"At first I would not believe my own judgment, but drove my anger down by replying, 'He is no traitor; he is my friend.' But at night when I came up, and you spoke to me pityingly about my hard luck and your own increasing wealth, I knew what you meant. Mordaunt didn't seem to mind; he had ten thousand dollars of his own, so he only said, 'Give him time. He's all right. He'll remember and come round. His head's turned for the moment by his fortune and he's lost his standards of what is just. I daresay if this happened to you or me, we should have been as bad.'
"But that did not comfort me much, for I thought, 'A man who can betray and lie to you once, can always lie and betray.' I could not sleep at night for thinking about it and I brooded over it all the day; there was ever before my eyes the vision of you, sailing up the Great Amana without me.
"If nothing else had happened and it had remained at that, I suppose I should have finished my winter's contract with you and have gone out again in the spring, either with Mordaunt or alone, prospecting for myself. As it was, I began to argue with myself. 'What better right has Spurling to this gold than I?' I said. 'If I had chosen this claim, as I might have done, all the wealth which is now his would have been mine. Had that been the case, I should have held to my bargain and have dealt squarely by him. Since he refuses to allow me the share which he promised me, I have a right to take it.'
"You know what followed, how I hid some nuggets in my shirt, and you accused me and discovered them. You called me a thief, and threatened to expose me to the law of the mining camp. I told you that, since we had made that agreement to share conjointly whatever we found, I had as big a right to take charge of some of the gold as you yourself. Then you laughed in my face and struck me, asking if that was the usual way in which a labourer spoke to his employer. That blow drove me mad. I made no reply, for I had become suddenly crafty; I awaited a revenge that was certain and from which there could be no rebound. From that day forward the lust to kill was upon me; wherever I looked I saw you dead, and was glad. When the Northern Lights shot up they seemed to me, instead of green or yellow, to be always crimson, the bloodcolour. When they crept and rustled through the snow along the mountain heights, I fancied that they were a band of murderers who fled from their crime, and turned, and beckoned, and pointed to me, and whispered 'Come.' As my imagination wrought within me I grew silent; not even Mordaunt could rouse me. But he guessed what was happening, and would often come to me and say, 'Don't get down-hearted. Whatever Spurling does, I still hold to my promise. You and I are partners with a common fund. We have eleven thousand dollars already, so cheer up.'
"But it wasn't envy of your wealth had driven me mad; it was fear lest you should go off and leave me behind, and should get to Guiana and to El Dorado first. I couldn't shake off my hallucination however much I tried—which wasn't much; always and everywhere I could see you dead. You know that the Klondike with its few hours of winter daylight, its interminable nights, its pale-green moon which seems to shine forever in a steely cloudless sky, and its three long months when men rarely see the sun, is not a much better place than Keewatin in which to heal a crippled mind. So, with the passage of time, there was worse to come.
"One morning as I came to the shaft, I found a stranger waiting there. It was dark, I could not see his face; since he said nothing, I passed him and, descending to the bed-rock, commenced to scatter the last night's burning that I might get at the thawed-out muck. Presently I heard the sound of someone following, and the creak of the rope as he let himself down in the bucket. I thought it was you, so I did not turn, but sulkily went on with my work. The footsteps came after me wherever I went, standing behind me. At last I swung round in anger, supposing that you had come to torment me; at that moment I had it in my heart to strike you dead. In the light of the scattered fire, I discovered that it was not you, but instead a man of about my height and breadth. 'What d'you want?' I asked him. He did not answer. 'Who sent you here?' I said. He was silent. Then I grew frightened; seizing a smouldering brand, having puffed it to a blaze, I thrust it before his face—and saw myself.
"I was down there all alone and underground; no one could have heard me had I cried for help. In my terror I grew foolish and laughed aloud; it seemed to me so odd that I should have such fear of myself. When I had grown quiet, 'Who sent you here?' I asked again.
"At last he answered, 'You called me.'
"'What have you come for?' I questioned.
"'To murder Spurling,' he replied.