His hands caught Pelliter by the throat, but not before there had come from between the sick man’s lips a cry of “Kazan! Kazan!”
With a wolfish snarl the old one-eyed sledge-dog sprang upon Blake, and the three fell with a crash upon Pelliter’s bunk. For an instant Kazan’s attack drew one of Blake’s powerful hands from Pelliter’s throat, and as he turned to strike off the dog Pelliter’s hand groped out under his flattened pillow. Blake’s murderous face was still turned when he drew out his heavy service revolver; and as Blake cut at Kazan with a long sheath-knife which he had drawn from his belt Pelliter fired. Blake’s grip relaxed. Without a groan he slipped to the floor, and Pelliter staggered back to his feet. Kazan’s teeth were buried in Blake’s leg.
“There, there, boy,” said Pelliter, pulling him away. “That was a close one!”
He sat down and looked at Blake. He knew that the man was dead. Kazan was sniffing about the sailor’s head with stiffened spines. And then a ray of light flashed for an instant through the window. It was the sun— the second time that Pelliter had seen it in four months. A cry of joy welled up from his heart. But it was stopped midway. On the floor close beside Blake something glittered in the fiery ray, and Pelliter was upon his knees in an instant. It was the short golden hair he had snatched from the dead man’s coat, and partly covering it was the picture of his sweetheart which had fallen when the table was overturned. With the photograph in one hand and that single thread of woman’s hair between the fingers of his other Pelliter rose slowly to his feet and faced the window. The sun was gone. But its coming had put a new life into him. He turned joyously to Kazan.
“That means something, boy,” he said, in a low, awed voice, “the sun, the picture, and this! She sent it, do you hear, boy? She sent it! I can almost hear her voice, an’ she’s telling me to go. `Tommy,’ she’s saying, `you wouldn’t be a man if you didn’t go, even though you know you’re going to die on the way. You can take her something to eat,’ she’s saying, boy, `an’ you can just as well die in an igloo as here. You can leave word for Billy, an’ you can take her grub enough to last until he comes, an’ then he’ll bring her down here, an’ you’ll be buried out there with the others just the same.’ That’s what she’s saying, Kazan, so we’re going!” He looked about him a little wildly. “Straight up the coast,” he mumbled. “Thirty miles. We might make it.”
He began filling a pack with food. Outside the door there was a small sledge, and after he had bundled himself in his traveling-clothes he dragged the pack to the sledge, and behind the pack tied on a bundle of firewood, a lantern, blankets, and oil. After he had done this he wrote a few lines to MacVeigh and pinned the paper to the door. Then he hitched old Kazan to the sledge and started off, leaving the dead man where he had fallen.
“It’s what she’d have us do,” he said again to Kazan. “She sure would have us do this, Kazan. God bless her dear little heart!”
VIII
LITTLE MYSTERY
Pelliter hung close to the ice-bound coast. He traveled slowly, leading the way for Kazan, who strained every muscle in his aged body to drag the sledge. For a time the excitement of what had occurred gave Pelliter a strength which soon began to ebb. But his old weakness did not entirely return. He found that his worst trouble at first was in his eyes. Weeks of fever had enfeebled his vision until the world about him looked new and strange. He could see only a few hundred paces ahead, and beyond this little circle everything turned gray and black. Singularly enough, it struck him that there was some humor as well as tragedy in the situation, that there was something to laugh at in the fact that Kazan had but one eye, and that he was nearly blind. He chuckled to himself and spoke aloud to the dog.