Adler was for the moment stricken speechless. His jaw dropped; he stared, and caught his breath.
"Mr. Ferriss dead!" he exclaimed at length. "I—I can't believe it." He crossed himself rapidly. Bennett made no reply, and for upward of five minutes the two men sat motionless in the chairs, looking off into the night. After a while Adler broke silence and asked a few questions as to Ferriss's sickness and the nature and time of his death—questions which Bennett answered as best he might. But it was evident that Bennett, alive and present there in the flesh, was more to Adler than Ferriss dead.
"But you're all right, sir, ain't you?" he asked at length. "There ain't anything the matter with you?"
"No," said Bennett; looking at him steadily; then suddenly he added:
"Adler, I was to blame for Mr. Ferriss's death. If it hadn't been for me he would probably have been alive to-night. It was my fault. I did what I thought was right, when I knew all the time, just as I know now, that I was wrong. So, when any one asks you about Mr. Ferriss's death you are to tell him just what you know about it—understand? Through a mistake I was responsible for his death. I shall not tell you more than that, but that much you ought to know."
Adler looked at Bennett curiously and with infinite amazement. The order of his universe was breaking up about his ears. Bennett, the inscrutable, who performed his wonders in a mystery, impenetrable to common eyes, who moved with his head in the clouds, behold! he was rendering account to him, Adler, the meanest of his subjects—the king was condescending to the vassal, was admitting him to his confidence. And what was this thing he was saying, that he was responsible for Ferriss's death? Adler did not understand; his wits could not adjust themselves to such information. Ferriss was dead, but how was Bennett to blame? The king could do no wrong. Adler did not understand. No doubt Bennett was referring to something that had happened during the retreat over the ice—something that had to be done, and that in the end, and after all this lapse of time, had brought about Mr. Ferriss's death. In any case Bennett had done what was right. For that matter he had been responsible for McPherson's death; but what else had there been to do?
Bennett had spoken as he did after a moment's rapid thinking. To Adler's questions as to the manner of the chief engineer's death Bennett had at first given evasive replies. But a sudden sense of shame at being compelled to dissemble before a subordinate had lashed him across the face. True, he had made a mistake—a fearful, unspeakable mistake—but at least let him be man enough to face and to accept its consequences. It might not be necessary or even expedient to make acknowledgment of his folly in all quarters, but at that moment it seemed to him that his men—at least one of them—who had been under the command of himself and his friend, had a right to be told the truth. It had been only one degree less distasteful to undeceive Adler than it had been to deceive him in the first place. Bennett was not the general to explain his actions to his men. But he had not hesitated a moment.
However, Adler was full of another subject, and soon broke out with:
"You know, sir, there's another expedition forming; I suppose you have heard—an English one. They call it the Duane-Parsons expedition. They are going to try the old route by Smith Sound. They are going to winter at Tasiusak, and try to get through the sound as soon as the ice breaks up in the spring. But Duane's ideas are all wrong. He'll make no very high northing, not above eighty-five. I'll bet a hat. When we go up again, sir, will you—will you let me—will you take me along? Did I give satisfaction this last—"
"I'm never going up again, Adler," answered Bennett.