CHAPTER XXXIV
[THE CONVICT AT THE OAR]
A long account of Hemming's expedition, sent by a New Zealand correspondent, appeared in one of the morning papers the next day. Hemming had travelled a couple of hundred miles further south than Harry Rames. Then he had been compelled to return. But it was Harry Rames who had made it possible for him to get so far. For he used Rames's depots of provisions and was able to save his own for the stretch of new ice-covered country.
Harry lighted upon the account unexpectedly when he opened his newspaper at the breakfast table, but the moment he saw the head-line he folded the sheets quickly again and pushed the paper away from him. He shrank from reading it, hardly daring to trust himself, and he began to talk over with Cynthia the names of suitable candidates for the Hickleton Division.
"The Whips, of course, will have a man ready who will be pledged to swallow the whole of the Government policy, land bill and all. We must be beforehand with them. What do you say to young Burrell, Cynthia?"
"Sir James Burrell's son?"
"Yes. His father is anxious that he should do something," said Harry with a laugh.
"But isn't he rather young and rather insignificant?" asked Cynthia.
"Youth's a good quality in the House of Commons. The older men become suspicious of change and want life stereotyped as it is. And young Burrell isn't without brains. I don't say that he's a flyer, but then, like the Government, I prefer docility to brains in my followers. I think that I will run round to Sir James when we go back to town on Monday."
But though Harry Rames neglected his newspaper at the breakfast table, he came back for it at eleven in the morning. He could keep the drawer in his bureau locked upon his charts, but he could not quench his fever to read the details of Hemming's expedition. For an hour he tried to occupy himself with the business of Cynthia's estate, and then he gave up the attempt. When and how Hemming failed, how far he had travelled with his sledges, what new lessons were to be learnt from his experience--here were questions which he could not silence. He got the paper and read the account through. "The dogs gave out," he said to Cynthia. "The dogs are the trouble. You can't carry enough food for them and for the sledging-party as well. Of course, it's bad luck on Hemming. But I doubt if he followed the highest traditions of British exploration."