CHAPTER I
EVEN IN A WILDERNESS, ONE CANNOT ESCAPE THE DEVIL
“If your Star Woman lies this way, cap’n,” said Frontin, “devil take me if I want to find her! This ice—ah! A shot in this wilderness? Was that a gunshot or an ice-creak?”
Crawford seized his arm, stood listening. “A shot, true enough! Dead ahead of us. Bear to the left, I’ll bear to the right. Watch yourself!”
The two men separated.
Although it was August and the wide expanse of Hudson Bay was now open water, all the winter’s freeze was thrust here at the straits for exit, and not a ship had entered. No ship could fight this frozen sea until the jam burst. August, indeed? Here at the straits the very word was intolerable mockery.
Here nothing was in sight but ice and fog. The heavens above, the earth beneath, the waters under the earth, were all congealed into dead greyness; there was not even the blue shimmer of sun-struck bergs. Everything was unreal. The ear was assailed by a low, unceasing groan, which now rose into a crescendo of unearthly crashes and shrieks and again rolled in dim reverberant thunders, felt rather than heard; this came from the ice, floes and small bergs and crushed mountains hanging at crazy angles, all hurled into one inchoate mass by the tremendous urge of the bay waters trying to crowd through the narrow straits to the sea.
In the air was that bitter and penetrating chill which comes of melting floes—a chill mocking at furs, thrusting into the very heart and entrails of the two men who appeared and vanished again, crawling across that drear expanse. To the northwest, hidden among the white masses, the position of the bark Northstar was marked by a thread of smoke two miles away; even this smoke looked cold and shivery as it wound shuddering into the sky and fog. To east and south rose the steep and awful cliffs of Cape Digge and the strait; they ran, ice-dripping, into heaven and melted in the horizon fog, cold barriers set two thousand feet in air to keep the inland sea cloaked in thin mist and bitter chill. Digge’s Island was a dim blur; to west and south were grinding, crushing bergs and floes. Overhead was dun sunlight drowned in high fog—a ghastly and unearthly fog which threatened to close down again in an hour or two and add its clammy fingers to the merciless grip of the ice.
“The shot came from about here,” called Crawford, giving a hallo to which none answered. He paused on a rounded hummock to sweep the surrounding surface with his gaze. From his left, where Frontin was toiling among upflung masses of rough ice, broke a sudden sharp cry.
“Here we are, cap’n! Name of the saints—come and look!”
Turning, Crawford hastened to join his lieutenant, scrambling over pinnacles and avoiding pools of melted water. Frontin, poised on a ridge of broken masses, uttered a curt comment.