CHAPTER XVIThe Sequel
I worked my tried and still most workable and useful raft to the shore, and stepped from it to the sand, between some ragged floes of ice—a kind of ice foot. The loss of the hamper was a heavy blow, and to confront the unknown future with a few morsels of meat and some soakedtortillasseemed only a desperate and suicidal bravado. I was for a while stunned into a torpor of inaction. I had managed to force the raft somewhat up on the shore, but I took the precaution of further loading it with stones. Until I had more clearly made up my mind what would be my next step, I would not part company with this friend, for somehow to methen, the mute bundle of logs had become almost animate with a human affection.
And now the reaction against fatigue and all the sleepless hours made me faint and weak. I must first sleep. I untied the welcome sleeping bag and the rug, and disengaging the heavy gold belt—what a mockery its value seemed in this sterile solitude—and the small hatchet which it held, I rolled myself up, and instantly fell into unconsciousness. I must have slept almost twenty-four hours, for the sun which had been declining to the horizon was in almost the same position when I awoke. I was ravenously hungry, but my courage had returned, and at least I felt equal to considering my plans.
But first it was food. I made a fire, warmed or toasted the flat pancakes and roasted the meat chunks, and these with water contrived to satisfy my hunger. The contents of the pack were now my sole resource. They had been well soaked, but I had spread them on the white sands, and in the heat of the sun they had dried, even the matches proving serviceable again. My gun, which had been well greased (swagged) was uninjured, and the wax-smeared cartridges retained their murderous facility of exploding. If game was to be had the life in my body might yet reasonably expect considerable prolongation. And why not game? I recalled our first encounter when we were unceremoniously introduced to Krocker Land—the musk oxen. But was I to become a prowling Robinson Crusoe; were the days, the weeks, the months—there could not be years—before me to be a savage struggle to just live and then realize—starvation? At any rate there must be a plan. What should it be? It was then that my mind working feverishly over a few projects—the only ones I could conceive of, and all of them preposterous—was suddenly arrested by recalling that this very summer, even during this month, Coogan and Stanwix, Phillips and Spent would be pushing the “Astrum” through that very sea—but farther east—to find us. On that peg of suggestion I hung my hopes. I would work eastward if I could, or as far as possible, keep a watchout, and hope for the best. What else?
At first I thought I could make use of the raft, as there was much open water, but it required only a little circumspection to show me that the plan was impracticable; worse, fatal. I must fight my way somehow along the coast eastward, replenishing my larder with game, possibly with fish, not going farther than the inevitable angle—there must be such a turning point—where the land contours bentnorthward. That was aplan, it had a significant value. Immediately my spirits rose, so quickly does the mind recover its equipoise in an emergency when it is set about a rational scheme of action. It was really difficult for me to desert the raft. In that long drive through the canon of Homeward Bound, the irrepressible instinct of companionship had nurtured a curious hallucination of impersonation, and the bundle of dead logs had assumed an indefinite but real vitality. Could not I shape or build from it a serviceable sledge, and still, transformed, keep it in my service? Then again, could I spare the time to effect this change? I had only my hatchet for an implement, and the thongs and strands, rope and cords that had so stoutly kept it intact for nails and iron bands.
I abandoned the project, but before I started on my desperate search, I hacked enough timber from it to build a fire and cooked or roasted my last meal over it. It partook to me of the fantastic feeling of a valedictory.
The shore along which I now made my way was favorable for a rapid advance. It was a low upland, mainly detrital in composition with a beach apron of sand, gravel, and mud flats. It sloped upward to a semi-piedmont zone of hills, beyond which towered the monarchs of the Rim. The view landward was inspiritingly beautiful, and when the fogs that rolled inward from the vast ice-flecked and iceberg-studded sea, were absent the picture was entrancing. Rich verdure covered the upland, inundating, like a green flood, the opening valleys, slopes and sheltered ingles, and bearing on its bosom the Arctic yellow poppy and even the golden stars of the dandelion. Surely in this land I might expect to find game.
Nor was I to look long. I could just see, far off against a protruding dazzling granite mound, amoving spot. It was theOvibos hopkinsi. I almost laughed. I recurred to our first encounter with this new mountain sheep, when Hopkins and I first saw it, in an almost identical environment, when we landed at Krocker Land. I watched it with the eye of a voluptuary. Fresh meat would taste—Ah! my mouth watered—I could not venture a simile.
I hastened up the beautiful Arctic glen, and the still unsuspecting animals moved towards me. Now they saw me, and the bulls ranged themselves in defence, behind them the still grazing cows, startled only for a moment into attention. There was no inclination to escape. Only as I fired and the foremost bull staggered sideways and then dropped headlong at my second shot, did the herd shuffle to one side and then scamper away. Before I had reached the fallen leader their shaggy heads had disappeared over a fold of ground that shut in an adjoining valley.
I cut some steaks and loaded myself with the juicy red masses of flesh. Although Greely and Peary had failed to smoke-dry meat, perhaps I might succeed. I returned to the raft. It had become a base of operations. Here I cooked my steak and with the tastelesstortillasthey made a feast. But the momentary thought of jerking the meat was hopeless. It would take too long and then it might prove futile. If Coogan was looking for me, I must be looking for him. One more long sleep and then I must “be going.” I felt sad, and the glorious dying day bathing the horizon in carmine and gold, to be shifted a little further on, with scarcely a change of color, into sunrise, from its very exorbitant splendor oppressed me. I slept, but I tossed with forbidding dreams. I WAS NOT WELL.
The next day I started down the coast, but Irevisited theovibos, tore more meat from the carcass, and with my pack, a sleeping bag, the rug, my gun, and a bundle of splinters of wood I began my journey. The heaped up bundles on my back bent me, and I did not expect to make a record in walking. I was carrying my household on my back. But the favoring character of the shore cheered me, and it almost seemed that the peaks, barricades and buttresses of the mountains receded. I was on an extensive morainal or alluvial plain, furrowed by small valleys and inconspicuous ridges, where it rose to the amphitheatrical wall of the Krocker Land Rim.Ifit would last!
The diary of my daily progress for the next few days need not be rehearsed here. It was satisfactory on the whole, but the sure signs of scurvy had begun to show themselves, and some rheumatic ailment began to make every step I took painful. I seemed to see the end of it all, and, anticipation fed disease. My march each day lessened; the meat had been consumed in a few days, and was supplemented by ducks, a seal, and anotherovibos, so that for almost ten days I suffered no deprivation of actual nourishment, but my swelling limbs, the pasty and aching jaws, the occasional vanishing of all strength, and temporary collapses gave insistent warnings that I could not continue. A dull sense of helplessness supervened, my memory wavered, delusions visited my brain, and ever and again the white ice-packed sea seemed a snow covered tableland on which I might walk safely. Only some frantic remnant of sanity prevented this suicidal impulse. I was delirious at times with pain.
And the end of the propitious coast was in sight. I must have made, Mr. Link, in those ten days, by superhuman exertions, some one hundred and fifty miles, furiously driving on, almost unconscious ofmy motion. And now a black rampart of bold hills, stretched out like an arresting arm, crossed the horizon. Higher and higher rose the forbidding cliffs, and I saw with despair that they entered the sea in escarpments, whose vertical and gloomy walls were beaten by waves, or against which the churned ice was flung in broken cakes. Beyond the stern barrier my flagging strength could never take me. And yet, in my feebleness I hastened to reach it as an ultimate goal over which, I almost thankfully noted, so worn was I in spirit, I could not pass. Temperamental decay was at work in me, and I became inert.I did not care.
At last—oh how heavily dragged my feet, how wearingly surged the pains! I had come to the dark shadow of the cliffs. It was a sheer precipice. My wandering and scarcely seeing eyes dimly noted its immensity. It crushed the last vestiges of effort. Its undeniable prohibition smote me as a physical violence. I fell headlong. Nothing was with me but my gun. Pack, rug, sleeping bag, all had been dropped, the first last, for to its unequivocal testimony (in the gold and in the radium) of all I had seen, all I had been through, I clung with an almost demented obstinacy. And now that was left behind. Some recurrent spasm of vitality returned; I struggled to my feet, shaking in an ague, and just able to support myself against a detached splinter of rock, almost at the foot of the overhanging bluff, that seemed to my seared sight to touch the sky.
What was it then that made me seize my gun, and, steadying myself by some superhuman help—Yes, Mr. Link, by some help not of this earth—empty the magazine of cartridges in a crashing volley against that impenetrable rock? Was it madness, the last rage of defeated purpose, or was it inspiration? I do not know, but as the sharpreports multiplied, and to my racked nerves sounded in terrificcrescendosI fell forward. The sense of hearing was the last to desert me, and though my eyes had closed, even while the shattering reverberations from the cliff rang in them, I HEARD AN ANSWERING SHOT. It was all I heard. I had swooned.
But, Mr. Link, the ebbing tide of life returned, slowly indeed at first, so slowly that the friendly faces around me seemed only indefinite, leering masks, before which I shuddered. Warmth reasserted its sway, the warmth of life. I felt fresh, cleanly nourishment, theelixir of whiskyslipping down my throat, and then a delicious thrill of comfort, and I became conscious, to find myself eating and drinking and around me the anxious, staring faces of Coogan, Isaac Stanwix, Bell Phillips, and Jack Spent.
It was for an instant only, the violence of my return to consciousness weakened me, and I sank back in their arms, but as I did, the overmastering care that lay deepest in my heart struggled into utterance, through all my clouded mind, and I gasped, pointing to the path over which I had come, “The pack—the pack.”
It was not many hours later that I again awoke, in the luxurious cabin of the “Astrum,” pillowed in an easy chair, and watching with grateful eyes the ministering mercies of my friends. Very gradually my sapped strength and health were renewed, but indeed it sometimes occurs to me that I shall never be quite all I once was. The multiplied strains, repeated, contrasted, with the unapparent butrealnervous shocks of excitement suffered in the ordeals of entering Krocker Land, and those less obviously but most certainly disordering experiences in Radiumopolis, with the whole effect of the monstrous unreality of it all, have unhinged mysystem. And then—the agony of my last humiliation in this city.
"theERICKSON’S RESCUE
ERICKSON’S RESCUE
ERICKSON’S RESCUE
The story told by Coogan was a most simple one. It corroborated my expectations and of course exactly justified my conduct. The “Astrum” according to orders left Point Barrow, and steamed into the ice, which proved to be unusually negotiable, looking for us. They failed to discover any signs of us on the ice pack, but in an adventuresome trip northward, invited to the undertaking by the open water, they made a landfall, and found there the “Pluto,” our naphtha launch. It was on almost exactly the place of our landing from the storm. They concluded we had skirted the new land, reconnoitering it edgewise, as it were, or at any rate their first and prudent course was to do so. They had managed to creep on safely through broad leads between the shore ice and the big floes, until they came to themassif, that, like an out-thrust arm with clenched fist, cut the land in two. They had rather gingerly picked their way through the ice around the frowning headlands when my shots were heard. The rest is the usual story—the story I have hinted at—and my pack was safe.It lay at my feet.
Now to tell the truth I was rather reticent with Coogan and the others as to my own adventure. I did not wish then to tell them everything or even much. The whole marvel must be elsewhere and differently unfolded. It must be given to the world through science, and the national government of the United States must be empaneled for the rescue of my companions. I desired the audience of a nation, and the ears of the world. And now—deplorable reversion—I am telling it to you alone. I hid much or all, admitted that the new continent was large, that we had entered it, that the Professor and Hopkins were pursuing investigationsthere, and that I must return in time with a larger expedition. They seemed to understand my reticence—or was it commiseration?—and good-naturedly left me alone. About two months later we arrived safely in San Francisco.
(“Mr. Link”—the voice of the speaker perceptibly lowered, I might say perceptibly trembled—“it has been a pleasure to rehearse this wonderful experience, pleasant to recall my two friends still exiled in that mysterious continent, pleasant to believe that through the instrumentality of your publication, they may be extricated from their bewildering embarrassments, but—it is not pleasant to finish my story.”
Mr. Erickson was silent for a few moments, as if he half expected me to release him from the implied obligation of explaining more completely the origins of the predicament in which we found him. But I was relentlessly silent, and after a glance at my imperturbable and fixed gaze, he turned his head aside and resumed the “last measure of his tale.”)
I was not long in finding my former acquaintance to whom now instinctively, in my dearth of companionship, I had recourse for advice, and sensibly for succor—Carlos Huerta. Nothing could exceed the boisterous ardor of his welcome. He was overjoyed and appeared almost rapturous in his demonstrations of astonishment and delight at seeing me. Of course I succumbed all too easily to the caresses of his friendship—and then (the speaker paused again and a flood of carmine filling his cheeks and glowing warmly even in his temples, revealed his confusion), he introduced me to the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in all my life, Angelica Sigurda Tabasco, whose intimate, Diaz Ilario Aguadiente, was a gentleman of marvelous cordiality. I was literally taken to their hearts. You see, sir, plainly my state of defencelessness againstthese scheming reprobates—cunning parasites of fortune—whose suave geniality disarmed suspicion, and whose enthusiastic sympathy, not unintelligent either, warmed my weary heart and opened my lips.
They wormed a good deal out of me, they saw the gold—not the buckle—the radium, and they actually listened to the recital of our visit to the Gold Makers. Then they laid their plans. I was to be coaxed to New York—how many specious inducements could be given for me to go there. The season was not too late for any relief expedition, and at New York all the avenues of approach to capital could be reached. I was to give a public lecture, the best social and scientific auspices would protect it, and from New York the wave of interest would radiate to all the capitals of the world. It seemed so simple, it was so inviting, and then it was urged with such cordial plausibility and fervor, and all accompanied by that personal suasion of admiration, and the artifices of encouragement in surroundings that were sumptuous and enthralling. I was completely taken in.
I came on to New York with Huerta, who lavished every kindness on me, and whose incessant questioning as to the process of gold transmutation which I had seen easily assumed the guise of a natural curiosity. The merest accident prevented my bringing on to New York the precious pack in which the gold souvenirs, thegold buckle, and the radium mineral masses were preserved. The trio—themselves deceived by their gloating cupidity—had urged the necessity of protecting this property by placing it in a safety-deposit vault, and when the day arrived for Huerta and me to leave San Francisco, at the last moment, and just as I expected to call at the safe deposit company to claim and remove my property, I was seized with a chill that rapidly increased into a convulsive fit,followed by a temporary coma. I was alone in the room of my hotel and the seizure was so sudden that I was unable to summon assistance. When it had passed, much time had been lost, and actually fearing to reclaim the pack in my then physical condition I concluded to leave it, and have it forwarded later upon a written order.
This was quite feasible, and in some respects, so I thought at the moment, safer and more preferable, as I had taken the unusual precaution of enclosing the pack in a strong metal box.
When on the train I explained to Huerta my mishap he at first changed his demeanor, frowned and fidgeted and nettled me by his half suppressed acerbity. I think then I might have been saved, had his suspicious temper prolonged itself. But it was gone almost instantly, and his customary deceptive solicitude and optimistic confidence replaced it and my doubts vanished. It was also supposed by me that Angelica and Diaz would remain some time longer in San Francisco, and when I encountered them in east Fifty-eighth Street I was stupefied, though of course, by that time, I had no reason to feel any surprise over any development in my relations with these monsters.
In New York Huerta conducted me to an eastside boarding house. It is incredible how I permitted myself to follow him. Even while suspicion and distrust began to assail me I accompanied him into a common sort of house, apparently the resort of men only, and rather hard looking characters at that, and yet with these pregnant signs of coming mischief, I kept alongside of this inhuman brute, sat with him in a duskily lighted room at a shabby table, served by some slatternly woman waiters, under surroundings hopelessly sordid and dull. I was not myself, Mr. Link; the stamina of resistance was extirpated in me, and I was led like a child. Thedenouementfollowed quickly.
That very night or evening I went to my room or what I supposed was my room, only to discover it was a small bathroom, provided with a sleeping cot. I had preceded Huerta, who pointed to the door. As I opened it my surprise caused me to retreat, but Huerta pushed me in, and instantly he was joined by two other men from a room near at hand, and the door was locked. Of course, as by a flash of light, an unexpected danger was revealed. I saw that I was trapped.
There happened to be one chair in the place. Huerta, whose whole demeanor now altered, motioned toward it with a scowl and the other men stepped forward. Each of them carried a short leaden pipe. Mr. Link, I am not a timid man—what I have gone through shows that—but I was intimidated then. I glanced around me; there was not a window in the room; it was lighted by a smoking gas jet.
“Well,” I said, collecting my thoughts to meet the situation, “I guess you have me. What is it? What do you want?”
Huerta’s agreeable style was resumed. “Why just this, Mr. Erickson. You have got a sort of knowledge which is rather valuable, and we want to make an agreement with you; you might call it a sort of combine. You have got hold of some very interesting information. Let’s pool it and work it for our common benefit.”
“What information,” I asked and leaped to my feet, infuriated at the smiling, insulting visage that he wore as an answer to my question.
“Oh! Calm yourself. These gentlemen and myself are not icebergs, but perhaps we can hit as hard. The thing is simple enough. Sign this paper.”
He held out a folded sheet which I at once recognized as having been torn from a writing pad in thePullman in which we had come to New York. It was an order on the safe deposit company in San Francisco to forward to him, Carlos Huerta, my pack, the satchel of gold and radium. Then followed his address, which was—east Fifty-eighth Street, the very house in which you found me, Mr. Link.
I threw the paper in his face. It wasmaladroit. His temper—and he had the passion of a fiend—broke loose and he struck me. I jumped at him, and hurled the chair straight at his head, but it was intercepted, and, in a trice, the three rushed at me and held me, kicking, squirming, and shouting, on the narrow bed. No help came; I was bound and was knocked almost senseless.
(It was some time before Erickson could continue; he was in a pitiful agitation, walking over and across the room with a most distressful expression on his face. At length he pulled himself together and resumed his story.)
Well, they kept me in that room some five days. I was fed and attended by my captors—I think now partially drugged by them. But my will remained stubborn. I had faced death before, I could face it now, though it seemed more terrifying in this wretched shape than meeting it undisguised beneath the open skies. This obstinacy drove Huerta frantic. I calculated that it would lead to an outbreak or issue soon.It did.
The sixth night the room was entered by the three men to whom, now weakened, dazed, nervous with disgust, I could offer no resistance. I was really sick. They tied my arms and legs and gagged my mouth, and put me in a sack. It was then, before they completed their task, that I managed to secrete a few scribbled words on a slip of paper, which I had kept by me, and later succeeded in forcing through an aperture in the bag.This paper your boy Riddles found. I was whisked off in an automobile, unloaded like a sack of potatoes at the door of—east Fifty-eighth Street, and taken to the attic floor where you and the police found me.
Before you came I was confronted with Angelica and Diaz, and the proposition was very attractively made that nothing should be said in any public way about Krocker Land, but that my gold specimen should be sold as bullion, and that we four should form a transmutation plant with the radium that I had brought back. Accede to this, they explained (they were somehow convinced that I was withholding the secret technique I had learned of the process of transmutation), and combine with them, and my life and freedom would be assured.
I saw through the ruse, feeble as I had mentally become. My life, at least its short continuance, depended upon my resisting their demands. Once granted, the paper signed, what I knew of the transmutation revealed—and I now sedulously encouraged their belief in a more or less recondite process which demanded physical apparatus and silver bullion—and my life would be but a flash in the pan—out—like that. (And Erickson snapped his fingers.) If I could delay the upshot—inevitable in any case unless relief came—until some lucky chance brought me deliverance and I hoped the paper scribble would—I might yet survive.
Therefore I pleaded, I argued, I promised everything if they would liberate me, and then upon their savage refusal, I grew dogged and silent. It was then or a little afterwards that the conversation occurred that you and the police overheard and then, when these ruthless, bloodless imps of Hell were about to inflict their brutal torture—the door was burst open,and all was over.
I recall distinctly the evening on which Mr. Erickson concluded his stupendous narrative. It had been agreed that, apart from some brief announcements before the various proper scientific bodies of the world, no details should precede the publication in book form of Erickson’s personal account and the serial report in theTruth Getter. All this is now a part of history, and a part which fairly challenges comparison with those thunderstruck days when Columbus and Cabot, Vespucius, Hudson, and Verrazani rolled up the curtain that hid the western world.
I say I remember the evening. It was a sombre dying twilight in March. The servant had just lit the lamp of the library, and a hoarse wind rose petulantly outside, like the distant drone of a fog whistle. A vision stood at the door. It was my daughter, Sibyl. She was resplendent. I noticed Erickson’s awed rapture. She held an evening paper in her hand. Her voice was as beautiful as her person. Its music conveyed this message:
“Father, this paper has a telegram from St. John’s, Newfoundland, saying that Donald McMillan has reached Krocker Land, and below it is one from Point Barrow, saying Stefansson has reached Krocker Land. Isn’t that a surprising coincidence?”
Erickson sprang toward her, and she handed him the paper; his face in the red reflection from the hearth looked sallow. He read the lines.
“My God, it’s true—Then Hopkins and the Professor are saved.”
“But,” I interjected with proper journalistic trepidation, “where do we come in, Mr. Erickson?”
He gazed at me as if petrified:
“RUSH THE COPY.”
It was rushed, and before McMillan or Stefansson were again heard from, Erickson’s story was the property of the world.