The shining object rattled among the stones; it had a silvery lustre, and as the Yankee stooped and picked it up, there was something strangely grave in his face.
“You win, Goritz,” he calmly said, as he pocketed the trinket, “and I’ll follow you till the curtain drops.”
He rose and extended his hand; it was grasped cordially by the big Dane, the two men facing each other at almost the same level, both beautiful types of manhood.
“Mr. Link, the object that Spruce Hopkins flung upwards, and cast as the die of our destiny that day is in my hand.” (He laid a flat silver medal on the table between us. I picked it up; on one side was a masterly execution of the face of a lovely woman; on the other was a sort of Satan.)
“Mr. Link,” resumed Erickson, “that woman is Angelica Sigurda Tabasco, and that man Diaz Ilario Aguadiente, the two interesting occupants of No. — east Fifty-eighth Street, from whose unpleasant society you freed me. Hopkins gave me that the last time I saw him alive. What he told me then had something to do with the predicament you found me in.”
(Mr. Erickson again retired into his obviously gloomy thoughts, which I did not attempt to disturb, and, on his emergence, continued his story.)
This impromptu solution won the day, and we prepared for the unknown transit over that unknown territory of which we had had one fleeting glimpse, and which lay somewhere before us, in a vast milkness of mist.
We concluded to take with us two dogs; the rest—now three, one had gone mad (piblocto) and had been shot—were killed, and a cannibalistic feast offered to the survivors. The oil and stoves were left behind; there might be enough fibre or wood for fire, at least we hoped so. Our packs were made as light as possible. We were in a race, like Mikkelsen’s last lap, a Race against Hunger. The sleeping-bags were discarded, the tent we carried a short distance only. No grimmer or braver determination ever animated explorers; we were not running for safety, we were running away from it. The step taken, our spirits rose, the former fancies swarmed upon us, and perhaps the gold belt again floated before our vision, an omen and a guide. This imaginative sway of anticipation was needed, or else we could never have plucked up courage to make the fateful start.
The beginning was symptomatic enough of our coming dangers. To get over and down the precipice on whose edge we stood was impossible without a clearance of the besetting fogs, and fortunately, as if by invitation for us to retain our resolution, the fog lifted on the morning we started. We were on the brink of a high columnar black wall, rising from 200 feet or less to 600 feet or more, from the rocky floor of the country beyond. We searched for some pathway for descent. Innumerable shelves and footholds diversified the precipitous faces but they were far apart, and often offered little more than space for a bird or a goat. Once down the first vertical cliffs the gigantic heaps of talus leaning against their bases would afford us a practicable though rough way to the bottom. And now we saw with astonishment the obvious inclination of the farther land. It seemed an almost unbroken hillside, coursed by streams and stream beds, furrowed by dry, stony valleys, cut by the low, serrated backs of steep hills, the whole landscape terminating in that distant medley of rolling clouds, streaming vapor banks barely discernible, except as, so it seemed, they were lit by flashes of light. Were we on the outer flanks of a continental lava bed, and was that cloud space beyond the lip of a vast volcanic confusion? The question was not asked aloud, but its staggering terror made us tremble. Never, Mr. Link, did men more heroically walk into the shadows of the Valley of Death than did we.
The morning sun sent long shadows westward; the day was actually warm; a sudden brightness encouraged us. If the food lasted! That was the terror that haunted us. Could it? At last Goritz discovered far northward a gorge or ravine reaching almost to the top of the palisade. Down this we scrambled and found ourselves in the bed of a low stream, which a day later became a swollen torrent, so quickly did precipitation feed the rivers, and so enormous was its volume. This made our daily progress more dangerous. We were soaked and miserable ourselves, but the protection to our food was imperfect, and that gave rise to serious doubts as to whether it would last us ten days, the calculated limit before its exhaustion. The biscuit half turned to dough and the drenched tea exuded in tawny drops from our packs. This led to a readjustment and each man carried his rations of tea and biscuit and chocolate underneath his coat. The pemmican, force meat, cabbage and beans are safe enough on our backs.