HOPE—AND A WILL
Without arousing the girl, Polaris made hasty search. Some rods along the back trail, he saw a break in the snow at the side of the trail. There he found the priest lying on his back, with his face turned up to the sun and his keen-pointed dagger piercing his heart. He had stumbled thither as far as his endurance would sustain him. More joyful than ever it had seemed in life was the half smile at the lips of the dead man.
That smile was the only message he had left. He had been dead for hours.
Polaris drew the dagger from the dead heart that had loved him well and hurled it afar in the snow. He smoothed the dress of the priest and bore the body to the camp. Before he aroused the girl he placed the corpse again in the sleeping parka.
Then he called the girl and told her that Kalin was dead, but made no mention of the way the priest had taken.
"Ah, another brave heart stilled—and because of me!" she cried, and the tears came, for she had liked the priest well. As she wept, Polaris told her of the love the man had borne her.
"And, lady," he said, "wherever Kalin is, he is well content, for he has aided you toward your dearest wishes and his soul asked no more than that."
He dug with the blade of a spear at the foot of one of the icy monoliths, and laid the corpse of Kalin there, while the dogs, which always seemed to sense the presence of death, bayed a hoarse requiem above the grave. But neither then nor at any future time did Polaris tell the girl of the supreme sacrifice Kalin made at the last, not wishing to make her suffer more regret.
On the rude grave he had made he piled a few loose fragments of rock, and turned to the task of breaking camp for the next northward lap into the wild land.
Two hundred miles to the north and east, three men were gathered on the snow crust in a little valley, wrenching and thrumming at the wires and pinions of the first bird-machine that ever had penetrated into the fastnesses of the antarctic.
All was taut for the start. The wings were set. The engines responded to the power. The propeller thrilled the air. Into the seat climbed a lean, fur-clad young man, with a thin face, high cheek-bones shadowing deep-set, cold, blue eyes, and a wisp of drab moustache above thin, eager lips.
"Ready there, Aronson," he said, to a man standing by.
A second later Captain James Scoland sailed majestically away into the white mystery of the unknown polar land.
At the door of the snow house that had been their home for days, Aronson and Mikel, who had pressed with him to his farthest south camp, watched his going with shaded eyes. A tiny silken flag bearing the stars and stripes, fluttered from one of the canvas plane wings. Mikel watched it as far as it was distinguishable.
"An' here's hopin' he carries Old Glory safely through to the pole—an' back again!" he shouted.
Leagues farther to the north, in another tiny camp, three other men were waiting, also. Still farther on, in an ice-locked harbor, the good ship Felix rode day by day, the little company of its crew watching the slow passing of the hours, with every ear attuned to catch the first voice returning from the south that should tell of success, or of defeat and death.
And were that tale of success, those on the ship nursed a heavy sorrow, that would turn into bitterness all the glory of success. A glorious maid and two men who had been of their company had strayed from the ship and perished in the wilderness.
Silence.
As far as the eye could reach, a dull wilderness, stretching wearily under a leaden, sunless sky. A rolling plain of lusterless snow, cut sharply here and there by crevasses, gashed at intervals by rifts of unknown depths and tortuous gulleys. North and south seemingly without bounds; east and west, many a mile of bleak fatigue between low, sullen hills of gray.
A land without sound, without life, and without hope.
Yet, among the ridges in that dead and twilight chaos, something stirred. A dark speck crawled on and on, writhing along the brinks of the crevasses, skirting the yawning rifts, twisting in and out around the hummocks, like the course of some wriggling vermin across the cracked and gaping skin of a white, unholy corpse.
Northward, ever northward, the blot dragged its crooked way. Nearer would it resolve itself into two wearily plodding beasts, tugging, slipping, stumbling, but going on, the creaking straps of their leathern harness pulling a sledge with a heap of skins upon it. Still nearer—a fur-clad, haggard man with hollow blazing eyes glittering through an unkempt shock of golden hair and a gaunt gray dog with drooping tail picking their way with soundless feet through the white reaches, dragging their sledge; like a fantasy passing across the white and silent dream of the cold end of the world.
Once the dog had looked up into the face of the master, the dumb eloquence of sacrifice shining through its eyes, an age-old fire. The massive jaws slipped apart, but closed again; only a sigh was breathed from the beast's broad chest.
"Aye, Marcus, I know," muttered the man. "I know that you'll die on your four feet, if you can, and in the straps. And I, Marcus," his voice dropped to a whisper, "I'll die, too, Marcus, as you will—for the Rose—all for the Rose—But not yet, Marcus; for the Rose yet lives, and death is slow for the very strong."
Five luckless days had passed since the priest had laid his burdens by. One by one the cruel south had taken lives in toll, until only Polaris and the grim pack leader stood in harness to race with death on the course to the north.
First polar bears, made mad by hunger, attacked the party, and two of the dogs, Juno and Nero, died under the sweeping crescent claws.
A nameless distemper, from which no dog, however carefully bred, is quite immune, had seized both Hector and Julius. For hours they acted strangely as they ran, and then, at a stopping place, they went quite mad and turned on the man and girl.
Hector went down to silence under the crushing jaws of Marcus, who rose with a mighty roar to quell this insane mutiny; and Julius died on the spear of Polaris. There were tears on the cheek of the man as he drove the weapon home.
Refashioning the harness to suit his own wide shoulders, Polaris then took up the work of the lost dogs. For two long days of many marches he and Marcus had dragged the sledge. Now, with their stock of provisions dwindled away and their rations slender, the terrific strain of the journey was telling almost to madness on the man and the dog.
They came to rest in the shelter of one of the thousands of hummocks, and Polaris realized, with a chill at his stout heart, that their march had advanced them a bare score of miles from their last stopping place, when they should have covered at least twice that distance.
From her nestling place beneath the heap of furs on the sledge he gently aroused Rose Emer. The girl rode most of the weary miles in light and fitful slumbers, drowsy with the cold, and her brain at times benumbed by the prospect, now nearer and nearer, of almost certain disaster—a contingency which the man would not admit.
She came forth listlessly, and they prepared their poor meal over the fame of the little oil-burner, and ate it within the shelter of the skins which the man stretched to confine the heat from the stove. They divided their rations with Marcus, and girl and man and dog huddled at the side of the sledge, to sleep if they might until the time for the next setting forth along the terrible way.
Some hours later, when Polaris awakened her, ready for the next march forward, she shook her head wearily.
"No, my dear friend, you will have to go on without me. No," as he opened his mouth in quick question, "listen to me. I have thought it all out. If we continue on in this way we can proceed but a few miserable miles at the best, and then perish in the snow. I am the handicap. Without me, you and the dog could leave the sledge and go on alone, and, perhaps, save yourselves. You were born and have lived in this land, and you could get through alone; where, with me to look after, you will not succeed."
Polaris listened in silence, and a smile gathered at the corners of his mouth, as sad and wistful as any of Kalin's.
"Too much has been done and suffered already on my account," the girl went on. "I cannot let you make this sacrifice. You are as brave and true a gentleman as lives in the world to-day. All that human being can do, you have done for me. You must not die for me. You must go on and leave me—"
Her voice broke, and she hid her face in her hands. She felt the touch of Polaris's hand on her shoulder.
"Lady," he began, and his strong voice quivered. "Lady, what has Polaris done that you judge him so."
"Ah, no, no!" she sobbed, "you have been good and brave and true, even to the end—but the end is here. Oh, you must go on—"
For a moment the man stood and gazed down on her, as she sat with her head bent low. He started to hold out his arms toward her, then clenched his hands at his sides. Immediately he relaxed them, stooped, and swung her lightly from her seat on the furs, and tucked her tenderly in her place on the sledge.
"Dear lady," he said softly, "never did Polaris think to quarrel with you, and here, least of all places, is fitting for it. Yet speak no more like this. Polaris will, he must go on as he has gone. If he dies, it will be the death of an American gentleman, not that of a savage and a coward. Come, Marcus!"
He slipped his shoulders into the harness with the dog, and again they went forward into the gray unknown. Through tears the girl watched the strong back bending to its task ahead of her. In her eyes a great light kindled and burned steadily. Not all the antarctic snows might quench it.
They traversed four more laps across the snows, and were starting on their fifth when the final calamity fell.
As usual, they had camped close against the side of one of the larger mounds or hummocks. It was of rock, coated heavily with ice and frozen snow. On its beetling side, just above their little camp, a mass of rock had cracked away from the main body of the hummock. Its slow separation had been a matter of years, perhaps ages. That fracture might have been begun by the grinding fangs of a glacier five thousand years ago, and completed by the tireless and eternal frosts.
There it was poised, masked by the snow and ice, waiting its time to fall.
At the moment that the travelers turned their faces from camp, and Polaris started to assist Rose Emer to her seat on the sledge, the hour struck for the fall. Rock grated on rock above them, warning the man to spring back. He dragged the girl aside. A few pieces of ice rattled down. Then the fragment, a weight of tons, toppled squarely down upon the rear of the sledge, crushing it to splinters, and burying it in the loose snow.
They stared at the wreck, and Marcus growled and strained to free himself from the harness.
Polaris dug aside the covering snow. A moment's inspection showed that the sledge was nothing but shattered uselessness. Indeed, could he have repaired it, he had not the chance. It was beneath the mass of the fallen rock, too great a weight for even his powers to remove. Some of their vanishing store of provisions also lay under the rock.
"We still can walk, lady," Polaris said. "We will go on together."
"No, dear friend, we will not walk on," she replied. "See, my foot is hurt, and I can scarcely stand upon it. A splinter of ice struck it when the rock fell—"
Polaris leaped to her side and examined the extended ankle. He found it not broken, but bruised and swelling rapidly. It was true that she could not walk on it, nor would for many days.
He made no answer to her last argument. He tore several skins robes from the fore part of the sledge, and set her down on them. Then, as well as he could, he bandaged the bruised ankle, winding it with strips of hide, outside the girl's boot, for he dared not remove the coverings from the injured limb lest the cold do it irreparable injury.
His hasty surgery completed, he stepped to the ruin of the sledge and filled two skin sacks with the remains of the meat which he could come at. He strapped one of them on the back of Marcus, and the other he slung on his own shoulders.
With his knife he cut and fashioned at one of the skin robes. When he approached the girl again he wore a rude sling, which he had passed about his neck and shoulders, so that it hung across his broad chest.
He plucked her from the snow, wrapped her in a robe, and set her in the sling at his breast. He stooped, and with his knife cut Marcus out of the useless harness.
Unbelievable as it was that human beings so beset could continue to exist, they proceeded thus for the space of two days. At the end of each short march they huddled together in their robes—the girl and the dog and the man, and warmed with the heat of their bodies their frozen food, until they might chew and mumble it. Still closer they huddled for their fitful slumbers.
On the march the girl swooned many times with the throbbing pain of her swollen ankle. Always she awoke to find herself in the man's arms. They wound about her, a living barrier, which death itself could not pass. All the weary miles of the weary marches he carried her.
Under her weight, every muscle of his splendid body was racked with the pangs of torture, until the fierce pain was succeeded by a numbness that slowly enveloped his body and crept up to his brain. He felt that he had been transformed into a marching machine of unfeeling steel. He went on, bearing his burden, mile after mile, stolidly, doggedly, splendidly.
Two days passed. Polaris roused himself from where they slept huddled in a little hollow in the snow.
The mere rising to his feet was a matter of minutes, and he swayed uncertainly. Once more he fought fiercely with the temptation to acknowledge that this, indeed, was the end, and to follow the footsteps of Kalin. Once more his courage upheld his resolve. He would go on. He would walk until he could walk no longer. Then he would crawl on his hands and knees, drag himself forward with his hands, but he would go on.
As he stooped there came to his ears a humming, faint and far away. He arranged the robe and gathered Rose Emer gently into the sling. With immense effort he straightened his knees and back and stood erect again. Again the humming noise, nearer now, and louder! Marcus floundered out of the hollow, both ears pricked, and growled a weak, hoarse defiance. Polaris followed.
From a distant humming the noise rose to a shrilling; from a shrilling to a prolonged shriek. The man came out of the hollow, and his eyes sought the sky, whence came the sound. His heart bounded and threatened to burst in his breast.
Sharply outlined against the dazzling sky, sailing along on steady planes like a great white bird of the air, her engine purring and thrilling, and her propeller screaming, an air-ship passed athwart his vision!
Enthralled, his eyes followed it. It was less than half a mile away to his right. He tried to shout aloud, but his voice was feeble, and seemed to be thrown back at him from the air. Before he could rouse the girl, or convey to her senses what was occurring, the ship of the air had vanished. It dipped out of sight into the mouth of a little valley.
He looked again. No, his eyes did not deceive. Smoke was curling up from the valley, a thin blue spiral. The bird man had alighted there. There was a camp of men. Food and warmth, rescue and life for his precious burden—all were there in that little valley, a bare quarter of a mile away across the snow. Could he ever reach it?
Into his brain leaped a multitude of quick thoughts. Joy and the shadow of an old suspicion came together. He knelt again in the snow and aroused Rose Emer.
"Lady," he said very softly, "you are saved. Yonder," and he pointed across the snow toward the valley—"yonder is the smoke of a camp, and an air-ship from the south just landed in that valley."
Rose Emer strained her eyes across the snow. She saw the smoke and comprehended. For an instant she bowed her face on her arms. When she raised it her eyes were streaming. Out of hard despair tear time had come again. She caught his hand to her breast, and then raised it to her lips. He snatched it from her.
"Oh, but I thank you; words are too feeble to say it. I thank you for life, Polaris!"
"Lady," he made answer, "I am going to make a strange request of you. Yonder are those of your own people—the American captain and his men. It is my wish that when we come among them you will say nothing of my origin, of where you found me, or what has befallen us, more than is necessary to tell—"
"It is enough that you ask it," the girl broke in. "Never mind any further reason. I will do as you say."
He groped within the breast of his furred waistcoat and took out a small, flat packet, sewn in membranous parchment. "One more favor of your kindness, lady," he asked. "Please keep this packet until I ask it of you again. It is the message which I carry to the world at the north. Should I pass into the world of shadows, you will do me a great service if you will open it and send its contents to whom it is directed."
Rose Emer took the packet and hid it in her bosom.
"Now we will go on to the valley, before strength fails entirely," he said. He straightened up again, and bent to the toil of the pathway which he had marked out for himself. The girl leaned back against his straining breast. Once more, when she might have spoken, she kept silence.
They went on. Slowly, uncertainly, for Polaris staggered much, foot by foot, he fought his way across that bleak and endless quarter of a mile of snow.
Three hours after the air-ship had landed from its history-making dash in and out of the jaws of the antarctic, Captain Scoland and his two men were startled in their camp by an apparition.
Down the slope of the valley and through a circle of snarling dogs that rushed to attack and then slunk back affrighted, strode a grim-faced and silent man. On he came like a machine, or like one who walks wide-eyed at night. Behind him crept the tottering skeleton of a great gray wolf dog.
Slung across the breast of the man was a fur-wrapped bundle. With measured tread he walked on to the door of the shelter, paused, and with no word let his burden gently down into the snow. A corner of the robe fell aside and disclosed the face of Rose Emer. She had swooned, and lay like one dead.
Captain Scoland sprang forward with a strained cry of surprise and question. The strange man stood for an instant, his unseeing eyes fixed on the snow reaches beyond the valley. Then he tossed his arms above his head and pitched backward, inert and lifeless. The tottering wreck of a dog crept up and licked his face.