lenore and her little jealousies did not even
find a place in Bess’s thought. She returned Ned’s gaze, her eyes
lustrous as if with tears, and she understood wholly the prayer that was
in his heart.

“Of course she may stay here,” she said. “We’ll make out somehow.”




                                   XX


Doomsdorf’s trap lines lay in great circles, coinciding at various
points in order to reduce the number of cabins needed to work them, and
ultimately swinging back to the home cabin in the thicket beside the
sea. They were very simple to follow, he explained—Bess’s line running
up the river to the mouth of a great tributary that flowed from the
south, the camp being known as the Eagle Creek cabin; thence up the
tributary to its forks, known as the Forks cabin, up the left-hand forks
to its mother springs, the Spring cabin, and then straight down the
ridge to the home cabin, four days’ journey in all. She couldn’t miss
any of the three huts, Doomsdorf explained, as all of them were located
in the open barrens, on the banks of the creeks she was told to follow.
Doomsdorf drew for her guidance a simple map that would remove all
danger of going astray.

Ned’s route was slightly more complicated, yet nothing that the veriest
greenhorn could not follow. It took him first to what Doomsdorf called
his Twelve-Mile cabin at the very head of the little stream on which the
home cabin was built, thence following a well-blazed trail along an
extensive though narrow strip of timber, a favorable country for marten,
to the top of the ridge, around the glacier, and down to the hut that
Bess occupied the third night out, known as the Forks cabin; thence up
the right-hand fork to its mother spring, the Thirty-Mile cabin; over
the ridge and down to the sea, the Sea cabin; and thence, trapping
salt-water mink and otter, to the home cabin, five days’ journey in all.
“If you use your head, you can’t get off,” Doomsdorf explained. “If you
don’t, no one will ever take the trouble to look you up.”

As if smiling upon their venture, nature gave them a clear dawn in which
to start forth. The squaw and Bess started up from the river mouth
together, the former in the rôle of teacher; Ned and Doomsdorf followed
up the little, silvery creek that rippled past the home cabin. And for
the first time since his landing on Hell Island Ned had a chance really
to look about him.

It was the first time he had been out of sight of the cabin and thus
away from the intangible change that the mere presence of man works on
the wild. All at once, as the last vestige of the white roof was
concealed behind the snow-laden branches of the spruce, he found himself
in the very heart of the wilderness. It was as if he had passed from one
world to another.

Even the air was different. It stirred and moved and throbbed in a way
he couldn’t name, as if mighty, unnamable passions seemed about to be
wakened. He caught a sense of a resistless power that could crush him to
earth at a whim, of vast forces moving by fixed, invisible law; he felt
that secret, wondering awe which to the woodsman means the nearing
presence of the Red Gods. Only the mighty powers of nature were in
dominion here: the lashing snows of winter, the bitter cold, the wind
that wept by unheard by human ears. Ned was closer to the heart of
nature, and thus to the heart of life, than he had ever been before.

He had no words to express the mood that came upon him. The wind that
crept through the stunted spruce trees expressed it better than he; it
was in the song that the wolf pack rings to sing on winter nights; in
the weird complaint that the wild geese called down from the clouds.
What little sound there was, murmuring branches and fallen aspen leaves,
fresh on the snow, rustling faintly together and serving only to
accentuate the depth of the silence, had this same, eerie
motif,—nothing that could be put in words, nothing that ever came
vividly into his consciousness, but which laid bare the very soul and
spirit of life. Cold and hunger, an ancient persecution whose reason no
man knew, a never-to-be-forgotten fear of a just but ruthless God!

This was the land untamed. There was not, at first, a blaze on a tree,
the least sign that human beings had ever passed that way before. It was
the land-that-used-to-be, unchanged seemingly since the dim beginnings
of the world. Blessed by the climbing sun of spring, warm and gentle in
the summer, moaning its old complaint when the fall winds swept through
the branches, lashed by the storms of winter,—thus it had lain a
thousand-thousand years. And now, a little way up the stream, there was
more tangible sign that this was the kingdom of the wild. Instead of an
unpeopled desert, it was shown to be teeming with life. They began to
see the trails of the forest creatures in the snow.

Sometimes they paused before the delicate imprint of a fox, like a snow
etching made by a master hand; sometimes the double track of marten and
his lesser cousin, the ermine; once the great cowlike mark of a caribou,
seeking the pale-green reindeer moss that hung like tresses from the
trees. Seemingly every kind of northern animal of which Ned had ever
heard had immediately preceded them through the glade.

“Where there’s timber, there’s marten,” Doomsdorf explained. “Marten, I
suppose you know, are the most valuable furs we take, outside of silver
and blue fox—and one of the easiest taken. The marten’s such a ruthless
hunter that he doesn’t look what he’s running into. You won’t find them
far on the open barrens, but they are in hundreds in the long, narrow
timber belt between Twelve-Mile cabin, to-night’s stop, and Forks cabin
that you’ll hit to-morrow night. And we’ll make our first set right
here.”

He took one of the traps from Ned’s shoulder and showed him how to make
the set. The bait was placed a few feet above the trap, in this case, on
the trunk of the tree, so that to reach it the marten would almost
certainly spring the trap.

“Put ’em fairly thick through here,” Doomsdorf advised. “Lay more
emphasis on fox and lynx in the open barrens.” He stepped back from the
set. “Do you think you can find this place again?”

Ned looked it over with minute care, marking it in relation to certain
dead trees that lay across the creek. “I think I can.”

“That’s the very essential of trapping, naturally. It will come to be
second nature after a while—without marking it by trees or anything.
You’ll have better than a hundred traps; and it isn’t as easy as it
looks. Remember, I won’t be with you the next time you pass this way.”

They tramped on, and Doomsdorf pointed out where a wolverine had come
down the glade and crossed the creek. “You’ll curse at the very name of
wolverine before the season’s done,” Doomsdorf told him, as Ned paused
to study the imprint. “He’s the demon of the snow so far as the trapper
is concerned. Nevertheless, you’ll want to take a skin for your own use.
It’s the one fur for the hood of a parka—you can wear it over your
mouth in fifty below and it doesn’t get covered with ice from your
breath. But you’ll have to be a smarter man than I think you are to
catch him.”

A few minutes later the timber became to be more noticeably stunted, the
trees farther and farther apart, and soon they were in the open. These
were the barren lands, deep moss or rich marsh grass already heavy with
snow; and the only trees remaining were a few willow, quivering aspen,
and birch along the bank of the creek. From time to time the two men
stopped to place their traps, Doomsdorf explaining the various “sets”,
how to conceal the cold steel of which most all creatures have such an
instinctive fear, and how to eliminate the human smell that might
otherwise keep the more cunning of the fur-bearers from the bait. Once
they paused before a great, cruel instrument of iron, seemingly much too
large to be a trap, that had been left at the set from the previous
trapping season.

“Lift it,” Doomsdorf advised. Ned bent, finding the iron itself heavy in
his arms.

“No creature’s going to walk away with that on his leg, is he?”

“No? That’s all you know about it. I’ll admit that you wouldn’t care to
walk with it very far. You would see why I didn’t take it into shelter
at the close of the season—although of course it’s easy enough to haul
on a sled. You notice it’s attached to a chain, and that chain to a
toggle.”

“Toggle” was a word that Ned had never heard before, but which plainly
represented a great log, or drag, to which the trap chain was attached.
Ned gazed, and another foolish question came to his lips. “You use that
because there isn’t a tree handy?” he asked.

“If there was a tree handy, I’d use it just the same,” Doomsdorf
explained. “There’s no holding the animal I catch in that trap by
chaining him fast. No matter how big the tree or how stout the chain,
he’d break loose—or else he’d pull out his foot. You’ve got to give him
play. That’s why we use a toggle.”

“You don’t mean he drags that great thing——”

“No, only about halfway across the island before I can possibly overtake
him and shoot him, bellowing like a devil every step of the way.
Moreover, the toggle has to be chained near the end, rather than in the
middle—otherwise he’ll catch the ends back of a couple of tree trunks
and break loose. Now set the trap.”

It took nearly all of Ned’s strength to push down the powerful springs
and set the great jaws. The fact that he didn’t know just how to go
about it impeded him too. And when he stood erect again, he found
Doomsdorf watching him with keenest interest.

“I didn’t think you were man enough to do it,” he commented. “You’ll say
that’s quite a trap, won’t you?”

“It’s quite a trap,” Ned agreed shortly. “What kind of an elephant do
you take in it?”

“No kind of an elephant, but one of the grandest mammals that ever
lived, at that. I don’t trap them much, because I hardly get enough for
their skins to pay for handling them—you can guess they’re immensely
bulky. There’s a fair price for their skulls, too, but the skull alone
is a fair load for a weak back. Last year I needed a few hides for the
cabin. Did you ever hear of the Kodiac bear?”

“Good Lord! One bear can’t move all that.”

Doomsdorf stood erect, and his eyes gleamed. Evidently the great, savage
monarch of the islands of which he spoke was some way close to his own
savage heart. “He can move your heart into your throat just to look at
him!” he said. “One of the grandest mammals that ever lived—the great,
brown bear of the islands. Of course, you ought to know he’s by all odds
the biggest bear on earth, he and the polar bear just north of here—and
the biggest carnivorous animal on earth, for that matter. Your lions,
your tigers wouldn’t last a minute under those great hooks of his. He’d
tear your whole chest out in one swipe. This seems to be about the
northern limit of his range—the big brownies go all the way from
Admiralty Islands, in the south, clear up to here, with very little
variation as to size and color. There are not many on the Skopins—but
going around with just an axe and a hunting knife for weapons, you’ll be
glad there aren’t any more. At this point their range begins to
coincide, to some slight degree, with the polar bear—but of course just
a stray gets down below the Arctic circle. You’ve got to have a whole
caribou carcass to interest the old devil in the way of bait. And now
I’ll show you how to outfox him.”

He cut a slender whip, about half an inch in diameter, from a near-by
willow, and thrusting both ends into the ground in front of the trap,
made an arch. “When the old boy comes along, he’ll lift his front foot
right over that arch, to avoid stepping on anything that looks so
unstable, and then straight down into the trap,” Doomsdorf explained.
“If it was heavy wood, he’d rest his foot on it and miss the trap.”

A few minutes later they came to what seemed to Ned a new and
interesting geological formation. It seemed to be a noisy waterfall of
three or four feet, behind which the creek was dammed to the proportions
of a small, narrow lake. Yet the dam itself didn’t appear to be a
natural formation of rock. It looked more like driftwood, but it was
inconceivable that mere drift could be piled in this ordered way.

Keenly interested, he bent to examine it. Farther up the creek some
heavy body struck the water with a mighty splash. It was too swift,
however, for him to see what it was. There were no power plants or mill
wheels here, and thus it was difficult to believe that human hands had
gone to the great labor of building such a dam. Only one explanation
remained.

“It must be a beaver dam,” he said.

“You’re right for once,” Doomsdorf agreed. “Did you ever see better
engineering? Even the dam is built in an arch—the strongest formation
known to man—to withstand the waters. Sometime I’ll tell you how they
do it—there isn’t as much premeditated cunning in it as you think. Do
you know what a beaver looks like?”

“Got big teeth——”

“Correct. It has to have ’em to cut all this wood. Likely enough the
little devils go considerable distances up and down this creek to get
their materials. Sometimes they’ll dig great canals for floating the
sticks they use in their dams.

“A big beaver weighs about fifty pounds—and he’s about the handiest boy
to trap there is. You’ll wonder what the purpose of these dams is. As
far as I can make out, simply to keep the water at one level. You know
these little streams rise and fall like the tides. They’ve learned, in a
few hundred thousand years of their development, that it doesn’t pay to
build a nice house and then have the creek come up and wash it away and
drown them out. When they put down their winter food, they want to be
sure it’s going to be there when they want it—neither washed away nor
high and dry out of water. The solution was—to build a dam. Now I’ll
show you how to catch a beaver.”

It seemed to Ned that the logical place to lay the trap was on the
beaver house itself—a great pile of sticks and mud. But Doomsdorf
explained that a trap set on the house itself so alarmed the animals
that the entire colony was likely to desert the dam. Instead, the trap
was set just below the surface of the water at a landing,—a place where
the beaver went in and out of the water in the course of their daily
work.

No bait was used this time. The trap was covered with fine mud with the
idea that the beaver would blunder into it either on leaving or entering
the water. A heavy sack of little stones from the creek bed was attached
to the chain, and a long wire, leading from this, was fastened securely
to a tree on the creek bank. The arrangement was really a merciful one
to the beaver. The instant the trap was sprung, the animal’s instinct
was to dive into deep water. Of course he dragged the heavy sack with
him and was unable to rise again. The beaver, contrary to expectations,
can not live in water indefinitely. An air-breathing mammal, he drowns
almost as quickly as a human being would under the same circumstances.

They placed a second trap on the dam itself, then encircling the meadow,
continued on up the stream. From time to time they made their sets, as
this was a favorable region for mink and otter, two of the most
beautiful and valuable furs.

Time was passing swiftly for Ned. There was even a quality of enjoyment
in his reaction to the day’s toil. Now as they mounted to the higher
levels, he was ever more impressed by the very magnitude of the
wilderness about—stretching for miles in every direction to the shores
of the sea. The weary wastes got to him and stirred his imagination as
never before. He found, when he paused to make the sets, that a certain
measure of excitement was upon him. Evidently there was a tang and
flavor in this snow-swept wilderness through which he moved to make the
blood flow swiftly in the veins.

Partly it lay in the constant happening of the unexpected. Every few
rods brought its little adventure: perhaps a far-off glimpse of a fox;
perhaps a flock of hardy waterfowl, tardy in starting south, flushing up
with a thunderous beat of wings from the water; perhaps the swift dive
of that dreadful little killer, the mink; possibly the track of a
venerable old bear, already drowsy and contemplating hibernation, who
had but recently passed that way. But perhaps the greater impulse for
excitement lay in the expectation of what the next turn in the trail
might bring forth. There were only tracks here, but the old bear himself
might launch forth into a deadly charge from the next thicket of birch
trees. The fox was only a fleet shadow far away, but any moment they
might run into him face to face, in the act of devouring his prey. Ned
found that his senses had miraculously sharpened, that many little
nerves of which hitherto he had been unaware had wakened into life and
were tingling just under the skin. Until fatigue came heavily upon
him—only the first hint of it had yet come to his thighs and back—this
particular part of his daily duties need never oppress him.

But this dim, faltering hope was forgotten in the travail of the next
few hours. The load of heavy traps on his back; the labor of tramping
through the snow; most of all the loss of bodily heat through his
flimsy, snow-wet clothes soon rewarded him for daring to seek happiness
on this desert of despair. As the gray afternoon advanced, his quickened
spirit fell again: once more his senses were dulled, and the crooked,
boyish half-smile that had begun to manifest itself faded quickly from
his lips. Doomsdorf still marched in his easy, swinging gait; and ever
it was a harder fight to keep pace. Yet he dared not lag behind. His
master’s temper was ever uncertain in these long, tired hours of
afternoon.

Tired out, weakened, aching in every muscle and not far from the
absolute limit of exhaustion, Ned staggered to the cabin door at last.
He had put out all the traps he had brought from the home cabin: thence
his course lay along a blazed trail that skirted the edge of the narrow
timber belt, over the ridge to the Forks cabin. Doomsdorf entered, then
in the half-light stood regarding the younger man who had followed him
in.

Ned tried to stand erect. He must not yield yet to the almost
irresistible impulse to throw himself down on the floor and rest. He
dared not risk Doomsdorf’s anger; how did he know what instruments of
torture the latter’s satanic ingenuity might contrive in this lonely
cabin! Nor was his mood to be trusted to-night. His gray eyes shone with
suppressed excitement; and likely enough he would be glad of an excuse
for some diversion to pass the hours pleasantly. It was very lonely and
strange out here, in the open, in the full sweep of the wind over the
barren lands.

But Ned wasn’t aware of Doomsdorf’s plans. The great blond man stretched
his arms, yawning, buttoned his coat tighter about him, and turned to
go. “I’ll see you in about five days,” he remarked laconically.

Ned wakened abruptly from his revery. “You mean—you aren’t going to
show me anything more?”

“There’s nothing more you can’t learn by yourself—by hard experience.
I’ve given you your map and your directions for the trap line. A baby
couldn’t miss it. There’s traps on the wall—scatter ’em along between
here and the Forks cabin. There you will find another bunch to put
between there and Thirty-Mile cabin. So on clear around. Over your head
you see the stretchers.”

Ned looked up, and over the rafters, among other supplies, were laid a
large number of small boards, planed smooth and of different sizes.

“I’ve shown you how to set your traps, for every kind of an animal,”
Doomsdorf went on. “You ought to be able to do the rest. By the time you
come around, we’ll likely have freezing weather—that means you’ll have
to thaw out your animals before you skin them. If it’s a big animal,
dead in the trap, too heavy to carry into camp, you’ll have to make a
fire in the snow and thaw him out there. Otherwise bring ’em in. You saw
me skin that otter I shot—skin all the smaller animals the same way.
Simply split ’em under the legs and peel ’em out toward the head, as you
would a banana. Of course you’ll spoil plenty of skins at first, so far
as market value is concerned, but they’ll be all right for your own use.
The closer you can skin them, the less fat you leave on the pelts, the
less you’ll have to flesh them when you get to your cabin. When you
can’t strip off any more fat, turn ’em wrong side out on one of those
boards—stretching them tight. Use the biggest board you can put in.
Then hang ’em up in the cabin to dry. A skin like a beaver, that you
slit up the belly and which comes off almost round, nail on the wall.
All the little tricks of the trade will come in time.

“Here and here and here”—he paused, to put in Ned’s hands a clasp
hunting knife, razor sharp, a small pocket hone to whet his tools, and a
light axe that had been hanging back of the stove—“are some things
you’ll need. The time will come when you’ll need snowshoes, too. I ought
to make you make them yourself, but you’d never get it done and I’d
never get any furs. There’s a pair on the rafters. Now I’m going to
tramp back to the cabin to spend the night—in more agreeable company.”

For a moment the two men stood regarding each other in absolute silence.
Then Doomsdorf’s keen ears, eager for such sounds, caught the whisper of
Ned’s troubled breathing. Presently a leering smile flashed through the
blond beard.

It was as he thought. Ned’s mind was no longer on furs. His face had
been drawn and dark with fatigue, but now a darker cloud spread across
it, like a storm through open skies, as some blood-curdling thought made
ghastly progress through his brain. At first it was only startled
amazement, then swift disbelief—the manifestation of that strange quirk
in human consciousness that ever tries to shield the spirit from the
truth—and finally terror, stark and without end. It showed in the
tragic loosening of every facial muscle; in the cold drops that came out
at the edge of the brown, waving hair; in the slow, fixed light in his
eyes.

This was what Doomsdorf loved. He had seen the same look in the faces of
prisoners—newly come to a stockade amid the snow and still hopeful that
the worst they had heard had been overdrawn—on seeing certain
implements of initiation; and it had been a source of considerable
amusement to him. This was the thing that his diseased soul craved. As
the young man reached imploring hands to his own great forearms, he
hurled him away with a ringing laugh.

“You mean—you and Lenore will be alone——” Ned asked.

“You saw the squaw start out with Bess?” was the triumphant answer. “But
why should you care? It was Lenore’s own wish to stay. She’d take me and
comfort any time, sooner than endure the cold with you. Of such stuff,
my boy, are women made.”

The hands reached out again, clasping tight upon Doomsdorf’s forearms.
Ned’s face, lifeless and white as a stone, was no longer loose with
terror. A desperate fury had brought him to the verge of madness.

“That’s a foul lie!” he shouted, reckless of Doomsdorf’s retaliation.
“She didn’t dream that you would do that——”

Doomsdorf struck him off, hurling him against the wall; but it was not
with the idea of inflicting punishment. Amused at his impotent rage, his
blow was not the driving shoulder blow which, before now, had broken a
human jaw to fragments. Nor did he carry through, hammering his victim
into insensibility at his leisure.

“That gets you a little, doesn’t it?” he taunted. Ned straightened,
staring at him as if he were a ghost. “Your sweetheart—that you’d sworn
was yours to the last ditch! I don’t mean that she’d give herself
willingly to me—yet. She’s just the kind of girl I’d expect a weakling
like yourself to pick out—the type that would sooner go wrong than
endure hardship. And that’s why she’s more or less safe, for the time
being at least, from me. Even if Sindy wasn’t coming back home
to-night—probably already there—you wouldn’t have to fear.”

Ned could not speak, but Doomsdorf looked at him with the fire of a
zealot in his eyes.

“I don’t want anything that’s that easy,” he said with infinite
contempt. “Sometimes the game is harder. I take back something I
inferred a moment ago—that _all_ women would do the same. The best of
them, the most of them, still will go through hell for an idea; and
that’s the kind whose spirit is worth while to break. Do you know any
one who right now, likely enough, is trudging along through this hellish
snow with forty pounds of traps over her back?”

Ned shuddered, hurling off his doubt, believing yet in the fidelity of
his star. “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he answered.

“That’s what Bess Gilbert is doing, and you know it. There, young man,
is a woman worthy of my steel!”

He turned and strode out the door. Ned was left to his thoughts and the
still, small voices of the waste places, alone with the wilderness night
whose word was the master word of life, and with the wind that sobbed
unhappy secrets as it swept his cabin roof. He couldn’t help but listen,
there in the twilight. Thus the work of training Ned Cornet’s soul went
on, strengthening him to stand erect when that stern officer, the Truth,
looked into his eyes; teaching him the mastery of that bright sword of
fortitude and steadfastness whereby he could parry the most pitiless
blows of fate.




                                  XXI


Thus began a week of trial for Ned. For the first time in his life he
was thrown wholly upon his own resources, standing or falling by his own
worth. Should he fall insensible in the snow there were none to seek him
and bring him into shelter. If he should go astray and miss the cabins
there was no one to set him on the right path again. He was meeting the
wilderness alone, and face to face.

Cooking his meals, cutting the fuel and building the fires that kept him
warm, meeting the storm in its fury and fighting a lone fight from the
gray of dawn to the day’s gray close, Ned made the long circuit of his
trap line. The qualities that carried him far in his home city—such
things as wealth and position and culture—were as dust here. His
reliance now was the axe on his shoulder and the hunting knife at his
hip; but most of all his own stamina, his own steadfastness, the cunning
of his brain and the strength of his sinews. And every day found him
stronger and better able to meet the next.

Certain muscles most used in tugging through the snow, seemingly worn to
shreds the first day’s march, strengthened under the stress, and he
found he did his daily stint with ever greater ease. Ever he handled the
little, daily crises with greater skill, and this with less loss of
vital energy: the crossing of a swollen stream or a perilous morass; or
the climbing of a slippery glacier. Every day the wilderness unrolled
its pages to his eyes.

The little daily encounters with the wild life were ever a greater
delight. He found pleasure in trying to guess the identity of the
lesser, scurrying people he met on the trail: he found a moving beauty
in the far-off glimpse of the running pack, in a vivid silhouette on the
ridge at twilight; the sight of a bull caribou tossing his far-spreading
antlers sent his blood moving fast in his veins. By the grace of the Red
Gods he was afforded the excitement of being obliged to backtrack two
hundred yards in order gracefully to yield the trail to a great, surly
Alaskan bear already seeking a lair for his winter sleep.

He crossed the divide to Forks cabin, followed the springs to
Thirty-Mile cabin, descended to the sea, and along the shore to the home
cabin, just as he had been told to do. He put out his traps as he went
in what seemed to him the most likely places, using every wile Doomsdorf
had taught him to increase his chances for a catch. In spite of the fact
that he went alone, the second day was ever so much easier than the
first; and he came into the home cabin only painfully tired, but not
absolutely exhausted, on the fifth. Of course he didn’t forget that,
other things being equal, these first five days were his easiest days.
Actual trapping had not yet started: he had not been obliged to stop,
thaw out and skin such larger animals as would be found dead in his
traps; nor yet work late into the night fleshing and stretching the
pelts. A greater factor was the moderate weather: light snowfall and
temperature above freezing, a considerable variance from the deadly
blizzards that would ensue.

All through the five days he had strengthened himself with the thought
that Lenore awaited him at the journey’s end; and she had never seemed
so lovely to him as when, returning in the gray twilight, he saw her
standing framed in the lighted doorway of the home cabin. She had
suffered no ill-treatment in his absence. The great fear that had been
upon his heart was groundless, after all: her face was fresh, her eyes
bright, she was not lost in despair. In spite of his aching muscles, his
face lighted with hopefulness and relief that was almost happiness.

Doubtless it was his own eagerness that made her seem so slow in coming
into his arms; and his own great fire that caused her to seem to lack
warmth. He had been boyishly anticipatory, foolishly exultant. Yet it
was all sweet enough. The girl fluttered a single instant in his arms,
and he felt repaid for everything.

“Let me go,” she whispered tensely, when his arms tried to hold her.
“Don’t let Doomsdorf see. He might kill you——”

But it came about that she didn’t finish the warning. Presently she felt
his arms turn to steel. She felt herself thrust back until her eyes
looked straight into his.

She had never seen Ned in this mood before. Indeed she couldn’t ever
remember experiencing the sensation that swept her now: secretly
appalled at him, burnt with his fire, wavering beneath his will. She
didn’t know he had arms like that. His face, when she tried to meet it,
hardly seemed his own. The flesh was like gray iron, the eyes cold as
stones.

“What has Doomsdorf to do with it?” he demanded. “Has he any claim on
you?”

“Of course not,” she hastened to reply. “He’s treated me as well as
could be expected. But you know—he makes claims on us all.”

The fact could not be denied. Ned turned from her, nestling to the fire
for warmth.

The happiness he had expected in this long-awaited night had failed to
materialize. He ate his great meal, sat awhile in sporadic conversation
with the girl in the snug cabin; then went wearily to his blankets. He
hardly knew what was missing. Her beauty was no less; it was enhanced,
if anything, by the flush of the wind on her cheeks. Yet she didn’t
understand what he had been doing, what he had been through. He held her
interest but slightly as he told of his adventures on the trail. When in
turn she talked to him, it was of her own wrongs; and the old quick,
eager sympathy somehow failed to reach his heart. But it was all he
could expect on this terrible island. He must thank what gods there were
for the one kiss she had given him—and be content. All happiness was
clouded here.

Often, in the little hour after supper about the stove, he wakened from
his revery to find that he had been thinking about Bess. She had come in
from her line the previous day and had gone out again; and he had not
dreamed that her absence could leave such a gap in their little circle.
He had hardly regarded her at all, yet he found himself missing her. She
was always so high-spirited, encouraging him with her own high heart. Of
course the very fact that they were just three, exiled among foes, would
make her absence keenly felt. The mere bond of common humanity would do
that. Yet he found himself wishing that he had shown greater
appreciation of her kindness, her courage, her sweet solicitude for him.
On her lonely trap line out in the wastes it was as if she had gone
forever. He found himself resenting the fact that Lenore had but cold
assent to his praise of her, wholly unappreciative of the fact that her
own ease was due largely to Bess’s offer to do additional work.

But his blankets gave him slumber, and he rose in the early hours,
breakfasted, and started out on his lonely trap line. He was not a
little excited as to the results of this morning’s tramp. Every skin he
took was his, to protect his own body from the bitter, impending cold.

The first few traps had not been sprung. Out-witting the wild creatures
was seemingly not the easy thing he had anticipated. The bait had been
stolen from a marten trap at the edge of the barrens, but the jaws had
failed to go home, and a subsequent light snowfall had concealed the
tracks by which he might have identified the thief. Was this the answer
to his high hopes? But he had cause to halt when he neared the trap on
the beaver dam.

For a moment he couldn’t locate the trap. Then he saw that the wire,
fastened securely to the bank, had become mysteriously taut. Not daring
to hope he began to tug it in.

At the end of the wire he found his trap, and in the trap was a large
beaver, drowned and in prime condition.

The moment was really a significant one for Ned. The little traps of
steel, placed here and there through the wilderness, had seemed a
doubtful project at best; but now they had shown results. The incident
gave him added confidence in himself and his ability to battle
successfully these perilous wilds. The rich, warm skin would help to
clothe him, and he would easily catch others to complete his wardrobe.

The beaver was of course not frozen; and the skin stripped off easily
under the little, sawing strokes of his skinning knife. He was rather
surprised at its size. It came off nearly round, and it would stretch
fully thirty-two inches in diameter. Washing it carefully, he put it
over his back and started on.

Other traps yielded pelts in his long day’s march. The trap on the
beaver landing contained a muskrat; he found several more of the same
furred rodents in his traps along the creek; and small skins though they
were, he had a place for every one. Once an otter, caught securely by
the hind leg, showed fight and had to be dispatched by a blow on the
head with a club; and once he was startled when a mink, scarcely larger
than his hand, leaped from the snowy weeds, trap and all, straight for
his ankle.

There was no more ferocious creature in all the mammalian world than
this. “Little Death,” was a name for him in an aboriginal tongue; and it
was perfectly in accord with his disposition. His eyes were scarlet; he
opened his rapacious jaws so wide that they resembled those of a deadly
serpent; he screamed again and again in the most appalling fury. This
was the demon of the Little People: the snaky Stealth that murdered the
nestlings in the dead of night; the cruel and remorseless hunter whose
red eyes froze the snowshoe hare with terror.

Tired out, barely able to stand erect, yet wholly content with his day’s
catch, Ned made the cabin in the twilight, built his fire, and cooked
his meager supper. After supper he skinned out such little animals as he
had not taken time to skin on the trail, fleshed and stretched his
pelts, then hung them up to dry. He was almost too tired to remove his
wet garments when the work was done. He hardly remembered drawing the
blankets over him.

Thus ended the first of a long series of arduous days. The hardship was
incomparably greater than that endured by the great run of those hardy
men, the northern trappers, not only because of his inadequate clothes,
but because the line had been laid out by a giant’s rule. Doomsdorf had
spaced his cabins according to his own idea of a full day’s work, and
that meant they were nearly twice as far apart as those of the average
trap line. Bess had been given the line he had laid out for his squaw,
hardly half so rigorous, yet all the average man would care to attempt.

But in spite of the hardship, the wrack of cold, the fatigue that crept
upon him like a dreadful sickness, Ned had many moments of comparative
pleasure. One of these moments, seemingly yielding him much more delight
than the occasion warranted, occurred at the end of the second day of
actual trapping.

This day’s march had taken him to the Forks cabin; and there, as
twilight drew about him, he was amazed to hear the nearing sound of
footsteps in the snow. Some one was coming laboriously toward him, with
the slow, dragging tread of deep fatigue.

The thing made no sense at all. Human companionship, in these gray and
melancholy wastes, was beyond the scope of the imagination. For a moment
he stared in dumb bewilderment like a man at the first seizure of
madness. Then he sprang through the door and out on the snowy slope.

It was not just a whim of the fancy. A dim form moved toward him out of
the grayness, hastening, now that his lantern light gleamed on the snow.
Presently Ned saw the truth.

It was Bess, of course. At this point their lines coincided. It was her
third stop, and since she had left the home cabin a day ahead of him,
she was perfectly on schedule. He could hardly explain the delight that
flashed through him at the sight of her. In this loneliness and silence
mere human companionship was blessing enough.

His appearance in the doorway was not a surprise to Bess. She had
counted the days carefully, and she knew his schedule would bring him
here. But now she was too near dead with fatigue to give him more than a
smile.

The night that ensued was one of revelation to Ned. His first cause of
wonder was the well of reserve strength that suddenly manifested itself
in the hour of need. He had not dreamed but that he was at the edge of
collapse from the long day’s toil; his brain had been dull with fatigue,
and he was almost too tired to build his fire, yet he found himself a
tower of strength in caring for the exhausted girl. It was as if his own
fatigue had mysteriously vanished when he became aware of hers.

With scarcely a word he lifted her to the cot, covered her with a
blanket, and in spite of her protests, went speedily about the work of
cooking her supper. It was a strange thing what pleasure it gave him to
see the warm glow of the life stream flow back into her blanched cheeks,
and her deep, blue eyes fill again with light. Heretofore this twilight
hour, at the end of a bitter day, had been the worst hour of all; but
to-night it was the best. He hadn’t dreamed that so much pleasure could
be gained simply by serving others. In addition to some of the simple
staples that he found among the cabin’s supplies, he served her, as a
great surprise, the plump, white breast of a ptarmigan that he had found
in one of his ermine traps; and it was somehow a deep delight to see her
little, white teeth stripping the flesh from the bone. He warmed her up
with hot coffee; then sat beside her while the night deepened at the
window.

They had a quiet hour of talk before he drew the blankets about her
shoulders and left her to drift away in sleep. He was unexplainably
exultant; light-hearted for all this drear waste that surrounded him.
This little hut of logs was home, to-night. The cold could not come in;
the wind would clamor at the roof in vain.

He did her work for her to-night. He skinned the smaller animals she had
brought in, then fleshed and stretched all the pelts she had taken.
After preparing his own skins, he made a hard bed for himself on the
floor of the hut.

It was with real regret that they took different ways in the dawn. Ned’s
last office was to prepare kindling for her use on her next visit to the
cabin four days hence—hardly realizing that he was learning a little
trick of the woodsman’s trade that would stand him in good stead in many
a dreadful twilight to come. Only the veriest tenderfoot plans on
cutting his kindling when he finishes his day’s toil. The tried
woodsman, traveling wilderness trails, does such work in the morning,
before fatigue lays hold of him. The thing goes farther: even when he
does not expect to pass that way again he is careful to leave the
kindling pile for the next comer. Like all the traditions of the North,
it is founded on necessity: the few seconds thus saved in striking the
flame have more than once, at the end of a bitter day, saved the flame
of a sturdy life. This is the hour when seconds count. The hands are
sometimes too cold to hold the knife: the tired spirit despairs at this
labor of cutting fuel. It is very easy, then, to lie still and rest and
let the cold take its toll.

The trails of these two trappers often crossed, in the weeks to come.
They kept close track of each other’s schedules, and they soon worked
out a system whereby they could meet at the Forks cabin at almost every
circuit. They arranged it wholly without embarrassment, each of them
appreciating the other’s need for companionship. By running a few traps
toward the interior from the forks, Bess made an excuse to take five
days to her route; and for once Doomsdorf seemed to fail to see her real
motive. Perhaps he thought she was merely trying to increase her catch,
thus hoping to avoid the penalties he had threatened.

Ned found to his amazement that they had many common interests. They
were drawn together not only by their toil, and by their mutual fear of
Doomsdorf’s lash; but they also shared a deep and growing interest in
the wilderness about them. The wild life was an absorbing study in
itself. They taught each other little tricks of the trapper’s trade,
narrated the minor adventures of their daily toil; they were of mutual
service in a hundred different ways. No longer did Ned go about his work
in the flimsy clothes of the city. Out of the pelts he had dried she
helped to make him garments and moccasins as warm and serviceable as her
own, supplied through an unexpected burst of generosity on Doomsdorf’s
part soon after their arrival on the island. They brought their hardest
problems to the Forks cabin and solved them together.

As the winter advanced upon them, they found an increasing need of
mutual help. The very problem of living began to demand their best
coöperation. The winter was more rigorous than they had ever dreamed in
their most despairing moments, so that coöperation was no longer a
matter of pleasure, but the stark issue of life itself. The spirit,
alone and friendless, yielded quickly in such times as these.

It got to be a mystery with them after while, why they hadn’t given up
long since, instead of playing this dreadful, nightmare game to its
ultimate end of horror and death. Why were they such fools as to keep up
the hopeless fight, day after day through the intense cold, bending
their backs to the killing labor, when at any moment they might find
rest and peace? They did not have to look far. Freedom was just at their
feet. Just to fall, to lie still; and the frost would creep swiftly
enough into their veins. Sleep would come soon, the delusion of warmth,
and then Doomsdorf’s lash could never threaten them again. But they
found no answer to the question. It was as if a power beyond themselves
was holding them up. It was as if there was a debt to pay before they
could find rest.

Day after day the snow sifted down, ever laying a deeper covering over
the island, bending down the limbs of the strong trees, obscuring all
things under this cold infinity of white. The traps had to be
laboriously dug out and reset, again and again. These were the days when
the old “sourdough” on the mainland remained within his cabin, merely
venturing to the door after fuel; but Ned and Bess knew no such mercy.
Their fate was to struggle on through those ever-deepening drifts until
they died. Driven by a cruel master they dared not rest even a day.
Walking was no longer possible without snowshoes; and even these sank
deep in the soft drifts, the webs filling with snow, so that to walk a
mile was the most bitter, heart-breaking labor. Yet their fate was to
plow on, one day upon another,—strange, dim figures in the gray,
whirling flakes—the full, bitter distances between their cabins. To try
to lay out meant death, certain and very soon. Moreover they could not
even move with their old leisure. The days were constantly shorter, just
a ray of light between great curtains of darkness; and only by mushing
at the fastest possible walking pace were they able to make it through.

When the skies cleared, an undreamed degree of cold took possession of
the land. Seemingly every trickle of moving water was already frozen
hard, the sea sheltered by the island chain was an infinity of ice,
snow-swept as was the rest of the weary landscape, but now the breath
froze on the beard, and the eyelids one upon another. The fingers froze
in the instant that the fur gloves were removed, and the hottest fires
could hardly warm the cabins. And on these clear, bitter nights the
Northern Lights were an ineffable glory in the sky.

A strange atmosphere of unreality began to cloud their familiar world.
They found it increasingly hard to believe in their own consciousnesses;
to convince themselves they were still struggling onward instead of
lying lifeless in the snow. It was all dim like a dream,—snow and
silence and emptiness, and the Northern Lights lambent in the sky. And
for a time this was the only mercy that remained. Their perceptions were
blunted: they were hardly aware of the messages of pain and torture that
the nerves brought to the brain. And then, as ever, there came a certain
measure of readjustment.

Their bodies built up to endure even such hardship as this. The fact
that the snow at last packed was a factor too: they were able to skim
over the white crust at a pace even faster than the best time they had
made in early fall. They mastered the trapper’s craft, learning how to
skin a beaver with the fewest number of strokes, and in such a manner
that the minimum amount of painstaking fleshing was required; and how to
bait and set the traps in the fastest possible time. They learned their
own country, and thus the best, easiest, and quickest routes from cabin
to cabin.

The result was that at last the companionship between Bess and Ned,
forgotten in the drear horror of the early winter months, was revived.
Again they had pleasant hours about the stove at the Forks cabin,
sometimes working at pelts, sometimes even enjoying the unheard-of
luxury of a few minutes of idleness. While before they had come in
almost too tired to be aware of each other’s existence, now they were
fresh enough to exchange a few, simple friendly words—even, on rare
occasions, to enjoy a laugh together over some little disaster of the
trail. The time came when they knew each other extremely well. In their
hours of talk they plumbed each other’s most secret views and
philosophies, and helped to solve each other’s spiritual problems.

Very naturally, and scarcely aware of the fact themselves, they had come
to be the best of companions. As Ned once said, when a night of
particular beauty stirred his imagination and loosened his stern lips,
they had been “through hell” together; and the finest, most enduring
companionship was only to have been expected. But it went farther than a
quiet sort of satisfaction in each other’s presence. Each had got to
know approximately what the other would do in any given case; and that
meant that they afforded mutual security. They had mutual trust and
confidence, which was no little satisfaction on this island of peril.
Blunted and dulled before, their whole consciousness now seemed to
sharpen and waken; they not only regarded each other with greater
confidence: their whole outlook had undergone significant change. During
the first few months of early winter they had moved over their terrible
trails like mechanical machines, doing all they had to do by instinct,
whether eating, sleeping, or working; self-consciousness had been almost
forgotten, self-identity nearly lost. But now they were themselves
again, looking forward keenly to their little meetings, their interests
ever reaching farther, the first beginnings of a new poise and
self-confidence upon them. They had stood the gaff! They had come
through.

Ned’s hours with Lenore, however, gave him less satisfaction than they
had at first. She somehow failed to understand what he had been through.
He had found out what real hardship meant, and he couldn’t help but
resent, considering her own comparative comfort, her attitude of
self-pity. Always she wept for deliverance from the island, never
letting Ned forget that his own folly had brought her hither; always
expecting solicitude instead of giving it; always willing to receive all
the help that Ned could give her, but never willing to sacrifice one
whit of her own comfort to ease his lot. Because he had done man’s work,
and stood up under it, he found himself expecting more and more from
her,—and failing to receive it. Her lack of sportsmanship was
particularly distressing to him at a time when sobbing and complaints
could only tear down his own hard-fought-for spirit to endure. Most of
all he resented her attitude toward Bess. She had no sympathy for what
the girl had been through, even refusing to listen to Ned’s tales of
her. And she seemed to resent all of Ned’s kindnesses to her.

Slowly, by the school of hardship and conquest over hardship, Ned Cornet
was winning a new self-mastery, a new self-confidence to take the place
of the self-conceit that had brought him to disaster. But the first real
moment of wakening was also one of peril,—on the trapping trail one
clear afternoon toward the bitter close of January.

He had been quietly following that portion of his trap line that
followed the timber belt between the Twelve-Mile cabin and Forks cabin,
and the blazed trail had led him into the depths of a heavy thicket of
young spruce. He had never felt more secure. The midwinter silence lay
over the land; the cold and fearful beauty of a snow-swept wilderness
had hold of his spirit; the specter of terror and death that haunted
these wintry wastes was nowhere manifest to his sight. The only hint of
danger that the Red Gods afforded him did not half penetrate his
consciousness and did not in the least call him from his pleasant
fancies. It was only a glimpse of green where the snow had been shaken
from a compact little group of sapling spruce just beside one of his
sets. Likely the wind had caught the little trees just right; perhaps
some unfortunate little fur-bearer, a marten perhaps, or a fisher, had
sprung back and forth among the little trees in an effort to free
himself from the trap. He walked up quietly, located the tree to which
the trap chain was attached, bent and started to draw the trap from the
small, dense thicket whence some creature had dragged it. He was only
casually interested in what manner of poor, frozen creature would be
revealed between the steel jaws. The beauty of the day had wholly taken
his mind from his work.

One moment, and the forest was asleep about him; the little trees looked
sadly burdened with their loads of snow. The next, and the man was
hurled to the ground by a savage, snarling thing that leaped from the
covert like the snow demon it was; and white, gleaming fangs were
flashing toward his throat.




                                  XXII


Except for the impediment of the trap on the creature’s foot, there
would have been but one blow to that battle in the snow. White fangs
would have gone home where they were aimed, and all of Ned Cornet’s
problems would have been simply and promptly solved. There would have
been a few grotesque sounds, carrying out among the impassive
trees,—such sounds as a savage hound utters over his bone, and perhaps,
a strange motif carrying through, a few weird whisperings, ever growing
fainter, from a torn throat that could no longer convey the full tones
of speech; and perhaps certain further motion, perhaps a wild moment of
odd, frenzied leaping back and forth, fangs flashing here and there over
a form that still shivered as if with bitter cold. But these things
would not have endured long: the sounds, like wakeful children, speedily
hiding and losing themselves in the great curtains of silence and the
wilderness itself swiftly returning to its slumber. Drifting snow dust,
under the wind, would have soon paled and finally obliterated the
crimson stain among the little trees.

Ned would have been removed from Doomsdorf’s power in one swiftly
passing instant, the wilderness forgetting the sound of his snowshoes in
its silent places. All things would be, so far as mortal eyes can
discern, as if his soul had never found lodging in his body.

This was not some little fur-bearer, helpless in the trap. It was no
less a creature than that great terror of the snow, a full-grown Arctic
wolf, almost as white as the drifts he hunted through. Only the spruce
trees knew how this fierce and cunning hunter came to snare his foot in
the jaws of a marten trap. Nor could any sensible explanation be made
why the great wolf did not break the chain with one lunge of his
powerful body, instead of slinking into the coverts and waiting
developments. The ways of the wild creatures quite often fail of any
kind of an explanation; and it is a bold woodsman who will say what any
particular creature will do under any particular condition. When he saw
Ned’s body within leaping range, he knew the desperate impulse to fight.

None of the lower creatures are introspective in regard to their
impulses. They follow them without regard to consequences. The wolf
leaped with incredible speed and ferocity. The human body is not built
to stand erect under such a blow: the mighty, full-antlered caribou
would have gone down the same way.

The chain of the trap broke like a spring as he leaped. The steel leash
that is often used to restrain a savage dog would have broken no less
quickly. There was no visible recoil: what little resistance there was
seemingly did not in the least retard the blow. It did, however, affect
its accuracy. That fact alone saved Ned from instant death.

But as the wolf lunged toward him to complete his work—after the manner
of some of the beasts of prey when they fail to kill at the first
leap—an inner man of might seemed to waken in Ned’s prone body. A great
force came to life within him. He lunged upward and met the wolf in the
teeth.

Months before, when a falling tree had lashed down at him, he had seen a
hint of this same, innate power. It was nothing peculiar to him: most
men, sooner or later, see it manifested in some hour of crisis. But
since that long-ago day it had been immeasurably enhanced and increased.
While his outer, physical body had been developing, it had been
strengthening too. Otherwise it would have been of little avail against
that slashing, leaping, frenzied demon of the snow.

This inner power hurled him into a position of defense; but it would
have saved him only an instant if it had not been for its staunch allies
of muscles of tempered steel. For months they had been in training for
just such a test as this; but Ned himself had never realized anything of
their true power. He hadn’t known that his nerves were as finely keyed
as a delicate electrical instrument, so that they might convey the
commands of his brain with precision and dispatch. He suddenly wakened
to find himself a marvelous fighting machine, with certain powers of
resistance against even such a foe as this.

A great surge of strength, seemingly without physical limitation, poured
through him. In one great bound he overcame the deadly handicap of his
own prone position, springing up with terrible, reaching, snatching
hands and clasping arms. Some way, he did not know how, he hurled that
hundred pounds of living steel from his body before the white fangs
could go home.

But there was not an instant’s pause. Desperate with fury, the wolf
sprang in again,—a long, white streak almost too fast for the eye to
follow. But he did not find Ned at a disadvantage now. The man had
wrenched to one side to hurl the creature away, but he had already
caught his balance and had braced to meet the second onslaught. A
white-hot fury had descended upon him, too—obliterating all sense of
terror, yielding him wholly to such fighting instincts as might be
innate within him. Nor did they betray him, these inner voices. They
directed the frightful power of his muscles in the one way that served
him best.

Ned did not wait to catch the full force of that blow. His powerful
thighs, made iron hard in these last bitter weeks, drove him out and up
in an offensive assault. His long body seemed to meet that of the wolf
full in the air. Then they rolled together into the drifts.

Ned landed full on top of the body of the wolf; and with a mighty surge
of his whole frame he tried to strengthen his own advantageous position.
His mighty knee clasped at the animal’s breast, pressing with all his
strength with the deadly intention of crushing the ribs upon the wild
heart. And he gave no heed to the clawing feet. His instincts told him
surely that in the white fangs alone lay his danger. With one arm he
encircled the shaggy neck; with the other he tried to turn the great
muzzle from his flesh.

The wolf wriggled free, sending home one vicious bite into the flesh
just under the arm; and for a breath both contestants seemed to be
playing some weird, pinwheel game in the snow. The silence of the
everlasting wild was torn to shreds by the noise of battle,—the frantic
snarling of the wolf, the wild shouts of this madman who had just found
his strength. No moment of Ned’s life had ever been fraught with such
passion; none had ever been of such lightning vividness. He fought as he
had never dreamed he could fight; and the glory of battle was upon him.

It might be that Doomsdorf could have picked up the great white creature
by the scruff of the neck and beat his brains out against a tree. Yet
Ned knew, in some cool, back part of his mind, that this was a foe
worthy of the best steel of any man, however powerful. Even men of
unusually great strength would have been helpless in an instant before
those slashing fangs. Yet never for an instant did he lose hope. Bracing
himself, he clamped down again with mighty knees on the wolf’s breast.

Again the slashing fangs caught him, but he was wholly unaware of the
pain. The muscles of his arms snapped tight against the skin, the great
tendons drew, and he jerked the mighty head around and back.

Then for a moment both contestants seemed to lie motionless in the snow.
The wolf lay like a great hound before the fireside,—fore legs
stretched in front, body at full length. Ned lay at one side, the
animal’s body between his knees, one arm around his neck, the other
thrusting back the great head. The whole issue of life or death, victory
or defeat, was suddenly immensely simplified. It depended solely on
whether or not Ned had the physical might to push back the shaggy head
and shatter the vertebræ.

There was no sense of motion. Rather they were like figures in metal, a
great artist’s theme of incredible stress. Ned’s face was drawn and
black from congested blood. His lips were drawn back, the tendons of his
hand, free of the glove, seemed about to break through the skin. For
that long moment Ned called on every ounce of strength of his body and
soul. Only his body’s purely physical might could force back the fierce
head the ghastly inch that was needed; only the high-born spirit of
strength, the mighty urge by which man holds dominion over earth and
sea, could give him resolution to stand the incredible strain.

Time stood still. A thousand half-crazed fancies flew through his mind.
His life blood seemed to be starting from his pores, and his heart was
tearing itself to shreds in his breast. But the wolf was quivering now.
Its eyes were full of strange, unworldly fire. And then Ned gave a last,
terrific wrench.

A bone broke with a distinct crack in the utter silence. And as he fell
forward, spent, the great white form slacked down and went limp in his
arms.

Like a man who had been asleep Ned regained his feet. The familiar world
of snow and forest rushed back to him, deep in the enchantment of the
winter silence; and it was as if the battle had never occurred. Such
warlike sounds as had been uttered were smothered in the stillness.

Yet the sleeve of his fur coat was torn, and dark red drops were
dripping from his fingers. They made crimson spots in the immaculate
snow. And just at his feet a white wolf lay impotent, never again to
strike terror into his heart by its wild, unearthly chant on the ridge.
The two had met, here in the wolf’s own snows; and now one lay dead at
his conqueror’s feet.

Whose was the strength that had laid him low! Whose mighty muscles had
broken that powerful neck! Vivid consciousness swept back to Ned; and
with it a deep and growing exultation that thrilled the inmost chords of
his being. It was an ancient madness, the heritage of savage days when
man and beast fought for dominance in the open places; but it had not
weakened and dimmed in the centuries. His eye kindled, and he stood
shivering with excitement over his dead.

He had conquered. He had fought his way to victory. And was there any
reason in heaven or earth why he should not fight on to freedom—out of
Doomsdorf’s power? The moving spirit of inspiration seemed to bear him
aloft.

Drunk with his own triumph, Ned could not immediately focus his
attention on any definite train of thought. At first he merely gave
himself up to dreams, a luxury that since the first day on the island he
had never permitted himself. For many moments after the exultation of
his victory had begun to pass away, he was still so entranced by dreams
of freedom that he could not consider ways and means.

The word freedom had come to have a tangible meaning for him in these
last dreadful months; its very idea was dear beyond any power of his to
tell. It was so beloved a thing that at first his cold logic could not
take hold of it: its very thought brought a luster as of tears to his
eyes and a warm glow, as in the first drifting of sleep, to his brain.
He had found out what freedom meant and how unspeakably beautiful it
was. In his native city, however, he had taken it as a matter of course.
Because it was everywhere around him he was no more conscious of it than
the air he breathed; and he felt secret scorn of much of the sentimental
eloquence concerning it. It had failed to get home to him, and many of
his generation had forgotten it, just as they had forgotten the Author
of their lives. It was merely something that feeble old men, amusing in
their earnestness and their badges of the Grand Army so proudly worn on
their tattered clothes, spoke of with a curious, deep solemnity, which a
scattered few of his friends, from certain hard-fighting divisions, had
learned on battlefields in France; but which was of little importance in
his own life. When he did think of it at all he was very likely to
confuse it with license. Now and then, when heady liquor had hold of
him, he had amused his friends with quite a lecture concerning
freedom,—particularly in its relation to the Volstead act. But the old
urge and devotion that was the life theme of hundreds of generations
that had preceded him had seemed cold in his spirit.

He had learned the truth up here. He had found out it was the outer gate
to all happiness; and everything else worth while was wholly dependent
upon it. As he stood in this little snowy copse beside the dead wolf,
even clearer vision came to him concerning it. Was it not the dream of
the ages? Was not all struggle upward toward this one star,—not only
economic and religious freedom, but freedom from the tyranny of the
elements, from the scourge of disease, from the soiling hand of
ignorance and want? And what quality made for dominance as much as love
of freedom?

It was a familiar truth that no race was great without this love.
Suddenly he saw that this was the first quality of greatness, whether in
nations or individuals. The degree of this love was the degree of worth
itself; and only the fawning weakling, the soul lost to honor and
self-respect, was content to live beneath a master’s lash when there was
a fighting chance for liberty!

A fighting chance! The phrase meant nothing less than the chance of
death. But all through the loner roll of the centuries the bravest men
had defied this chance; and they would not lift their helmets to those
that eschewed it. But now he knew the truth of that stern old law of
tribes and nations,—a law sometimes forgotten yet graven on the
everlasting stone—that he who will not risk his life for liberty does
not deserve to live it. The thing held good with him now. _It held good
with Bess and Lenore as well._

_That was the test!_ It was the last, cruel trial in the Training Camp
of Life.

Deeply moved and exalted, he lifted his face to the cold, blue skies as
if for strength. For the instant he stood almost motionless, oblivious
to his wounds and his torn clothes, a figure of unmistakable dignity in
those desolate drifts. He knew what he must do. He too must stand trial,
bravely and without flinching. For Ned Cornet had come into his manhood.




                                 XXIII


In a little while Ned stripped the pelt from the warm body of the wolf
and continued down his line of traps. He was able to think more
coherently now and consider methods and details. And by the same token
of clear thought, he was brought face to face with the fact of the
almost insuperable obstacles in his path.

For all he could see now, Doomsdorf had surrounded them with a stone
wall. He had seemingly thought of everything, prepared for every
contingency, and left them not the slightest gateway to hope.

Plans for freedom first of all seemingly had to include Doomsdorf’s
death. That was the first essential, and the last. Could they succeed in
striking the life from their master, they could wait in the cabin until
the trader _Intrepid_ should touch their island in the spring. It can be
said for Ned that he conjectured upon the plan without the slightest
whisper of remorse, the least degree of false sentiment. The fact that
their master was, more or less, a human being did not change the course
of his thought whatever. He would hurl that wicked soul out of the world
with never an instant’s pity, and his only prayer would be that it might
fall into the real hell that he had tried to imitate on earth. There
could be no question about that. If, through some mercy, the brute lay
helpless for a single second at his feet, it would be time enough for
the deed Ned had in mind. His arm would never falter, his cruel axe
would shatter down as pitilessly as upon some savage beast of the
forest. He had not forgotten what the three of them had endured.

The difficulty lay in finding an opening of attack. Doomsdorf’s rifle
was never loaded except when it was in his arms, and he wore his pistol
in his belt, day and night. For all his hopelessness, Ned had noticed,
half inadvertently, that he always took precautions against a night
attack. The squaw slept on the outside of their cot and would be as
difficult to pass without arousing as a sleeping dog. The cabin itself
was bolted, not to be entered without waking both occupants; and the
three prisoners of course slept in the newer cabin.

Bess had told him of Doomsdorf’s encounter with Knutsen, describing with
particular emphasis the speed with which the murderer had whipped out
his pistol. He could get it into action long before Ned could lay bare
his clasp knife. Indeed, mighty man that he was, he could crush Ned to
earth with one bound at the latter’s first offensive movement. And
Doomsdorf was always particularly watchful when Ned carried his axe.

Yet the fact remained that in his axe alone lay the only possible hope
of success. Some time Ned might see an opportunity to swing it down:
perhaps he could think of some wile to put Doomsdorf at a disadvantage.
It was inconceivable that they should try to escape without first
rendering Doomsdorf helpless to follow them. They could attempt neither
to conceal themselves on the island, or cross the ice straight to Tzar
Island without the absolute certainty of being hunted down and punished.
What form that punishment would take Ned dared not guess.

It was true that Doomsdorf kept but a perfunctory watch over Ned and
Bess while they plied their trap lines. But long ago he had explained to
them the hopelessness of attempting to load their backs with food and
strike off across the ice on the slim chance of encountering some
inhabited island. The plan, he had said, had not been worth a thought,
and even now, in spite of his new courage, Ned found that it promised
little. In the first place, to venture out into that infinity of ice,
where there was not a stick of fuel and the polar wind was an icy demon
day and night, meant simply to die without great question or any
considerable delay. The islands were many, but the gray ice between them
insuperably broad and rough. As Doomsdorf had said, they could not get
much of a start; scarcely a day went by but that Doomsdorf, from some
point of vantage where his daily hunting excursions carried him,
discerned the distant forms of one or both of his two trappers across
the snowy barrens; and he would be quick to investigate if they were
missing. His powerful legs and mighty strength would enable him to
overtake the runaways in the course of a few hours. But lastly, settling
the matter once and for all, there was the subject of Lenore. He could
neither smuggle her out nor leave her to Doomsdorf’s vengeance.

The plan might be worth considering, except for her. Of course, the odds
would be tragically long on the side of failure; but all he dared pray
for was a fighting chance. As matters lay, it was wholly out of the
question.

Seemingly the only course was to lie low, always to be on the watch for
the moment of opportunity. Some time, perhaps, their master’s vigilance
would relax. Just one little instant of carelessness on his part might
show the way. Perhaps the chance would come when the _Intrepid_ put into
the island to buy the season’s furs, if indeed life dwelt in his own
body until that time. Ned didn’t forget that long, weary months of
winter still lay between.

He concluded that he would not take Lenore into his confidence at once.
That would come later,—when he had something definite to propose.
Lately she had not shown great confidence in him, scorning his ability
to shelter her and serve her; and of course she would have only contempt
for any such vague hope as this. He had nothing to offer now but the
assurance of his own growing sense of power. As yet his hope lay wholly
in the realization of the late growth and development of his own
character. So far as material facts went, the barriers between her and
her liberty were as insuperable as ever. He would not be able to
encourage her: more likely, by her contempt, she would jeopardize his
own belief in himself. Besides, for all his great love for her, he could
not make himself believe that she was of fighting metal. He found, in
this moment of analysis of her soul, that he could not look to her for
aid. She was his morning star, all that he could ask in woman, and he
had chosen her for her worth and beauty, rather than for a helpmate, a
fortress at his side. Yes, coöperation with her might injure, rather
than increase, his chances for success.

He dismissed in an instant the idea of telling Bess. His loyalty to
Lenore demanded that, at least. She must not go where his own betrothed
was excluded. If the thought came that Bess, by light of courage and
fortitude, had already gone where in weakness and self-pity Lenore could
not possibly follow—the windy snow fields and the bitter crests of the
rugged hills—he pushed it sternly from him. The whole thing was a
matter of instinct with him, perhaps a wish to shield himself from
invidious comparisons of the two girls. He would have liked to convince
himself that Lenore could be his ally, but he was wholly unable to do
so. Realizing that, he preferred to believe that Bess was likewise
incompetent. But he knew he must not let his mind dwell to any great
length upon the subject. He might be forced to change his mind.

He must make a lone fight. He must follow a lone trail—like the old
gray pack leader whose sluts cannot keep pace.

Thereafter, day and night, Ned watched his chances. Never he climbed to
the top of the ridge but that he searched, with straining eyes, for the
glimpse of a dog-sledge on the horizon, or perhaps the faint line of a
distant island. On the nights that he spent at the home cabin, he made
an intense study of Doomsdorf’s most minor habits, trying to uncover
some little failing, some trifling carelessness that might give him his
opportunity. He made it a point to leave his axe in easy reaching
distance; his clasp knife, in a holster of fur, was always open in his
pocket, always ready to his hand. All day, down the weary length of his
trap line, he considered ways and means.

Simply because the wild continued to train him, he was ever stronger for
this great, ultimate trial. Not only his intent was stronger, his
courage greater, but his body also continued its marvelous development.
His muscles were like those of a grizzly: great bunches of tendons, hard
as stone, moving under his white skin. Every motion was lithe and
strong; his energy was a never-failing fountain; his eyes were vivid and
clear against the old-leather hue of his face.

There was no longer an unpleasant discoloration in the whites of his
eyes. They were a cold, hard, pale blue; and the little network of lines
that had once shown faintly at his cheek bones had completely faded. His
hands had killing strength; his neck was a brown pillar of muscle.
Health was upon him, in its full glory, to the full meaning of the word.

He found, to his great amazement, that his mental powers had similarly
developed. His thought was more clear, and it flowed in deeper channels.
It was no effort for him now to follow one line of thought to its
conclusion. The tendency to veer off in the direction of least
resistance had been entirely overcome. He could be of some aid, now, in
the fur house of Godfrey Cornet. He felt he would like to match wits
with his father’s competitors.

He would need not only this great physical strength, but also his
enhanced mental powers in the trial and stress that were to come.
Doomsdorf’s tyranny could not be endured forever; they were being borne
along toward a crisis as if on an ocean current. And for all his growth,
Ned never made the fatal mistake of considering himself a physical match
for Doomsdorf. Over and above the fact that the latter was armed with
rifle and pistol, Ned was still a child in his hands. It was simply a
case of intrinsic limitations. It was as if the wolf, chain-lightning
savagery that he is, should try to lay low the venerable grizzly bear.

Sooner or later the crisis would fall upon them,—a fit of savage anger
on Doomsdorf’s part, or a wrong that could not be endured, even if death
were the penalty for rebellion. Moreover, Ned could not escape the
haunting fear that such a crisis was actually imminent. Doomsdorf’s mood
was an uncertain thing at best; and lately it had taken a turn for the
worse. He was not getting the satisfaction that he had anticipated out
of Ned’s slavery; the situation had lost its novelty, and he was open to
any Satanic form of diversion that might occur to him. Ned had mastered
his trap lines, had stood the gaff and was a better man on account of
it; and it was time his master provided additional entertainment for
him. In these dark, winter days he remembered the Siberian prison with
particular vividness, and at such times the steely glitter was more
pronounced in his eyes, and certain things that he had seen lingered
ever in his mind. He kept remembering strange ghosts of men, toiling in
the snow till they died, and souls that went out screaming under the
lash; and such remembrances moved him with a dark, unspeakable lust. He
thought he would like to bring these memory-pictures to life. Besides,
his attitude toward Bess was ever more sinister. He followed her motions
with a queer, searching, speculative gaze; and now and then he offered
her little favors.

If he could only be held in restraint a few months more. Ned knew
perfectly that the longer the crisis could be averted, the better his
chance for life and liberty. He would have more opportunity to make
preparations, to lay plans. Besides, every day that he followed his trap
line he was better trained—in character and mind and body—for the test
to come. The work of bringing out Ned Cornet’s manhood had never ceased.

Every day he had learned more of those savage natural forces that find
clearest expression in the North. He knew the wind and the cold,
snow-slide and blizzard, but also he knew hunger and fear and travail
and pain. All these things taught him what they had to teach, and all of
them served to shape him into the man he had grown to be. And one still,
clear afternoon the North sent home a new realization of its power.

He was working that part of the line from his Twelve-Mile cabin over the
ridge toward the Forks cabin,—his old rendezvous with Bess. He was
somewhat late in crossing the range to-day. He had taken several of the
larger fur-bearers and had been obliged to skin them laboriously, first
thawing them out over a fire in the snow, so that midafternoon found him
just emerging from the thick copse where he had killed the white wolf.
The blazed trail took him around the shoulder of the ridge, clear to the
edge of a little, deeply seamed glacier such as crowns so many of the
larger hills in the far North.

Few were the wild creatures that traversed this icy desolation, so his
trap line had been laid out around the glacier, following the blazed
trail in the scrub timber. But to-day the long way round was
particularly grievous to his spirit. More than a mile could be saved by
leaving the timber and climbing across the ice, and only a few sets,
none of which had ever proved especially productive, would be missed. In
his first few weeks the danger of going astray had kept him close to his
line, but he was not obliged to take it into consideration now. He knew
his country end to end.

Without an instant’s hesitation he turned from the trail straight over
the snowy summit toward the cabin. The cut-off would save him the
annoyance of making camp after dark. And since he had climbed it once
before, he scarcely felt the need of extra caution.

The crossing, however, was not quite the same as on the previous
occasion. Before the ice had been covered, completely across, with a
heavy snowfall, no harder to walk on than the open barrens. He soon
found now that the snow prevailed only to the summit of the glacier, and
the descent beyond the summit had been swept clean by the winds.

Below him stretched a half-mile of glare ice, ivory white like the fangs
of some fabulous beast-of-prey. Here and there it was gashed with
crevices,—those deep glacier chasms into which a stone falls in
silence. For a moment Ned regarded it with considerable displeasure:

He was not equipped for ice scaling. Perhaps it was best not to try to
go on. But as he waited, the long way down and around seemed to grow in
his imagination. It was that deadly hour of late afternoon when the
founts of energy run low and the thought-mechanism is dulled by
fatigue;—and some way, he felt his powers of resistance slipping away
from him. He forget, for the moment, the _Fear_ that is the very soul of
wisdom.

He decided to take a chance. He removed his snowshoes and ventured
carefully out upon the ice.

It was easier than it looked. His moccasins clung very well. Steadily
gaining confidence, he walked at a faster pace. The slope was not much
on this side, the glacier ending in an abrupt cliff many hundred feet in
height, so he felt little need of especial precaution. It was, in fact,
the easiest walking that he had had since his arrival upon the island,
so he decided not to turn off clear until he reached the high ground
just to one side of the ice cliff. He crawled down a series of shelves,
picked his way about a jagged promontory, and fetched up at last at the
edge of a dark crevice scarcely fifty feet from the edge of the snow.

The crevice was not much over five feet wide at this point, and looking
along, he saw that a hundred yards to his right it ended in a snowbank.
But there was no need of following it down. He could leap it at a
standing jump: with a running start he could bound ten feet beyond.

He was tired, eager to get to camp,—and this was the zero hour. He drew
back three paces, preparatory to making the leap.

As he halted he was somewhat amazed at the incredible depth of silence
that enthralled this icy realm. It seemed to him, except for the beat of
his own heart, the absolute zero of silence,—not a whimper of wind or
the faintest rustle of whisking snow dust. All the wilderness world
seemed to be straining—listening. The man leaped forward.

At that instant the North gave him some sign of its power. His first
running step was firm, but at the second his moccasin failed to hold,
slipping straight back. He pitched forward on his hands and knees,
grasping at the hard, slippery ice.

But he had not realized his momentum. He experienced a strange instant
of hovering, of infinite suspense; and then the realization, like a
flash of lightning, of complete and immutable disaster. There was no
sense of fast motion. He slid rather slowly, with that sickening
helplessness that so often characterizes the events of a tragic dream;
and the wilderness seemed still to be waiting, watching, in unutterable
indifference. Then he pitched forward into the crevice.

To Ned it seemed beyond the least, last possibility of hope that he
should ever know another conscious second. The glacier crevices were all
incredibly deep, and he would fall as a stone falls, crushed at last on
the lightless floor of the glacier so far below that no sound might rise
to disturb this strange immensity of silence. It was always thus with
wilderness deaths. There is no sign that the Red Gods ever see. All
things remain as they were,—the eternal silence, the wild creatures
absorbed in their occupations; the trees never lifting their bowed heads
from their burdens of snow. Ned did not dream that mortal eyes would
ever rest upon his form again, vanishing without trace except for the
axe that had fallen at the edge of the crevice and the imprint of his
snowshoes on the trail behind. There was no reason in heaven or earth
for doubting but that this ivory glacier would be his sepulcher forever.

In that little instant the scope of his mind was incredibly vast. His
thought was more clear and true than ever before in his life, and it was
faster than the lightning in the sky. It reached back throughout his
years; it encompassed in full his most subtle and intricate relations
with life. There was no sense of one thought coming after another. The
focus of his attention had been immeasurably extended; and all that he
knew, and all that he was and had been, was before his eyes in one
great, infinite vista.

He still had time in plenty to observe the immensity of the silence; the
fact that his falling had not disturbed, to the least fraction of a
degree, the vast imperturbability of the stretching snow fields about
him. In that same instant, because of the seeming certainty of his end,
he really escaped from fear. Fear in its true sense is a relation that
living things have with the uncertainties of the future: a device of
nature by which the species are warned of danger, but it can serve no
purpose when judgment is signed and sealed. This was not danger but
seeming certainty; and the mind was too busy with other subjects to give
place to such a useless thing as fear.

By the same token he could not truly be said to hope. Hope also is the
handmaiden of uncertainty. Glancing back, there was no great sense of
regret. Seemingly dispatched irrevocably out of the world, in that flash
of an instant he was suddenly almost indifferent toward it. He
remembered Lenore clearly, seeing her more vividly than he had ever seen
her before, but she was like an old photograph found buried in a
forgotten drawer,—recalling something that was of greatest moment once,
but which no longer mattered. Perhaps, seemingly facing certain death,
he was as one of the dead, seeing everything in the world from an
indifferent and detached viewpoint.

All these thoughts swept him in a single fraction of an instant as he
plunged into darkness. And all of them were unavailing. The uncertainty
that shadows the lives of men held sway once more; and with it a ghastly
and boundless terror.

He was not to die at once. There was still hope of life. He fetched up,
as if by a miracle, on an icy shelf ten feet below the mouth of the
crevice,—with sheer walls rising on each side.




                                  XXIV


Ned knew what fear was, well enough, as he lay in the darkened chasm,
staring up at the white line of the crevice above him. The old love of
life welled back, sweeping his spirit as in a flood, and with it all the
hopes and fears of which life is made. He remembered Lenore, now. Her
image was not just a lovely photograph of a past day,—a silvery
daguerreotype of a happiness forgotten. He remembered again his debt of
service to her, his dear companionship for Bess, his dreams of escape
from the island. Rallying his scattered faculties, he tried to analyze
his desperate position.

The shelf on which he had fallen was scarcely wider than his body, and
only because it projected at an upward incline from the sheer wall had
he come to rest upon it. It was perhaps fifty feet long, practically on
a level all the way. The wall was sheer for ten feet above him; beyond
the shelf was only the impenetrable darkness of the crevice, extending
apparently into the bowels of the earth.

Could he climb the wall? There was no other conceivable possibility of
rescue. No one knew where he was; no one would come to look for him.
Moreover, his escape must be immediate,—within a few hours at most.
There was no waiting for Doomsdorf to come to look for him in the
morning light. He was dressed in the warmest clothes, but even these
could not repel the frightful cold of the glaciers.

Cool-headed, with perfect self-mastery, he shifted himself on the ledge
to determine if he had been injured in the fall. He was drawn and
shuddering with pain, but that alone was not an index. Often the more
serious injuries result in a temporary paralysis that precludes pain. If
any bones were broken he was beaten at the start. But his arms and legs
moved in obedience to his will, and there seemed nothing to fear from
this.

Very cautiously, in imminent danger of pitching backward into the abyss,
he climbed to his feet. He was a tall man, but his hands, reaching up,
did not come within two feet of the ledge. And there was nothing
whatever for his hands to cling to.

If only there were irregularities in the ice. With a surge of hope he
thought of his axe.

This tool, however, had either fallen into the crevice or had dropped
from his shoulder and lay on the ice above. But there remained his clasp
knife. He drew it carefully from his pocket.

Already he felt the icy chill of the glacier stealing through him, the
cold fingers of death itself. He must lose no time in going to work. He
began to cut, two feet above the ledge, a sharp-edged hole in the ice.

Brittle ice is not easy to cut with a knife. It was a slow, painful
process. He knew at once that he must work with care,—any irregular cut
would not give him foothold. But Ned was working for his life; and his
hand was facile as never before.

He finished the cut at last, then started on another a foot above. He
hewed out a foothold with great care.

In spite of his warm gloves and the hard exercise of cutting, the
numbing, biting frost was getting to his fingers. But he mustn’t let his
hand grow stiff and awkward. He did not forget that the handholds, to
which his fingers must cling, were yet to be made. They had to be
finished with even greater skill than the footholds. Very wisely, he
turned to them next.

He made the first of them as high as he could reach. Then he put one in
about a foot below. Three more footholds were put in at about
twelve-inch intervals between.

At that point he found it necessary to stop and spend a few of his
precious moments in rest. He must not let fatigue dull him and take the
cunning from his hand. But the first stage of the work was
done;—deliverance looked already immeasurably nearer. If he could climb
up, then cling on and cut a new hold! Placing the knife between his
teeth, he put his moccasin into the first foothold and pulled himself
up.

It did not take long, however, to convince him that the remaining work
bordered practically on the impossible. These holes in the ice were not
like irregularities in stone. The fingers slipped over them: it was
almost impossible to cling on with both hands, much less one. But
clinging with all his might, he tried to free his right hand to procure
his knife.

He made it at last, and at a frightful cost of nervous energy succeeded
in cutting some sort of a gash in the icy wall above his head. Standing
so close he could not look up, it was impossible to do more than hack
out a ragged hole. And because life lay this way and no other, he put
the blade once more between his teeth, reached his right hand into the
hole, and tried to pull himself up again.

But disaster, bitter and complete, followed that attempt. His numbing
hands failed to hold under the strain, and he slipped all the way back
to his shelf. Something rang sharply against the ice wall, far below
him.

He did not hear it again; but the truth went home to him in one
despairing instant. Try as hard as he could, his jaws had released their
hold upon the knife, and it had fallen into the depths of the crevice
below. He was not in the least aware of the vicious wound its blade had
cut in his shoulder, of the warm blood that was trickling down under his
furs. He only knew, with that cold fatalism with which the woodsman
regards life, that he had fought a good fight,—and he had lost.

There was no use of trying any more. He had no other knife or axe, no
tool that could hack a hole in the icy wall. What other things he
carried about him—the furs on his back, his box of safety matches, and
other minor implements of his trade—could not help him in the least.
And soon it became increasingly difficult to think either upon the fight
he had made or the fate that awaited him.

It was hard to remember anything but the growing cold.

It hurt worst in his hands. So he took to rubbing his hands together,
hard as he could. He felt the blood surge back into them, and soon they
were fairly warm in the great mittens of fur.

Directly he settled back on his icy shelf and drew the pelts he had
taken that day over his shoulders. There was but one hope left; and such
as it was, it was curiously allied with despair. He hoped that he had
heard true that when frost steals into the veins it comes with
gentleness and ease. Perhaps he would simply go to sleep.

It wouldn’t be a long time. In fact, a great drowsiness, not unpleasant
but rather peaceful, was already settling upon him. The cold of the
glacier was deadly. Not many moments remained of his time on earth. The
death that dwells in the Arctic ice is mercifully swift.

He had counted on hours, at least. He had even anticipated lingering far
into the night. But this was only _moments_! The cleft above him was
still distinctly gray.

The ice was creeping again into his fingers. But he wouldn’t try to
shake it out again. And now, little, stabbing blades of cold were
beginning to pierce his heart.

But likely he would go to sleep before they really began to trouble him.
The northern night deepened around him. The wind sprang up and moved
softly over the pale ice above him. The day was done.




                                  XXV


Bess had made good time along her line that day. She had not forgotten
that this was the day of her rendezvous with Ned, and by walking
swiftly, eschewing even short rests, carrying her larger trophies into
the cabin to skin rather than halting and thawing them out over a fire,
she arrived at the Forks hut at midafternoon. She began at once to make
preparations for Ned’s coming.

She built a roaring fire in the little, rusted stove, knowing well the
blessing it would be to the tired trapper, coming in with his load of
furs. She started supper so that the hot meal would be ready upon his
arrival. Then she began to watch the hillside for his coming.

It always gave her a pleasant glow to see the little, moving spot of
black at the edge of the timber. Because of a vague depression that she
had been unable all day to shake off, she anticipated it especially now.
They always had such cheery times together, perched on opposite sides of
the little stove. To Bess they redeemed the whole, weary week of toil.
It was true that their relations were of companionship only; but this
was dear enough. If, long ago, her dreams had gone out to him with
deeper meaning, surely she had conquered them by now,—never to set her
heart leaping at a friendly word, never to carry her, at the edge of
slumber, into a warm, beloved realm of exquisite fancy. Bess had
undergone training too. These days in the snow had strengthened her and
steeled her to face the truth; and even, in a measure, to reconcile
herself to the truth. She had tried to make her heart content with what
she had, and surely she was beginning to succeed.

Ned was a little past his usual time to-night. Her depression deepened,
and she couldn’t fight it off. This North was so remorseless and so
cruel, laying so many pitfalls for the unsuspecting. It was strange what
blind terror swept through her at just the thought of disaster befalling
Ned. It made her doubt herself, her own mastery of her heart. She never
considered the dangers that lay in her own path, only those in his. At
the end of a miserable hour she straightened, scarcely able to believe
her eyes.

On the glare ice of the glacier, a mile straight up the ridge from the
cabin, she saw the figure of a man. Far as it was, one glance told her
it was not merely a creature of the wild, a bear disturbed in his winter
sleep or a caribou standing facing her. It was Ned, of course, taking
the perilous path over the ice, instead of keeping to the blazed trail
of his trap line. On the slight downward slope toward her, clearly
outlined against the white ice, she could see every step he took.

He was walking boldly over the glassy surface. Didn’t he know its
terrors, the danger of slipping on the icy shelves and falling to his
death, the deep crevices shunned by the wild creatures? She watched
every step with anxious gaze. When he was almost to safety she saw him
stop, draw back a few paces, and then come forward at a leaping pace.

What happened thereafter came too fast for her eyes to follow. One
instant she saw his form distinctly as he ran. The next, and the ice lay
white and bare in the wan light, and Ned had disappeared as if by a
magician’s magic.

For one moment she gazed in growing horror. There was no ice promontory
behind which he was hidden, nor did he reappear again. And peering
closely, she made out a faint, dark line, like a pencil mark on the ice,
just where Ned had disappeared.

The truth went home in a flash. The dark line indicated a crevice, to
the bottom of which no living thing may fall and live. Yet to such
little wild creatures, red-eyed ermine and his fellows that might have
been watching her from the snow in front, Bess gave no outward sign that
she had seen or that she understood.

She stood almost motionless at first. Her eyes were toneless, lightless
holes in her white face; the face itself seemed utterly blank. She
seemed to be drawing within herself, into an eerie dream world of her
own, as if seeking shelter from some dire, unthinkable thing that lay
without. She was hardly conscious, as far as the usual outward
consciousness is concerned; unaware of herself, unaware of the snow
fields about her and the deepening cold; unaware of the onward march of
time. She seemed like a child, hovering between life and death in the
scourge of some dread, childhood malady.

Slowly her lips drew in a smile; a smile ineffably sweet, tender as the
watch of angels. It was as if the dying child had smiled to reassure its
sobbing mother, to tell her that all was well, that she must dry her
tears. “It isn’t true,” she whispered, there in the stillness. “It
couldn’t be true—not to Ned. There is some way out—some mistake.”

She turned into the cabin, bent, and added fresh fuel to the stove. Its
heat scorched her face, and she put up her hand to shield it. The cabin
should be warm, when she brought Ned home. She mustn’t let the cold
creep in. She must not forget the _cold_, always watching for every
little opening. Perhaps he would want food too: she glanced into the
iron pot on the stove. Then, acting more by instinct than by conscious
thought, she began to look about for such tools as she would need in the
work to follow.

There was a piece of rope, used once on a hand sled, hanging on the
wall; but it was only about eight feet in length. Surely it was not long
enough to aid her, yet it was all she had. Next, she removed a blanket
from her cot and threw it over her shoulder. There might be need of this
too,—further protection against the cold.

Heretofore she had moved slowly, hardly aware of her own acts; but now
she was beginning to master herself again. She mustn’t linger here. She
must make her spirit waken to life, her muscles spring to action.
Carrying her rope and her blanket, she went out the door, closed it
behind her, and started up toward the glacier.

Only one thing was real in that long mile; and all things else were
vague and shadowy as faces in a remembered dream. The one reality was
the dark line, ever broader and more distinct, that lay across the ice
where Ned had disappeared. The hope she had clung to all the way, that
it was merely a shallow hollow in the ice and not one of the dread
crevices that seem to go to the bowels of the earth, was evidently
without the foundation of fact.

Weary lifetimes passed away before ever she reached the first, steep
cliff of the glacier. She had to follow along its base, on to the high
ground toward which Ned had been heading, finally crossing back to the
smooth table of the glacier itself. There was no chance for a mistake
now. The gash in the ice was all too plain.

At last she stood at the very edge of the yawning seam, staring down
into the unutterable blackness below. Not even _light_ could exist in
the murky depths of the crevice, much less fragile human life. The day
was not yet dead, twilight was still gray about her; but the crevice
itself seemed full of ink clear to its mouth. And Ned’s axe, lying just
at the edge of the chasm, showed where he had fallen.

There was no use of seeking farther; of calling into the lightless
depths. The story was all too plain. Very quietly, she lay down on the
ice, trying to peer into the blackness below; but it was with no hope of
bringing the fallen back to her again. Ned was lost to her, as a falling
star is lost to the star clusters in the sky.

It never occurred to her that she would ever get upon her feet again.
The game had been played and lost. There was no need of braving the snow
again, of fighting her way down the trap line in the bitter dawns. The
star she had followed had fallen; the flame of her altar had burned out.

She knew now why she had ever fought the fight at all. It was not
through any love of life, or any hope of deliverance in the end. It had
all been for Ned. She had denied it before, but the truth was plain
enough now. It was her love for Ned that had kept her shoulders straight
under the killing labor, had sheltered her spirit from the curse of cold
and storm, that had borne her aloft out of the power of this savage land
to harm. She knew now why she had not given up long since.

Was that the way of woman’s heart, to sustain her through a thousand
unutterable miseries only that she might be crushed in the end? Was life
no more than this? She had been content to live on, to endure all, just
to be near him and watch over him to the end; but there was no need of
lingering now. The fire in the cabin could burn down, and the fire of
her spirit could flicker out in the ever-deepening cold.

She had tried to blind herself to the truth, yet always, in the secret
places of her soul, she had known. It was not that she ever had hope of
Ned’s love. Lenore would get that: Ned’s devotion to her had never
faltered yet. But it was enough just to be near, to work beside him, to
care for him to the full limit of her mortal power. She knew now that
all the tears she had shed had been for him: not for the lash of cold on
her own body, but on his; not for her own miseries, but those that had
so often brought Ned clear into the shadow of death. And now the final
blow had fallen. She could lie still on the ice and let the wind cry by
in triumph above her.

She had loved every little moment with him, on the nights of their
rendezvous. She had loved him even at first, before ever his manhood
came upon him, but her love had been an infinite, an ineffable thing in
these last few weeks of his greatness. She had watched his slow growth;
every one of his victories had been a victory to her; and she had loved
every fresh manifestation of his new strength. But oh, she had loved his
boyishness too. His queer, crooked smile, his brown hair curling over
his brow, his laugh and his eyes,—all had moved her and glorified her
beyond any power of hers to tell.

She called his name into the chasm depths, and some measure of
self-control returned to her when she heard the weird, rolling echo.
Perhaps she shouldn’t give up yet. It wouldn’t be Ned’s way to yield to
despair until the last, faint flame of hope had burned out. Perhaps the
crevice was not of such vast depth as she had been taught to believe.
Perhaps even now the man she loved was lying, shattered but not dead,
only a few feet below her in the darkness. She had come swiftly; perhaps
the deadly cold had not yet had time to claim him. She called again,
loudly as she could.

And that cry did not go unheard. Ned had given up but a few moments
before Bess had come, and her full voice carried clearly into the
strange, misty realm of semi-consciousness into which he had drifted.
And this manhood that had lately grown upon him would not let him shut
his ears to this sobbing appeal. His own voice, sounding weird and
hollow as the voice of the dead in that immeasurable abyss, came back in
answer.

“Here I am, Bess,” he said. “You’ll have to work quick.”




                                  XXVI


It was bitter hard for Ned to fight his way back through death’s
twilight. The cold had hold of him, its triumph was near, and it would
not let him go without a savage battle that seemed to wrack the man in
twain. So far as his own wishes went, he only wanted to drift on,
farther and farther into the twilight ocean, and never return to the
cursed island again. But Bess was calling him, and he couldn’t deny her.
Perhaps in a distant cabin Lenore called him too.

Indeed, the call upon him was more urgent than ever before. Before, his
thought had always been for Lenore, but Bess too was a factor now. In
that utter darkness Ned saw more clearly than ever before in his life,
and while his eyes searched only for Lenore, he kept seeing Bess too.
Bess with her never-failing smile of encouragement, her soft beauty that
had held him, in spite of himself, on their nights at Forks cabin. Her
need of him was real, threatened by Doomsdorf as she was, and he mustn’t
leave her sobbing so forlornly on the ice above. Lenore was first, of
course,—his duty to her reason enough for making a mighty fight. But
Bess’s pleading moved him deeply.

He summoned every ounce of courage and determination that he had and
tried to shake the frost from his brain. “You’ll have to work quick,” he
warned again. His voice was stronger now, but softened with a tenderness
beyond her most reckless dreams. “Don’t be too hopeful—I haven’t much
left in me. What can you do?”

The girl who answered him was in no way the lost and hopeless mortal
that had lain sobbing on the ice. Her scattered, weakened faculties had
swept back to her in all their strength, at the first sound of his
voice. _He was alive_, and it is the code of the North, learned in these
dreadful months, that so long as a spark still glows the battle must not
be given over. There was something to fight for now. The fighting side
of her that Ned had seen so often swept swiftly into dominance. At once
she was a cold blade, true and sure; brain and body in perfect
discipline.

“How far are you?” she asked. “I can’t see——”

“About ten feet—but I can’t get up without help.”

“Can you stand up?”

“Yes.” Forcing himself to the last ounce of his nerve and courage, he
drew himself erect. Reaching upward, his hands were less than a yard
from the top of the crevice.

Bess did not make the mistake of trying to reach down to him. She
conquered the impulse at once, realizing that any weight at all,
unsupported as she was, would draw her into the ravine. Even the rope
would be of no use until she had something firm to which to attach it.

“I’ve dug holes most of the way up,” he told her. “I might try to climb
’em, with a little help——”

“Are you at the bottom of the crevice?”

“The bottom is hundreds of feet below me. I’m on a ledge about three
feet wide.”

“Then stand still till I can really help you. I can’t pull you now
without being pulled in myself, and if you’d fall back you’d probably
roll off the ledge. The ice is like glass. Ned, are you good for ten
minutes more——”

“I don’t know——”

“It’s the only chance.” Again her tone was pleading. “Keep the blood
moving for ten minutes more, Ned. Oh, tell me you’ll try——”

Deep in the gloom she thought she heard him laugh—only a few, little
syllables, wan and strange in the silence—and it was all the answer she
needed. He would fight on for ten minutes more. He would struggle
against the cold until she could rescue him.

“Here’s a blanket,” she told him swiftly. “Put it around you, if you
can, without danger of rolling off.”

She dropped him the great covering she had brought; then in a single,
deerlike motion, she leaped the narrow crevice. On the opposite side she
procured Ned’s axe; then she turned, and half running, half gliding on
the ice, sped toward the nearest timber,—a number of stunted spruce two
hundred yards distant at the far edge of the glacier.

Bess had need of her woodsman’s knowledge now. Never before had her
blows been so true, so telling on the tough wood. Before, in the fuel
cutting of months before, she had wielded the axe in fear of the lash,
but to-day she worked for Ned’s life, for the one dream that mattered
yet. Almost at once she had done her work and was started back with a
tough pole, eight feet long and four inches in diameter, balanced on her
sturdy shoulder.

Ned was still strong enough to answer her call when she returned, and
the dim light still permitted him to see her lay the pole she had cut as
a bridge across the crevice, cutting notches in the ice to hold it firm.
Swiftly she tied one end of her rope to the pole and dropped the other
to him.

“Can you climb up?” she asked him. Everything had centered down to
this—whether he still had strength to climb the rope.

“Just watch me,” was the answer.

From that instant, she knew that she had won. The spirit behind his
words would never falter, with victory so near. He dug his moccasins
into the holes he had hacked in the ice, meanwhile working upward, hand
over hand. To fall meant to die,—but Ned didn’t fall.

It was a hard fight, weakened as he was, but soon the girl’s reaching
hands caught his sleeve, then his coat; finally they were fastened
firmly, lifting with all the girl’s strength, under the great arms. His
hand seized the pole, and he gave a great upward lunge. And then he was
lying on the ice beside her, fighting for breath, not daring to believe
that he was safe.

But the usual cool, half-mirthful remark that, in many little crises,
Ned had learned to expect from Bess was not forthcoming to-night. Nor
were the sounds in the twilight merely those of heavy breathing. The
strain was over, and Bess had given way to the urge of her heart at
last. Her tears flowed unchecked, whether of sorrow or happiness even
she did not know.

The man crawled toward her, moved by an urge beyond him, and for a
single moment his strong arms pressed her close. “Don’t cry, little
pal,” he told her. He smiled, a strangely boyish, happy smile, into her
eyes. Very softly, reverently he kissed her wet eyelids, then stilled
her trembling lips with his own. He smiled again, a great good-humor
taking hold of him. “You’re too big a girl to cry!”

It was he, to-night, who had to relieve with humor a situation that
would have soon been out of bounds. Yet all at once he saw that the
little sentence had meaning far beyond what he had intended. She _had_
shown bigness to-night,—a greatness of spirit and strength that left
him wondering and reverent. The battle she had fought to save his life
was no less than his own waged with the white wolf, weeks before.

Here was another who had stood the gaff! She too knew what it was to
take the fighting chance. Presently he knew, by light of this adventure
on the ice, that Bess was more than mere companion in toil and hardship,
some one to shelter and protect. She was a _comrade-at-arms_,—such a
fortress of strength as the best of women have always been to the men
they loved.

He did not know whether or not she loved him. It didn’t affect the point
that, in a crisis, she had shown the temper of her steel! He did not
stand alone henceforth. In the struggle for freedom that was to come
here was an ally on whom, to the very gates of death, he could
implicitly rely.




                                 XXVII


When food and warmth had brought complete recovery, Ned took up with
Bess the problem of deliverance from the island. He found that for weeks
she had been thinking along the same line, and like him, she had as yet
failed to hit upon any plan that offered the least chance for success.
The subject held them late into the night.

There was no need of a formal pact between them. Each of them realized
that if ever the matter came to the crisis, the other could be relied
upon to the last ditch. They stood together on that. Whatever the one
attempted, the other would carry through. And because of their mutual
trust, both felt more certain than ever of their ultimate triumph.

They took different trails in the dawn, following the long circle of
their trap lines. All the way they pondered on this same problem,
conceiving a plan only to reject it because of some unsurmountable
obstacle to its success; dwelling upon the project every hour and
dreaming about it at night. But Ned was far as ever from a conclusion
when, three days later, he followed the beach on the way to the home
cabin.

He had watched with deadened interest the drama of the wild things about
him these last days; but when he was less than a mile from home he had
cause to remember it again. To his great amazement he found at the edge
of the ice the fresh track of one of the large island bears.

There was nothing to tell for sure what had awakened the great creature
prematurely from its winter sleep. The expected date of awakening was
still many weeks off. But the grizzly is notoriously irregular in his
habits; and experienced naturalists have long since ceased to be
surprised at whatever he may do. Ned reasoned at once that the present
mild weather had merely beguiled the old veteran from his lair (the size
of the track indicated a patriarch among the bears) and he was simply
enjoying the late winter sunlight until a cold spell should drive him in
again.

The sight of the great imprint was a welcome one to Ned, not alone
because the wakening forecasted, perhaps, an early spring, but because
he was in immediate need of bear fur. His own coat was worn; besides, he
was planning a suit of cold-proof garments for Lenore, to be used
perhaps in their final flight across the ice. And he saw at once that
conditions were favorable for trapping the great creature.

Scarcely a quarter of a mile ahead, in a little pass that led through
the shore crags down to the beach, Doomsdorf had left one of his most
powerful bear traps. Ned had seen it many times as he had clambered
through on a short cut to the cabin. Because it lay in a natural runway
for game—one of the few spots where the shore crags could be easily
surmounted—it was at least possible that the huge bear might fall into
it, on his return to his lair in the hills.

Ned hurried on, and in a few moments had dug out the great trap from its
covering of snow. For a moment he actually doubted his power to set it.
It was of obsolete type, mighty-springed, and its jaws were of a width
forbidden by all laws of trapping in civilized lands, yet Ned did not
doubt its efficiency. Its mighty irons had rusted; but not even a bear’s
incalculable might could shatter them.

This was not to be a bait set, so his success depended upon the skill
with which he concealed the trap. First he carefully refilled the
excavation he had made in digging out the trap; then he dug a shallow
hole in the snow in the narrowest part of the pass. Here he set the
trap, utilizing all the power of his mighty muscles, and spread a light
covering of snow above.

It was a delicate piece of work. Ned had no wish for the cruel jaws to
snap shut as he was working above them. But his heart was in the
venture, for all his hatred of the cruelty of the device; and he covered
up his tracks with veteran’s skill. Then he quietly withdrew, retracing
his steps and following the shore line toward the home cabin.

Surely the mighty strength that had set the powerful spring and the
skill that covered up all traces of his work could succeed at last in
freeing him from slavery.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bess had reached the shelter first, and she was particularly relieved to
see Ned’s tall form swinging toward her along the shore. Doomsdorf was
in a particularly ominous mood to-night. The curious glitter in his
magnetic eyes was more pronounced than she had ever seen it,—catlike in
the shadows, steely in the lantern light; and his cruel savagery was
just at the surface, ready to be wakened. Worst of all, the gaze he bent
toward her was especially eager to-night, horrible to her as the cold
touch of a reptile.

Every time she glanced up she found him regarding her, and he followed
her with his eyes when she moved. Yet she dared not seek shelter in the
new cabin, for the simple reason that she was afraid Doomsdorf would
follow her there. Until Ned came, her defense was solely the presence of
Lenore and the squaw.

There was no particular warmth in her meeting with Ned. Doomsdorf’s eyes
were still upon her, and she was careful to keep any hint of the new
understanding out of her face and eyes. Ned’s weather-beaten countenance
was as expressionless as Sindy’s own.

He refused to be depressed, at once, by the air of suspense and
impending disaster that hung over the cabin. Thus was the day of his
home-coming—looked forward to throughout the bitter days of his trap
line—and was not Lenore waiting, beautiful in the lantern light, for
him to speak to her? Yet the old exultation was somehow missing
to-night. His thoughts kept turning back to the pact he had made with
Bess—to their dream of deliverance. What was more curious, Lenore’s
lack of warmth that had come to be a matter of course in their weekly
meetings almost failed to hurt. His mind was so busy with the problem of
their freedom that he escaped the usual despondency that had crept upon
him so many times before.

It was a peculiar paradox that while this was his day of days, the one
day in five that seemed to justify his continued life, it was always the
most hopeless and miserable, simply because of Lenore’s attitude toward
him. It wasn’t entirely her failure to respond to his own ardor. The
inevitable disappointment lay as much in his own attitude toward her. It
was as much the things she did as those she failed to do that depressed
him; the questions she asked, her patronage of Bess, her self-pitying
complaints. Always he experienced a sense of some great
omission,—perhaps only his failure to feel the old delight and
exultation that the mere fact of her presence used to impart to him. He
found it increasingly hard to give full attention to her; to let his
eyes dwell always on her beauty and his ears give heed to her wrongs.

She found him preoccupied, and as a result increased her complaints. But
they left him cold to-night. Her lot was happiness itself compared to
that of Bess, and yet Bess’s spirit of good sportsmanship and courage
was entirely absent in her. But he must not keep comparing her with
Bess. Destruction lay that way! He must continue to adore her for her
beauty, the charm that used to hold him entranced.

She was all he had asked for in his old life. If they ever gained
freedom, he would, in all probability, find in her all that he could
desire in the future. They could take up their old love anew, and
doubtless she would give him all the happiness he had a right to
expect—more than he deserved. Likely enough, if the test ever came, she
would show that her metal too was the finest, tempered steel! At least
he could continue to believe in her until he had cause to lose faith.

And the test was not far distant now. He was not blind to the gathering
storm; at any moment there might ensue a crisis that would embroil all
three of them in a struggle to the death. Not one of them could escape,
Lenore no more than himself or Bess. She was one of the
triumvirate,—and surely she would stand with them to the last.

If the crisis could only be postponed until they had made full
preparations for it! Yet in one glance, in which he traced down
Doomsdorf’s fiery gaze and found it centered upon Bess, he knew that any
instant might bring the storm!

He felt his own anger rising. A dark fury, scarcely controllable, swept
over him at the insult of that creeping, serpent gaze upon Bess’s
beauty. But he mustn’t give way to it yet. He must hold himself for the
last, dread instant of need.

The four of them gathered about the little, rough table, and again the
squaw served them, from the shadows. It was a strange picture, there in
the lantern light,—the imperturbable face of the squaw, always half in
shadow; the lurid wild-beast eyes of Doomsdorf gleaming under his shaggy
brows; Lenore’s beauty a thing to hold the eyes; and Bess horrified and
fearful at what the next moment might bring. Hardly a word was exchanged
from the meal’s beginning to its end. Bess tried to talk, so as to
divert Doomsdorf’s sinister thoughts, but the words would not come to
her lips. The man seemed eager to finish the meal.

As soon as they had moved from the table toward the little stove, and
the squaw had begun the work of clearing away the dishes, Doomsdorf
halted at Bess’s side. For a moment he gazed down at her, a great hand
resting on her chair.

“You’re a pretty little hell-cat,” he told her, in curiously muffled
tones. “What makes you such a fighter?”

She tried to meet his eyes. “I have to be, in this climate,” she
answered. “Where would you get your furs——”

He uttered one great hoarse syllable, as if in the beginning of
laughter. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. You’d sooner walk
ten miles through the snow than give an inch, wouldn’t you?” His hand
reached, closing gently upon her arm, and a shiver of repulsion passed
over her. “That’s a fine little muscle—but you don’t want to work it
off. Why don’t you show a little friendship?”

The girl looked with difficulty into his great, drawn face. Ned
stiffened, wondering if the moment of crisis were at hand at last.
Lenore watched appalled, but the native went on about her tasks as if
she hadn’t heard.

“You can’t expect—much friendship—from a prisoner,” Bess told him
brokenly. Her face, so white in the yellow lantern light, her trembling
lips, most of all the appeal for mercy in her child’s eyes—raised to
this beast compared with whom even the North was merciful—wakened
surging, desperate anger in Ned. The room turned red before his eyes,
his muscles quivered, and he was rapidly reaching that point wherein his
self-control, on which life itself depended, was jeopardized. Yet he
must hold himself with an iron hand. He must wait to the last instant of
need. Everything depended on that, in avoiding the crisis until he had
made some measure of preparation.

The loss of his long-bladed skinning knife increased the odds against
him. He had put considerable reliance in its hair-splitting blade; and
since he had perfected the sheath of caribou leather whereby he could
keep it open in his pocket, he had hoped that it might be the means of
freedom. In the three days since its loss he had been obliged to carry
one of the butcher knives from the supplies at Forks cabin,—a sharp
enough implement, but without the dagger point that would be so deadly
in close work. However, he moved his arm so that he could reach the hilt
of the knife in one motion.

But with the uncanny watchfulness of a cat Doomsdorf saw the movement.
For one breath Ned’s life was suspended by a hair: Doomsdorf’s first
impulse was to seize his pistol and bore the younger man through and
through with lead. It was a mere madman’s whim that he refrained: he had
a more entertaining fate in store for Ned when affairs finally reached a
crisis. He leered down in contempt.

“Your little friend seems to be getting nervous,” he remarked easily to
Bess. “So not to disturb him further, let’s you and I go to the new
cabin. I’ve taken some fine pelts lately—I want you to see them. You
need a new coat.”

He seemed to be aware of the gathering suspense, and it thrilled his
diseased nerves with exultation. But there was, from his listeners, but
one significant response at first to the evil suggestion that he made
with such iniquitous fires in his wild eyes and such a strange,
suppressed tone in his voice. Bess’s expression did not change. It had
already revealed the uttermost depths of dread. Ned still held himself,
cold, now, as a serpent, waiting for his chance. But the squaw paused a
single instant in her work. For one breath they failed to hear the
clatter of her pans. But seemingly indifferent, she immediately went
back to her toil.

Bess shook her head in desperate appeal. “Wait till morning,” she
pleaded. “I’m tired now——”

Ned saw by the gathering fury of their master’s face that her refusal
would only bring on the crisis, so he leaped swiftly into the breach.
“Sure, Bess, let’s go to look at them,” he said. “I’m anxious to see ’em
too——”

Doomsdorf whirled to him, and his gaze was as a trial of fire to Ned.
Yet the latter did not flinch. For a long second they regarded each
other in implacable hatred, and then Doomsdorf’s sudden start told that
he had been visited by inspiration. His leering look of contempt was
almost a smile. “Sure, come along,” he said. “I’ve got something to say
to you too. To spare Lenore’s feelings—we’ll go to the other cabin.”

Ned was not in the least deceived by this reference to Lenore. Doomsdorf
had further cause, other than regard for Lenore’s sensibilities, for
continuing their conversation in the other cabin. What it was Ned did
not know, and he dared not think. And he had a vague impression that
while he and Doomsdorf had waged their battle of eyes, Bess had
mysteriously moved from her position. He had left her just at
Doomsdorf’s right; when he saw her again she was fully ten feet distant,
within a few feet of the cupboards where the squaw kept many of the food
supplies, and now was busy with her parka of caribou skin.

She led the way out into the clear, icy night. It was one of those
still, clear, late winter evenings, not so cold as it had been, when the
frozen, snow-swept world gave no image of reality to the senses. The
snow wastes and the velvet depths of the sky were lurid, flashing with a
thousand ever-changing hues from the giant kaleidoscope of the Northern
Lights. Moved and held by this wonder that never grows old to the
northern man, Doomsdorf halted them just without the cabin door.

As they watched, the procession of colors suddenly ceased, leaving world
and sky an incredible monochrome in red. It was wanly red at first, but
the warm hue slowly deepened until one could imagine that the spirits of
all the dead, aroused for some cosmic holiday, were lighting flares of
red fire. It was a strange sight even for these latitudes; but this
lambent mystery is ever beyond the ken of man. The name that Doomsdorf
had given his island had never seemed so fitting as now. In the carmine
glow the bearded face of the master of the isle was suddenly the
red-hued visage of Satan.

But the light died away at last, and the falling darkness called them
back to themselves. The lust that fired Doomsdorf’s blood, the fear like
the Arctic cold in the veins of Ned and Bess was all worldly enough. For
a moment he studied their pale, tense faces.

“There’s no need of going farther,” he said in his deep, rumbling voice.
“There was no need of even coming here. You seem to be forgetting, you
two, where you are—all the things I told you at first.”

He paused, and his voice had dropped, and the tone was strange and even,
dreadful to hear, when he spoke again. “I’ve evidently been too easy
with you,” he went on. “I’ll see that I correct that fault in the
future. You, Ned, made a serious mistake when you interfered in this
matter to-night. I’ll see if I can’t teach you to keep your place. And
Bess—long ago I told you that your body and your soul were mine—to do
with what I liked. You seemed to have forgotten—but I intend that you
will call it to mind—again.”

But Ned still faced him when he paused, eyes steadfast, his face an iron
gray in the wan light. His training had been hard and true, and he still
found strength to stand erect.

“I want to tell you this—in reply,” he answered in the clear, firm
voice of one who has mastered fear. “We know well enough what you can do
to us. But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to yield to you—to every
one of your evil wishes. Life isn’t so pleasant to either of us that
we’ll submit to everything in order to live. No matter what you do to
me—I know what I’ll do to you if you try to carry out your wicked
designs by force.”

Doomsdorf eyed him calmly, but the smile of contempt was wholly gone
from his lips. “You’ll show fight?” he asked.

“With every ounce I’ve got! You may master me—with every advantage of
weapons and physical strength—but you’ll have to kill me first. Bess
will kill herself before she’ll yield to you. You won’t be better
off—you’ll simply have no one to do your trapping for you. It isn’t
worth it, Doomsdorf.”

He eyed them a moment, coolly and casually. “When I want anything, Ned,
I want it bad enough to pay all I’ve got for it,” he said in a
remarkably even tone. “Don’t presume that I value your lives so much
that I’ll turn one step from my course. Besides, Ned—you won’t be
here!”

Ned’s eyes widened, as he tried to read his meaning. Doomsdorf laughed
softly in the silence. “You won’t be here!” he repeated. “You fool—do
you think I’d let you get in my way? It will rest as it is to-night.
To-morrow morning you start out to tend your traps—and you will tend
Bess’s lines as well as your own. She will stay here—with me—from now
on.”

Ned felt his muscles hardening to steel. “I won’t leave her to you——”

“You won’t? Don’t make any mistake on that point. If you are not on your
way by sun-up, you get a hundred—from the _knout_. You won’t be able to
leave for some time after that—but neither will you be able to
interfere with what doesn’t concern you. I’ll give you a few in the
dawn—just as a sample to show what they’re like. Nor am I afraid of
Bess killing herself. It’s cold and dark here, but it’s colder and
darker—There. She’ll stand a lot before she’ll do that.”

“That’s definite?” Ned asked.

“The truest words I ever spoke. I’ve never gone back on a promise yet.”

“And believe me, I won’t go back on mine. If that’s all you have to
say——”

“That’s quite all. Think it over—you’ll find it isn’t so bad. And
now—good night.”

He bowed to them, in mock politeness. Then he turned back into his
cabin.

For a moment his two prisoners stood inert, utterly motionless in the
wan light. Ned started to turn to her, still held by his own dark
thoughts, but at the first glance of her white, set face he whirled in
the most breathless amazement. It was in no way the stricken, terrified
countenance that he had seen a few moments before. The lips were firm,
the eyes deep and strange; even in the half-light he could see her look
of inexorable purpose.

Some great resolve had come to her,—some sweeping emotion that might
even be akin to hope. Was she planning suicide? Was _that_ the meaning
of this new look of iron resolution in her face? He could conceive of no
other explanation; in self-inflicted death alone lay deliverance from
Doomsdorf’s lust. He dared not hope for any happier freedom.

He reached groping hands to hers. “You don’t mean”—he gasped, hardly
able to make his lips move in speech—“you don’t intend——?”

“To kill myself? Not yet, by a long way.” The girl’s hand slipped
cautiously out from the pocket of her jacket, showing him what seemed to
be a small, square box of tin. But the light was too dim for him to make
out the words on the paper label. “I got this from the shelf—just as we
left the cabin.”

The hopeful tones in her voice was the happiest sound Ned had heard
since he had come to the island.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“Nothing very much—but yet—a chance for freedom. Come into the cabin
where we can scratch a match.”

They moved into the newer hut of logs, and there Bess showed him the
humble article in which lay her hopes. It was merely a tin of fine snuff
from among Doomsdorf’s personal supplies.




                                 XXVIII


Talking in an undertone, not to be heard through the log walls, Bess and
Ned made their hasty plans for deliverance. They gave no sign of the
excitement under which they worked. Seemingly they were unshaken by the
fact that life or death was the issue of the next hour,—the realization
that the absolute crisis was upon them at last. Bess did not recall, in
word or look, the trying experience just passed through. Like Ned she
was wholly self-disciplined, her mind moving cool and sure. Never had
their wilderness training stood them in better stead.

Here, in the cabin they occupied, the assault must be made. The reason
was simply that their plan was defeated at the outset if they attempted
to master Doomsdorf in the squaw’s presence. For all her seeming
impassiveness, she would be like a panther in her lord’s defense: Bess
had had full evidence of that fact the first day in the cabin. And it
was easier to decoy Doomsdorf here than to attempt to entice the squaw
away from her own house.

The fact that their two enemies must be handled singly required the
united efforts of not only Ned and Bess, but Lenore. Two must wait here,
as in ambush, and the third must make some pretext to entice Doomsdorf
from his cabin. This, the easiest part of the work, could fall to
Lenore. Both Ned and Bess realized that in their own hands must lie the
success or failure of the actual assault.

The plan, on perfection, was really very simple. As soon as Lenore came,
she would be sent back to the cabin to bring Doomsdorf. She would need
no further excuse than that Bess had asked to see him: Ned’s knowledge
of the brute’s psychology told him that. The scene just past would be
fresh in his mind, and it would be wholly characteristic of his
measureless arrogance that he would at once assume that Bess had come to
terms. He would read in the request a vindication of his own philosophy,
the triumph of his own ruthless methods; and it would be balm to his
tainted soul to come and hear her beg forgiveness. Likely he would
anticipate complete surrender.

Neither of the two conspirators could do this part of the work so well
as Lenore. For Bess to summon Doomsdorf herself was of course out of the
question; he might easily demand to hear her surrender on the spot. If
Ned went, inviting Doomsdorf to a secret conference with Bess, he would
invite suspicion if he reëntered the newer cabin with him; his obvious
course would be to remain outside and leave the two together. Besides,
Lenore was the natural emissary: a woman herself and thus more likely
chosen for woman’s delicate missions, she was also closer to Doomsdorf
than any other of the three, the one most likely to act as a
confidential agent. Doomsdorf would certainly comply with Bess’s request
to meet him in her cabin. The fact of the squaw’s presence would be
sufficient explanation to him why she would not care to confer with him
in his own.

Ned would be waiting in the newer cabin when Lenore and Doomsdorf
returned. He would immediately excuse himself and pass out the door, at
the same instant that Bess extended a chair for Doomsdorf. And the
instant that he was seated Bess would dash a handful of the blinding
snuff into his eyes.

Ned’s axe leaned just without the cabin door. Doomsdorf would notice it
as he went in: otherwise his suspicions might be aroused. And in his
first instant of agony and blindness, Ned would seize the weapon, dash
back through the door, and make the assault.

The plan was more than a mere fighting chance. It would take Doomsdorf
off his guard. Ned had full trust in Bess’s ability to do her part of
the work; as to his own, he would strike the life from their brute
master with less compassion than he would slay a wolf. He could find no
break, no weak link in the project.

They had scarcely perfected the plan before Lenore appeared, on the way
to her cot. Just an instant she halted, her face and golden head a glory
in the soft light, as she regarded their glittering eyes.

Their eyes alone, luridly bright, told the story. Perhaps Ned was
slightly pale; nothing that could not be explained by the inroads made
upon him in the critical hour just passed. Perhaps Bess was faintly
flushed at the cheek bones. But those cold, shining eyes held her and
appalled her. “What is it?” she demanded.

Ned moved toward her, reaching for her hands. For a breath he gazed into
her lovely face. “Bess wants you to go—and tell Doomsdorf—to come
here,” he told her. His voice was wholly steady, every word clearly
enunciated; if anything, he spoke somewhat more softly and evenly than
usual. “Just tell him that she wants to see him.”

She took her eyes from his, glancing about with unmistakable
apprehension.

“Why?” she demanded. “He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

“He _will_ be disturbed, before we’re done,” Ned told her grimly. “Just
say that—that she wants to see him. He’ll come—he’ll merely think it
has to do with some business we’ve just been talking over. Go at once,
Lenore—before he goes to bed. That’s your part—to bring him here. You
can leave him at the door if you like—you can even stay at the other
cabin while he comes.”

Her searching eyes suddenly turned in fascinated horror to Bess.
Standing near the open door, so that the room might not be filled with
the dust of the snuff and thus convey a warning to Doomsdorf, she was
emptying the contents of the snuff-box into her handkerchief. Her eyes
gleamed under her brows, and her hands were wholly steady. Lenore
shivered a little, her hands pressing Ned’s.

“What does it mean——?”

“Liberty! _That’s_ what it means, if the plan goes through.” For the
first time Ned’s voice revealed suppressed emotion. Liberty! He spoke
the word as a devout man speaks of God. “It’s the only chance—now or
never,” he went on with perfect coldness. “You’ve got to hold up and do
your share—I know you can. If we succeed—and we’ve got every
chance—it’s freedom, escape from this island and Doomsdorf. If we fail,
it’s likely death—but death couldn’t be any worse than this. So we’ve
nothing to lose—and everything to gain.”

Was it not true? Have not the greatest of all peoples always known that
it is better to die than to live as slaves? It was the very slogan of
the ages—the great inspiration without which human beings are not fit
to live. Overswept by their ardor Lenore turned back through the door.

Her instructions were simple. The easiest task of the three was hers.
Bess took one of the crude chairs, her handkerchief—clutched as if she
had been weeping—in her lap. Ned sat down in one of the other chairs,
intending to arise and excuse himself the instant Doomsdorf appeared.
His muscles burned under his skin.

It was only about fifty yards to the cabin. If Doomsdorf came at all, it
would be in the space of a few seconds. Lenore started out bravely: her
part of the task would be over in a moment. Just a few steps in the
glare of the Northern Lights, just a few listless words to Doomsdorf,
and liberty might easily be her reward. All the triumphs she had once
known might be hers again; luxury instead of hardship, flattery instead
of scorn—freedom instead of slavery. But what if the plan failed? Ned
had spoken bluntly, but beyond all shadow of doubt he had told the
truth. _Death_ would be the answer to all failure. Destruction for all
three.

The door of the cabin closed behind her, and Lenore was alone with the
night. The night was rather temperate, for these latitudes, yet her
first sensation was one of cold. It seemed to be creeping into her
spirit, laying its blasting hand upon her heart. The stars appalled her,
the Northern Lights were unutterably dreadful. She tried to walk faster,
but instead she found herself walking more slowly.

The wind stirred through the little spruce, whispering, whimpering,
trying to reach her ear with messages to which she dared not listen,
chilling her to the core, appalling her with its hushed, half-articulate
song of woe and death. There was nothing but Death on these snowy hills.
It walked them alone. It was Death that looked into her eyes now, so
close she could feel its icy hand on hers, its hollow visage leering
close to her own. Life might be hateful, its persecutions never done,
but Death was darkness, oblivion, a mystery and a terror beyond the
reach of thought.

So faint that it seemed some secret voice within her own being, the
long-drawn singsong cry of a starving wolf trembled down to her from a
distant ridge. Here was another who knew about Death. He knew the woe
and the travail that is life, utter subservience to the raw forces of
the North; and yet he dared not die. This was the basic instinct.
Compared to it freedom was a feeble urge that was soon forgotten. This
whole wintry world was peopled with living creatures who hated life and
yet who dared not leave it. The forces of the North were near and
commanding to-night: they were showing her up, stripping her of her
delusions, laying bare the secret places of her heart and soul, testing
her as she had never been tested before.

Could she too take the fighting chance? Could she too rise above this
awful first fear: master it, scorn it, go her brave way in the face of
it?

But before ever she found her answer, she found herself at the cabin
door. It seemed to her that she had crossed the intervening distance on
the wings of the wind. In as short a time more Doomsdorf could reach the
newer cabin,—and the issue would be decided. Either they would be free,
or under the immutable sentence of death; not just Bess and Ned, but
herself too. She would pay the price with the rest. The wind would sweep
over the island and never hear her voice mingling with its own. For her,
the world would cease to be. The fire was warm and kindly in the hearth,
but she was renouncing it, for she knew not what of cold and terror. Not
just Ned and Bess would pay the price, but she too. Listless, terrified
almost to the verge of collapse, she turned the knob and opened the
door. Doomsdorf had not yet gone to his blankets; otherwise the great
bolt of iron would be in place. He was still sitting before the great,
glowing stove, dreaming his savage dreams. The girl halted before him,
leaning against a chair.

At first her tongue could hardly shape the words. Her throat filled, her
heart faltered in her breast. “Bess—asked to see you,” she told him at
last. “She says for you to come—to her cabin.”

The man regarded her with quickening interest, yet without the slightest
trace of suspicion. It seemed almost incredible that he did not see the
withering terror behind those blanched cheeks and starting eyes and
immediately guess its cause: only his own colossal arrogance saved the
plot at the outset. He was simply so triumphant by what seemed to be
Bess’s surrender, so drunk with his success in handling a problem that
at first had seemed so difficult, that the idea of conspiracy could not
even occur to him. He hardly saw the girl before him; if he had noticed
her at first, she was forgotten at once in his exultation. Even the
lifeless tone in which she spoke made no impression upon him: he only
heard her words.

He got up at once. Lenore stared at him as if in a nightmare. She had
hoped in her deepest heart that he would refuse to come, that the great
test of her soul could be avoided, but already he was starting out the
door. She had done her part; she could wait here, if she liked, till the
thing was settled. In a few seconds more she would know her fate.

Yet she couldn’t stay here and wait. To Doomsdorf’s surprise, she
followed him through the door, into the glare of the Northern Lights.
She did not know what impulse moved her; she was only aware of the
growing cold of terror. Not only Ned and Bess would pay the price if the
plan failed. She must pay too. The thought haunted her, every step,
every wild beat of her heart.

All her life her philosophy had been of Self. And now, that Self was
once more in the forefront of her consciousness, she found her wild
excitement passed away, her brain working clear and sure. The night
itself terrified her no more. She was beyond such imaginative fears as
that: remembrance of _Self_, her _own_ danger and destiny, was making a
woman of her again. Only a fool forgot _Self_ for a dream. Only a madman
risked dear life for an ideal. Once more she was down to realities: she
was steadied and calmed, able to balance one thing with another. And now
she had at her command a superlative craft, even a degree of cunning.

She must not forget that lately her position had been one of comparative
comfort. She was a slave, fawning upon a brute in human form, but the
cold had mostly spared her; and she knew nothing of the terrible
hardships that had been the share of Ned and Bess. Yet she was taking
equal risks with them. It is better to live and hate life than to die;
it is better to be a living slave than a dead freeman. Besides, lately
she had been awarded even greater comforts, won by fawning upon her
master. Her privileges would be taken swiftly from her if the plan
failed. She would not be able to persuade Doomsdorf that she was
guiltless of the plot; she had been the agent in decoying him to the
cabin, and likely enough, since her work took her among the various
cabin stores, he would attribute to her the finding and smuggling out of
the tin of snuff. If the plot failed, Doomsdorf would punish her part
with death,—or else with pain and hardship hardly less than death. If
Bess failed to reach his eyes with the blinding snuff, if Ned’s axe
missed its mark, _she as well as they would be utterly lost_.

Doomsdorf was walking swiftly; already he was halfway from the door. The
desperate fight for freedom was almost at hand. But what was freedom
compared to the fear and darkness that is death?

The ideal sustained her no more. It brought no fire to her frozen heart.
It was an empty word, nothing that could thrill and move one of her kind
and creed. Its meaning flickered out for her, and terror, infinite and
irresistible, seized her like a storm.

There were no depths of ignominy beyond her now. She cried out shrilly
and incoherently, then stumbling through the snow, caught Doomsdorf’s
arm. “No, no,” she cried, fawning with lips and hands. “Don’t go in
there—they’re going to try to kill you. I didn’t have anything to do
with it—I swear I didn’t—and don’t make me suffer when I’ve saved
you——”

He shook her roughly, until the torrent of her words had ceased, and she
was silenced beneath his lurid gaze.

“You say—they’ve got a trap laid for me?” he demanded.

Her hands clasped before him. “Yes, but I say I’m not guilty——”

He pushed her contemptuously from him, and she fell in the snow. Then,
with a half-animal snarl that revealed all too plainly his murderous
rage, he drew his pistol from his holster and started on.




                                  XXIX


Watching through the crack in the door Ned saw the girl’s act; and her
treason was immediately evident to him. Whatever darkness engrossed him
at the sight of the ignoble girl, begging for her little life even at
the cost of her lover’s, showed not at all in his white, set face.
Whatever unspeakable despair came upon him at this ruin of his ideals,
this destruction of all his hopes, it was evidenced neither in his
actions nor in the clear, cool quality of his thought.

No other crisis had ever found him better disciplined. His mind seemed
to circumscribe the whole, dread situation in an instant. He turned, met
Bess’s straightforward gaze, saw her half-smile of complete
understanding. As she leaped toward him, he snatched up their two hooded
outer coats, and his arm half encircling her, he guided her through the
door.

Whether or not she realized what had occurred he did not know, but there
was no time to tell her now. Nor were explanations necessary; trusting
him to the last she would follow where he led. “We’ll have to run for
it,” he whispered simply. “Fast as you can.”

Ned had taken in the situation, made his decision, seized the parkas,
and guided Bess through the door all in one breath: the drama of
Lenore’s tragic dishonor was still in progress in the glare of the
Northern Lights. Doomsdorf, standing back to them, did not see the two
slip out the door, snatch up their snowshoes and fly. Otherwise his
pistol would have been quick to halt them. Almost at once they were
concealed, except for their strange flickering shadows in the snow,
behind the first fringe of stunted spruce.

Ned led her straight toward the ice-bound sea. He realized at once that
their least shadow of hope lay in fast flight that might take them to
some inhabited island before Doomsdorf could overtake them; never in
giving him a chase across his own tundras. Even this chance was
tragically small, but it was all they had. To stay, to linger but a
moment, meant death from Doomsdorf’s pistol—or perhaps from some more
ingenious engine that his half-mad cunning might devise.

Only the miles of empty ice stretched before them, covered deep with
snow and unworldly in the glimmer of the Northern Lights that still
flickered wanly in the sky; yet no other path was open. They halted a
single instant in the shelter of the thickets, slipped on their
snowshoes, then mushed as fast as they could on to the beach. In
scarcely a moment they were venturing out on the ice-bound wastes.

Doomsdorf encountered their tracks as he reached the cabin door, and
guessing their intent, raced for the higher ground just above the cabin.
But when he caught sight of the fugitives, they were already out of
effective pistol range. He fired impotently until the hammer clicked
down against an empty breach, and then, still senseless with fury,
darted down to the cabin for his rifle.

But he halted before he reached the door. After all, there was no
particular hurry. He knew how many miles of ice—some of it almost
impassable—lay between his island and Tzar Island, far to the east. It
was not the journey for a man and woman, traveling without supplies.
There was no need of sending his singing lead after them. Cold and
hunger, if he gave them play, would stop them soon enough.

He had, however, other plans. He turned through the cabin door, spoke to
the sullen squaw, then began to make preparations for a journey. He took
a cold-proof wolf-hide robe, wrapped in it a great sack of pemmican, and
made it into a convenient pack for his back. Then he reloaded his
pistol, took the rifle down from the wall, and started forth down the
trail that Ned and Bess had made.

It was likely true that the cold, though not particularly intense
to-night, would master them before ever they could reach Tzar Island.
They had no food, and inner fuel is simply a matter of life and death
while traveling Arctic ice. They had no guns to procure a fox, or any
other living creatures that they might encounter on the ice fields. But
yet Doomsdorf was not content. Death of cold was hardly less merciful
than that of a bullet. Just destruction would not satisfy the fury in
his heart; the strange, dark lust that raced through his veins like
poison demanded a more direct vengeance. Particularly he did not want
Bess to die on the ice. He would simply follow them, overtake them, and
bring them back; then some really diverting thing would likely occur to
him.

It would be easy to do. There was no man in the North who could compete
with him in a fair race. The two had less than a mile start of him, and
to overtake them was but a matter of hours. On the other hand long days
of travel, one after another past all endurance, would be necessary
before they could ever hope to cross the ice ranges to reach the
settlements on Tzar Island.

To Bess first came the realization of the utter hopelessness of their
flight. She could not blind herself to this fact. Nor did she try to
hide from herself the truth: in these last, bitter months she had found
that the way of wisdom was to look truth in the face, struggling against
it to the limit of her strength, but yielding herself neither to vain
hope nor untoward despair. The reason why the flight was hopeless was
because she herself could not stand the pace. She did not have the
beginning of Ned’s strength. Soon he would have to hold back so that she
could follow with greater ease, and that meant their remorseless hunter
would catch up. The venture had got down simply to a trial of speed
between Doomsdorf, whose mighty strength gave him every advantage, and
Ned, who braved the ice with neither blankets nor food supplies. Her
presence, slowing down Ned’s speed, increased the odds against him
beyond the last frontier of hope.

Tired though she was from the day’s toil, she moved freshly and easily
at first. Ned broke trail, she mushed a few feet behind. She had no
sensation of cold; hardened to steel, her muscles moved like the sliding
parts of a wonderful machine. The ice was wonderfully smooth as yet,
almost like the first, thin, bay ice frozen to the depth of safety. But
already the killing pace had begun to tell. She couldn’t keep it up
forever without food and rest. And the brute behind her was tireless,
remorseless as death itself.

The Northern Lights died at last in the sky, and the two hastened on in
the wan light of a little moon that was already falling toward the west.
And now she was made aware that the night was bitter cold. It was
getting to her, in spite of her furs. But as yet she gave no sign of
distress to Ned. A great bravery had come into her heart, and already
she could see the dawn—the first aurora of ineffable beauty—of her
far-off and glorious purpose. She would not let herself stop to rest.
She would not ask Ned to slacken his pace. She was tired to the point of
anguish already; soon she would know the last stages of fatigue; but
even then she would not give sign. Out of her love for him a new
strength was born—that sublime and unnamable strength of women that is
nearest to divinity of anything upon this lowly earth—and she knew that
it would hold her up beyond the last limits of physical exhaustion. She
would not give way to unconsciousness, thus causing Ned to stop and wait
beside her till she died. None of these things would she do. Her spirit
soared with the wings of her resolve. Instead, her plan was simply to
hasten on—to keep up the pace—until she toppled forward lifeless on
the ice. She would master herself until death mastered her. Then Ned,
halting but an instant to learn the truth, could speed on alone. Thus he
would have no cause to wait for her.

He travels the fastest who travels alone. Out of his chivalry he would
never leave her so long as a spark of life remained in her body: her
course was simply to stand the pace until the last spark went out. She
could fight away unconsciousness. She knew she could; as her physical
strength ebbed, she felt this new, wondrous power sweeping through her.

He travels the fastest who travels alone. Without her, his mighty
strength of body and spirit might carry him to safety. It was a long
chance at best, over the ice mountains; but this man who mushed before
her was not of ordinary mold. The terrible training camp through which
he had passed had made of him a man of steel, giving him the lungs of a
wolf and a lion’s heart, and it was conceivable that, after unimagined
hardship, he might make Tzar Island. There he could get together a party
to rescue Lenore, and though his love for the ignoble girl was dead, his
destiny would come out right after all. It was all she dared pray for
now,—that he might find life and safety. But he was beaten at the start
if he had to wait for her.

On and on through the night they sped, over that wonderfully smooth ice,
never daring to halt: strange, wandering figures in the moonlit snow.
But Bess was not to carry her brave intent through to the end. She had
not counted on Ned’s power of observation. He suddenly halted, turned
and looked into her face.

It was wan and dim in the pale light; and yet something about its
deepening lines quickened his interest. She saw him start; and with a
single syllable of an oath, reached his hand under her hood to the track
of the artery at her throat. He needed to listen but an instant to the
fevered pulse to know the truth.

“We’re going too fast,” he told her shortly.

“No—no!” Her tone was desperate, and his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
Wrenching back her self-control she tried to speak casually. “I can keep
up easily,” she told him. “I don’t feel it yet—I’ll tell you when I do.
We can’t ever make it if we slow up.”

He shook his head, wholly unconvinced. “I don’t know what’s got into
you, Bess. You can’t fool me. I know I feel it, good and plenty, and
you’re just running yourself to death. Doomsdorf himself can’t do any
more than kill us——”

“But he can——”

“We’re going to hit an easier pace. Believe me, he’s not running his
heart out. He’s planning on endurance, rather than speed. I was a fool
not to think about you until it began to get me.”

It was true that the killing pace had been using up the vital nervous
forces of both their bodies. Ned was suffering scarcely not at all as
yet, but he had caught the first danger signals. Bess was already
approaching the danger point of fatigue. When Ned started on again he
took a quick but fairly easy walking pace.

Yet Bess’s only impulse was to give way to tears. If their first gait
had been too fast, this was far too slow. While it was the absolute
maximum that she could endure—indeed she could not stand it without
regular rests that would ultimately put them in Doomsdorf’s hands—it
was considerably below Ned’s limit. He could not make it through at such
a pace as this. Because of her, he was destroying his own chance for
life and freedom.

They mushed on in silence, not even glancing back to keep track of
Doomsdorf. And it came about, in the last hours of the night, that the
rest both of them so direly needed was forced upon them by the powers of
nature. The moon set; and generally smooth though the ice was, they
could not go on by starlight. There was nothing to do but rest till
dawn.

“Lie down on the ice,” Ned advised, “and don’t worry about waking up.”
His voice moved her and thrilled her in the darkness. “I’ll set myself
to wake up at the first ray; that’s one thing I can always do.” She let
her tired body slip down on the snow, relying only on her warm fur
garments to protect her from it. Ned quickly settled beside her. “And
you’d better lie as close to me as you can.”

He was prompted only by the expedience of cold. Yet as she drew near,
pressing her body against his, it was as if some dream that she had
dared not admit, even to herself, had come true. Nothing could harm her
now. The east wind could mock at her in vain, the starry darkness had no
terror for her. The warmth of his body sped through her, dear beyond all
naming; and such a ghost as but rarely walks those empty ice fields came
and enfolded her with loving arms.

It was the Ghost of Happiness. Of course it was not real
happiness,—only its shadow, only its dim image built of the
unsubstantial stuff of dreams, yet it was an ineffable glory to her
aching heart. It was just an apparition that was born of her own vain
hopes, yet it was kindly, yielding one hour of unspeakable loveliness in
this night of woe and terror. Lying breast to breast, she could pretend
that he was hers, to-night. Of course real happiness could not come to
her; the heart that beat so steadily close to hers was never hers; yet
for this little hour she was one with him, and the ghost seemed very,
very near. She could forget the weary wastes of ice, the cold northern
stars, their ruthless enemy ever drawing nearer.

Instinctively Ned’s arms went about her, pressing her close; and
tremulous with this ghost of happiness, the high-born strength of
woman’s love surged through her again, more compelling than ever before.
Once more her purpose flamed, wan and dim at first, then slowly
brightening until its ineffable beauty filled her eyes with tears. Once
more she saw a course of action whereby Ned might have a fighting chance
for life. Her first plan, denied her because of Ned’s refusal to lead
faster than she could follow, had embodied her own unhappy death from
the simple burning up of her life forces from over-exertion; but this
that occurred to her now was not so merciful. It might easily preclude a
fate that was ten times worse than death. Yet she was only glad that she
had thought of it. She suddenly lifted her face, trying to pierce the
pressing gloom and behold Ned’s.

“I want you to promise me something, Ned,” she told him quietly.

He answered her clearly, from full wakefulness. “What is it?”

“I want you to promise—that if you see there’s no hope for me—that
you’ll go on—without me. Suppose Doomsdorf almost overtook us—and you
saw that he could seize me—but you could escape—I want you to promise
that you won’t wait.”

“To run off and desert you——”

“Listen, Ned. Use your good sense. Say I was in a place where I couldn’t
get away, and you could. Suppose we became separated somehow on the ice,
and he should be overtaking me, but you’d have a good chance to go to
safety. Oh, you would go on, wouldn’t you?” Her tone was one of infinite
pleading. “Would there be any use of your returning—and getting killed
yourself—when you couldn’t possibly save me? Don’t you see the thing to
do would be to keep on—with the hope of coming out at last—and then
getting up an expedition to rescue me? Promise me you won’t destroy what
little hope we have by doing such a foolish thing as that——”

Wondering, mystified by her earnestness, half inclined to believe that
she was at the verge of delirium from cold and exertion, his arms
tightened about her and he gave her his promise so that she might rest.
“Of course I’ll do the wise thing,” he told her. “The only thing!”

Her strong little arms responded to the embrace, and slowly, joyously
she drew his face toward hers. “Then kiss me, Ned,” she told him,
soberly yet happily, as a child might beg a kiss at bedtime. Her love
for him welled in her heart. “I want you to kiss me good night.”

Slowly, with all the tenderness of his noble manhood, he pressed his
lips to hers. “Good night, Bess,” he told her simply. For an instant,
night and cold and danger were forgotten. “Good night, little girl.”

Their lips met again, but now they did not fall away so that he could
speak. There was no need for words. His arm about her held her lips to
his, and thus they lay, forgetting the wastes of ice about them, for the
moment secure from the cruel forces that had hounded them so long. The
wind swept by unheard. The fine snow drifted before it, as if it meant
to cover them and never yield them up again. The dimmer stars faded and
vanished into the recesses of the sky.

The cold’s scourge was impotent now. The hour was like some dream of
childhood: calm, wondrous, ineffably sweet. The ghost of happiness
seemed no longer just a shadow. For the moment Bess’s fancy believed it
real.

Sleep drifted over Ned. Still with her lips on his, Bess listened till
his slow, quiet breathing told her that he was no longer conscious. She
waited an instant more, her arms trembling as she pressed him close as
she could.

“I love you, Ned,” she whispered. “Whatever I do—it’s all for love of
you.”

Then, very softly so as not to waken him, she slipped out of his embrace
and got to her feet. She started away straight north,—at right angles
to the direction that they had gone before.




                                  XXX


Ned’s instincts had been trained like the rest of him, and they watched
over him while he slept. They aroused him from sleep as soon as it was
light enough to pick his way over the rough ice that lay in front, yet
as if in realization of his physical need of rest, not an instant
sooner. He sprang up to find the dawn, gray over the ice-bound sea.

But the miracle of the morning, even the possibility that Doomsdorf had
made time while he slept and was now almost upon him did not hold his
thought an instant. His mind could not reach beyond the tragic fact that
he was alone. Bess was gone, vanished like a spirit that had never been
in the gray dawn.

The moment was one of cruel but wonderful revelation to Ned. It was as
if some unspeakable blessing had come to one who was blind, but before
ever sight came to him, it was snatched away. As sleep had fallen over
him, he had suddenly been close to the most profound discovery, the
greatest truth yet of his earthly life; but now only its image remained.
Bess had been in his arms, her lips against his, but now his arms were
empty and his lips were cold.

She had gone. Her tracks led straight north through the snow. The most
glorious hour life had ever given him had faded like a dream. Whence lay
this glory, the source of his wonder as well as the crushing despair
that now was upon him he might have seen in one more glance; in one
moment’s scrutiny of his soul he might have laid bare a heart’s secret
that had eluded him for all these past weary weeks. But there was no
time for such now. Bess had gone, and he must follow her. This was the
one truth left in an incredible heaven and earth.

Her last words swept through his memory. They gave him the key: his
deductions followed swift and sure by the process of remorseless logic.
In a single moment he knew the dreadful truth: Bess had not gone on in
the expectation of Ned overtaking her, thus saving a few moments of his
precious time. She had not gone east at all. She knew the stars as well
as he did: she would have never, except by some secret purpose, turned
north instead of east. He saw the truth all too plain.

“Say we became separated somehow on the ice,” she had told him before he
slept, “and he should be overtaking me but you’d have a chance to go on
to safety!” To quiet her, he had given her his promise to go on and
leave her to her fate; and now she had _purposely separated_ herself
from him. She had gone to decoy Doomsdorf from his trail.

She had chosen the direction that would give Doomsdorf the longest chase
and take him farthest from Ned’s trail. He couldn’t follow them both.
The morning light would show him that his two fugitives had separated;
and she had reasoned soundly in thinking that their enemy would pursue
her, rather than Ned. His lust for her was too commanding for him to
take any other course. While he pursued her, Ned would have every chance
to hurry on eastward to the safety of Tzar Island.

Had he not promised that if he found he could not aid her, he would go
on alone? Realizing that she was holding him back, had she not put
herself where it would be impossible for him to give her further aid. It
would only mean capture and death, certain as the brightening dawn, for
him to follow and attempt to come between her and Doomsdorf. On the
other hand, this was his chance: while their savage foe ran north in
pursuit of Bess, Ned himself could put a distance between them that
could hardly be overtaken. There was nothing to gain by following
her—her capture at Doomsdorf’s hands was an ultimate certainty—only
his own life to lose.

She had reasoned true. Together their flight was hopeless. Alone, he had
a chance. By leading Doomsdorf from his trail she had increased mightily
that chance. The affair was all one sided. Yet, not knowing why, he took
the side of folly.

Never for a moment did he even consider going on and leaving her to her
fate. He could not aid her, and yet in one moment more he had launched
forth on her trail, faster than he had ever mushed before. He had no
inward battle, no sense of sacrifice. There was not even a temptation to
take the way of safety. In these last months he had been lifted far
beyond the reach of any such feeble voice as that.

He sped as fast as he could along the dim trail she had made. The dawn,
icy-breathed, soon out-distanced him, permitting him to see Bess’s
fleeing form before he had scarcely begun to overtake her. She was just
a dark shadow at first against the stretching fields of white; but he
never lost sight of her after that. With the brightening dawn he saw her
ever more distinctly.

And in the middle distance, west of both of them, he saw the huge, dark
form of Doomsdorf bearing down upon her.

She had guessed right as to Doomsdorf. Catching sight of her, he had
left their double trail to overtake her. Hoping and believing that Ned
had taken his chance of safety and was fleeing eastward, she was leading
his enemy ever farther and farther north, away from him.

He was a strong man, this Cornet who had fought the North, but the
bitter, scalding tears shot into his eyes at the sight of that strange,
hopeless drama on the ice. But not one of them was in self-pity. They
were all for the slight figure of the girl, trying still to save him,
running so hopelessly from the brute who was even now upon her. To Ned,
the scene had lost its quality of horror. It was only unspeakably tragic
there behind the rising curtains of the dawn.

She was trying to dodge him now, cutting back and forth as a mouse might
try to dodge the talons of a cat,—still trying to save a few little
seconds for Ned. She wasn’t aware yet that her trial was all in vain. In
an attempt to hold Doomsdorf off as long as possible, she had not paused
one instant to assure herself that Ned had gone on east. He had given
her his word; likely she trusted him implicitly. The man’s heart seemed
to swell, ready to break, in pity for her.

A moment later he saw her slip on the ice, and in dread silence,
Doomsdorf’s arms went about her. Neither of them had apparently observed
Ned. They only became aware of him as his great shout, half in rage,
half in defiance, reached them across the ice.

It was really an instinctive cry. Partly the impulse behind it was to
warn Doomsdorf of his presence, hoping thus to call his attention from
Bess and thus save the girl immediate insult at his hands. And kneeling
upon the girl’s form, like a great bear upon its living prey, Doomsdorf
looked up and saw him.

Even at the distance that separated them the startled movement of his
head revealed his unutterable amazement. Doubtless he thought that Ned
was miles to the east by now. The amazement gave way to boundless
triumph as Ned walked calmly toward him. Then while he held the girl
prone on the ice with his great knee, Doomsdorf’s rifle made blue
lightning in the air.

Ned’s response was to throw his arms immediately into the air in token
of complete surrender. He was thinking coolly, his faculties in perfect
control; and he knew he must not attempt resistance now. Only death lay
that way; at that range Doomsdorf could shatter him lifeless to the ice
with one shot from the heavy rifle. It wasn’t enough just to die, thus
taking a quick road out of Doomsdorf’s power. Such a course would not
aid Bess. And to Bess he owed his duty—to aid Bess, in every way he
could, was his last dream.

At first he had had to play the cruel game for the sake of Lenore. That
obligation was past now; but it had never, at its greatest, moved him
with one-half the ardor as this he bore to Bess. He must not go this
route to freedom, or any other, until Bess could go with him. He must
not leave her in Doomsdorf’s power.

That much was sure. Self-inflicted death did not come into the Russian’s
calculations—he was too close to the beasts for that—so he would not
be on guard. Whatever befell, this gate was always open. Ned would play
the game through to the end, at her side.

Doomsdorf watched him approach in silence. The triumphant gloating that
Ned expected did not come to pass; evidently their brute master was in
too savage a mood even for this. “Wait where you are,” he ordered
simply, “or I’ll blow your head off. I’ll be ready for you in a minute.”

He bent, and with one motion jerked Bess to her feet. Then in silence,
still guarding them with his rifle, he pointed them their way,—back to
his cabin on the island.

It was a long and bitter march across that desolate ice. Except for a
share of his pemmican that Doomsdorf distributed, for expedience rather
than through any impulse of mercy, Bess could have hardly lasted out.
They walked almost in silence, Ned in front, then Bess, their captor
bringing up the rear; a strange death march over those frozen seas.

This was the end. The fight was done; there was no thought or dream but
that the last, fighting chance was lost. Ned knew he was going to his
death: any other possibility was utterly beyond hope. The only wonder he
had left was what form his death would take. There was no shadow of
mercy on the evil face of his captor.

Bess knew that her portion was also death, simply because the white,
pure flame that was her life could not abide in the body that was prey
to Doomsdorf. Death itself would cheat those terrible, ravishing hands:
this was as certain a conviction as any she had ever known in all the
brief dream of her life. Whether it would be brought about by her own
hand, by the merciful, caressing touch of her lover’s knife, or whether
simply by outraged nature, snatching her out of Doomsdorf’s power, she
neither knew nor cared.

The file trudged on. Ned led the way unguided. The hours passed. The dim
shadow of the shore crags strengthened. And another twilight was laying
its first shadows on the snow as they stepped upon the snowy beach.

It was at this point that Bess suddenly experienced an inexplicable
quickening of her pulse, an untraced but breathless excitement that was
wholly apart from the fact that she was nearing the cabin of her
destiny. The air itself seemed curiously hushed, electric, as if a great
storm were gathering; the moment was poignant with a breathless
suspense. She could not have told why. Warning of impending, great
events had been transmitted to her through some unguessed
under-consciousness; some way, somehow, she knew that it had reached her
from the mind of the man who walked in front. Fiery thoughts were
leaping through Ned’s brain, and some way they had passed their flame to
her.

A moment later Ned turned to her, ostensibly to help her up the steep
slope of the beach. She saw with amazement that his face was stark white
and that his eyes glowed like live coals. Yet no message was conveyed to
Doomsdorf, tramping behind. It was only her own closeness to him, her
love that brought her soul to his, that told her of some far-reaching
and terrific crisis that was at hand at last.

“_Walk exactly in my steps!_” he whispered under his breath. It was only
the faintest wisp of sound, no louder than his own breathing; yet Bess
caught every word. She did not have to be told that there was infinite
urgency behind the command. Her nerves seemed to leap and twitch; yet
outwardly there was no visible sign that a message had been passed
between them.

Now Ned was leading up toward the shore crags, into a little pass
between the rocks that was the natural egress from the beach on to the
hills behind. He walked easily, one step after another in regular
cadence: only his glowing eyes could have told that this instant had, by
light of circumstances beyond Bess’s ken, become the most crucial in his
life. And it was a strange and ironic thing that the knowledge he relied
on now, the facility that might turn defeat into victory, was not some
finesse gained in his years of civilized living, no cultural growth from
some great university far to the south, but merely one of the basic
tricks of a humble trade.

Doomsdorf had told him, once, that a good trapper must learn to mark his
sets. Any square yard of territory must be so identified, in the mind’s
eye, that the trapper can return, days later, walk straight to it and
know its every detail. Ned Cornet had learned his trade. He was a
trapper; and he knew this snowy pass as an artist knows his canvas. He
stepped boldly through.

Bess walked just behind, stepping exactly in his tracks. Her heart
raced. It was not merely because the full truth was hidden from her that
she walked straight and unafraid. She would always follow bravely where
Ned led. Now both of them had passed through the little, narrow gap
between lofty, snow-swept crags. Doomsdorf trudged just behind.

Then something sharp and calamitous as a lightning bolt seemed to strike
the pass. There was a loud ring and clang of metal, the sharp crack of a
snowshoe frame broken to kindling, and then, obliterating both, a wild
bellow of human agony like that of a mighty grizzly wounded to the
death. Ned and Bess had passed in safety, but Doomsdorf had stepped
squarely into the great bear trap that Ned had set the evening before.

The cruel jaws snapped with a clang of iron and the crunch of flesh. The
shock, more than any human frame could endure, hurled Doomsdorf to his
knees; yet so mighty was his physical stamina that he was able to retain
his grip on his rifle. And the instant that he went down Ned turned,
leaping with savage fury to strike out his hated life before he could
rise again.

He was upon him before Doomsdorf could raise his rifle. As he sprang he
drew his knife from its sheath, and it cut a white path through the
gathering dusk. And now their arms went about each other in a final
struggle for mastery.

Caught though he was in the trap, Doomsdorf was not beaten yet. He met
that attack with incredible power. His great hairy hand caught Ned’s arm
as it descended, and though he could not hold it, he forced him to drop
the blade. With the other he reached for his enemy’s throat.

This was the final conflict; yet of such might were these contestants,
so terrible the fury of their onslaughts, that both knew at once that
the fight was one of seconds. These two mighty men gave all they had.
The fingers clutched and closed at Ned’s throat. The right hand of the
latter, from which the blade had fallen, tugged at the pistol butt at
Doomsdorf’s holster.

Bess leaped in, like a she-wolf in defense of her cubs, but one great
sweep of Doomsdorf’s arm hurled her unconscious in the snow. There were
to be no outside forces influencing this battle. The trap at Doomsdorf’s
foot was Ned’s only advantage; and he had decoyed his enemy into it by
his own cunning. It was man to man at last: a cruel war settled for good
and all.

It could endure but an instant more. Already those iron fingers were
crushing out Ned’s life. So closely matched were the two foes, so
terrible their strength, that their bodies scarcely moved at all; each
held the other in an iron embrace, Ned tugging with his left hand at the
fingers that clutched his throat, Doomsdorf trying to prevent his foe
from drawing the pistol that he wore at his belt and turning it against
him.

It was the last war; and now it had become merely a question of which
would break first. They lay together in the snow, utterly silent,
motionless, for all human eyes could see, their faces white with agony,
every muscle exerting its full, terrific pressure. Ever Doomsdorf’s
fingers closed more tightly at Ned’s throat; ever Ned’s right hand drew
slowly at the pistol at Doomsdorf’s belt.

Neither the gun nor the strangling fingers would be needed in a moment
more. The strain itself would soon shatter and destroy their mortal
hearts. The night seemed to be falling before Ned’s eyes; his familiar,
snowy world was dark with the nearing shadow of death. But the pistol
was free of the holster now, and he was trying to turn it in his hand.

It took all the strength of his remaining consciousness to exert a last,
vital ounce of pressure. Then there was a curious low sound, muffled and
dull as sounds heard in a dream. And dreams passed over him, like waves
over water, as he relaxed at last, breathing in great sobs, in the
reddened drifts.

Bess, emerging into consciousness, crawled slowly toward him. He felt
the blessing of her nearing presence even in his half-sleep. But
Doomsdorf, their late master, lay curiously inert, his foot still held
by the cruel jaws of iron. A great beast-of-prey had fallen in the trap;
and the killer-gun had sped a bullet, ranging upward and shattering his
wild heart.

                 *        *        *        *        *

All this was just a page in Hell Island’s history. She had had one
dynasty a thousand-thousand years before ever Doomsdorf made his first
track in her spotless snows; and all that had been done and endured was
not more than a ripple in the tides that beat upon her shores. With a
new spring she came into her own again. Spring brought the _Intrepid_,
sputtering through the new passages between the floes; and the old
island kings returned to rule before ever the masts of the little craft
had faded and vanished in the haze.

The _Intrepid_ had taken cargo other than the usual bales of furs. The
sounds of human voices were no more to be heard in the silences, and the
wolf was no longer startled, fear and wonder at his heart, by the sight
of a tall living form on the game trails. The traps were moss-covered
and lost, and the wind might rage the night through at the cabin window,
and no one would hear and no one would be afraid.

The savage powers of the wild held undisputed sway once more, not again
to be set at naught by these self-knowing mortals with a law unto
themselves. Henceforth all law was that of the wild, never to be
questioned or disobeyed.

It may have been that sometimes, on winter nights, the wolf pack would
meet a strange, great shadow on the snow fields: but if so, it was only
the one-time master of the island, uneasy in his cold bed; and it was
nothing they need fear or to turn them from the trail. It was just a
shadow that hurried by, a wan figure buffeted by the wind, in the eerie
flare of the Northern Lights. And even this would pass in time. He would
be content to sleep, and let the snow drift deeper over his head.

Even the squaw had gone on the _Intrepid_ to join her people in a
distant tribe. But there is no need to follow her, or the three that had
taken ship with her. On the headlong journey south to spread the word of
their rescue, of their halting at the first port to send word and to
learn that the occupants of the second lifeboat had been rescued from
Tzar Island months before, of Godfrey Cornet’s glory at the sight of his
son’s face and the knowledge of the choice he had made, of the light and
shadow of their life trails in the cities of men, there is nothing that
need be further scrutinized. To Hell Island they were forgotten. The
windy snow fields knew them no more.

Yet for all they were bitterly cruel, the wilds had been kind too. They
had shown the gold from the dross. They had revealed to Ned the way of
happiness,—and it led him straight into Bess’s arms. There he could
rest at the end of his day’s toil, there he found not only love and
life, but the sustenance of his spirit, the soul of strength by which he
might stand erect and face the light.

Thus they had found a safe harbor where the Arctic wind might never
chill them; a hearth where such terror as dwelt in the dark outside
could not come in.

                                THE END

                 *        *        *        *        *

Transcriber’s Note:

A few obvious punctuation errors have been corrected without note.

A cover has been created for this ebook and is placed in the public
domain.

[End of _The Isle of Retribution_ by Edison Marshall]

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69070 ***