Polaris of the Snows
4. HURLED SOUTH AGAIN
When his strong form had bounded from her view, the girl turned to thelittle hut and shut herself within. She cast herself on a heap ofblankets, and gave way to her bereavement and terror.
Her brother's corpse was scarcely cold at the bottom of the abyss. Shewas lost in the trackless wastes--alone, save for this bizarre strangerwho had come out of the snows, this man of strange saying, who seemed ademigod of the wilderness.
Could she trust him? She must. She recalled him kneeling in the snow,and the courtierlike grace with which he kissed her hand. A hot flushmounted to her eyes. She dried her tears.
She heard him return to the camp, and heard the barking of the dogs.Once he passed near the hut, but he did not intrude, and she remainedwithin.
Womanlike, she set about the rearrangement of her hair and clothing.When she had finished she crept to the doorway and peeped out. Again herblushes burned her cheeks. She saw the son of the snows crouched abovethe camp-fire, surrounded by a group of monstrous dogs. He had rubbedhis face with oil. A bright blade glittered in his hand. Polaris was_shaving_!
Presently she went out. The young man sprang to his feet, cracking hislong whip to restrain the dogs, which would have sprung upon thestranger. They huddled away, their teeth bared, staring at her withglowing eyes. Polaris seized one of them by the scruff of the neck,lifted it bodily from the snow, and swung it in front of the girl.
"Talk to him, lady," he said; "you must be friends. This is Julius."
The girl bent over and fearlessly stroked the brute's head.
"Julius, good dog," she said. At her touch the dog quivered and itshackles rose. Under the caress of her hand it quieted gradually. Thebristling hair relaxed, and Julius's tail swung slowly to and fro in anoverture of amity. When Polaris loosed him, he sniffed in friendlyfashion at the girl's hands, and pushed his great head forward for morecaresses.
Then Marcus, the grim leader of the pack, stalked majestically forwardfor his introduction.
"Ah, you have won Marcus!" cried Polaris. "And Marcus won is a friendindeed. None of them would harm you now." Soon she had learned the nameand had the confidence of every dog of the pack, to the great delight oftheir master.
Among the effects in the camp was a small oil-stove, which Polarisgreeted with brightened eyes. "One like that we had, but it was worn outlong ago," he said. He lighted the stove and began the preparation of ameal.
She found that he had cleared the camp and put all in order. He haddragged the carcasses of the dead dogs to the other side of the slopeand piled them there. His stock of meat was low, and his own dogs wouldhave no qualms if it came to making their own meals of these strangersof their own kind.
The girl produced from the remnants of the camp stores a few handfuls ofcoffee and an urn. Polaris watched in wonderment as she brewed it overthe tiny stove and his nose twitched in reception of its deliciousaroma. They drank the steaming beverage, piping hot, from tin cups. Inthe stinging air of the snowlands even the keenest grief must give wayto the pangs of hunger. The girl ate heartily of a meal that in a moremoderate climate she would have considered fit only for beasts.
When their supper was completed they sat huddled in their furs at theedge of the fire. Around them were crouched the dogs, watching witheager eyes for any scraps which might fall to their share.
"Now tell me who you are, and how you came here," questioned the girl.
"Lady, my name is Polaris, and I think that I am an American gentleman,"he said, and a trace of pride crept into the words of the answer. "Icame here from a cabin and a ship that lie burned many leagues to thesouthward. All my life I have lived there, with but one companion, myfather, who now is dead, and who sends me to the north with a message tothat world of men that lies beyond the snows, and from which he long wasabsent."
"A ship--a cabin--" The girl bent toward him in amazement. "And burned?And you have lived--have grown up in this land of snow and ice andbitter cold, where but few things can exist--I don't understand!"
"My father has told me much, but not all. It is all in his message whichI have not seen," Polaris answered. "But that which I tell you is truth.He was a seeker after new things. He came here to seek that which noother man had found. He came in a ship with my mother and others. Allwere dead before I came to knowledge. He had built a cabin from theruins of the ship, and he lived there until he died."
"And you say that you are an American gentleman?"
"That he told me, lady, although I do not know my name or his, exceptthat he was Stephen, and he called me Polaris."
"And did he never try to get to the north?" asked the girl.
"No. Many years ago, when I was a boy, he fell and was hurt. After thathe could do but little. He could not travel."
"And you?"
"I learned to seek food in the wilderness, lady; to battle with itsbeasts, to wrest that which would sustain our lives from the snows andthe wastes."
Much more of his life and of his father he told her under her wonderingquestioning--a tale most incredible to her ears, but, as he said, thetruth. Finally he finished.
"Now, lady, what of you?" he asked. "How came you here, and from where?"
"My name is Rose--"
"Ah, that is the name of a flower," said Polaris. "You were well named."
He did not look at her as he spoke. His eyes were turned to the snowslopes and were very wistful. "I have never seen a flower," he continuedslowly, "but my father said that of all created things they were thefairest."
"I have another name," said the girl. "It is Rose--Rose Emer."
"And why did you come here, Rose Emer?" asked Polaris.
"Like your father, I--we were seekers after new things, my brother andI. Both our father and mother died, and left my brother John and myselfridiculously rich. We had to use our money, so we traveled. We have beenover most of the world. Then a man--an American gentleman--a very braveman, organized an expedition to come to the south to discover the southpole. My brother and I knew him. We were very much interested in hisadventure. We helped him with it. Then John insisted that he would comewith the expedition, and--oh, they didn't wish me to come, but I neverhad been left behind--I came, too."
"And that brave man who came to seek the pole, where is he now?"
"Perhaps he is dead--out there," said the girl, with a catch in hervoice. She pointed to the south. "He left the ship and went on, daysago. He was to establish two camps with supplies. He carried an airshipwith him. He was to make his last dash for the pole through the air fromthe farther camp. His men were to wait for him until--until they weresure that he would not come back."
"An airship!" Polaris bent forward with sparkling eyes. "So there _are_airships, then! Ah, this man must be brave! How is he called?"
"James Scoland is the name--Captain Scoland."
"He went on whence I came? Did he go by that way?" Polaris pointed wherethe white tops of the mountain range which he skirted pierced the sky.
"No. He took a course to the east of the mountains, where otherexplorers of years before had been before him."
"Yes, I have seen maps. Can you tell me where, or nearly where, we arenow?" he asked the girl.
"This is Victoria Land," she answered. "We left the ship in a long bay,extending in from Ross Sea, near where the 160th meridian joins the 80thparallel. We are somewhere within three days' journey from the ship."
"And so near to open water?"
She nodded.
* * * * *
Rose Emer slept in the little shelter, with the grim Marcus curled on arobe beside her pallet. Crouched among the dogs in the camp, Polarisslept little. For hours he sat huddled, with his chin on his hands,pondering what the girl had told him. Another man was on his way to thepole--a very brave man--and he might reach it. And then--Polaris must bevery wary when he met that man who had won so great a prize.
"Ah, my father," he sighed, "learning is mine through patience. Historyof the world and
of its wars and triumphs and failures, I know. Of itstongues you have taught me, even those of the Roman and the Greek, longsince passed away; but how little do I know of the ways of men--and ofwomen! I shall be very careful, my father."
Quite beyond any power of his to control, an antagonism was growingwithin him for that man whom he had not seen; antagonism that was notall due to the magnitude of the prize which the man might be winning, ormight be dying for. Indeed, had he been able to analyze it, that was theleast part of it.
When they broke camp for their start they found that the perverse wind,which had rested while they slept, had risen when they would journey,and hissed bitterly across the bleak steppes of snow. Polaris made aplace on the sledge for the girl, and urged the pack into the teeth ofthe gale. All day long they battled ahead in it, bearing left to thewest, where was more level pathway, than among the snow dunes.
In an ever increasing blast they came in sight of open water. Theyhalted on a far-stretching field, much broken by huge masses, sosnow-covered that it was not possible to know whether they were of rockor ice. Not a quarter of a mile beyond them, the edge of the field wasfretted by wind-lashed waves, which extended away to the horizon rim,dotted with tossing icebergs of great height.
Polaris pitched camp in the shelter of a towering cliff, and they madethemselves what comfort they could in the stinging cold.
They had slept several hours when the slumbers of Polaris were piercedby a woman's screams, the frenzied howling of the dogs, and thethundering reverberations of grinding and crashing ice cliffs. A dash ofspray splashed across his face.
He sprang to his feet in the midst of the leaping pack; as he did so hefelt the field beneath him sway and pitch like a hammock. For the firsttime since he started for the north the Antarctic sun was shiningbrightly--shining cold and clear on a great disaster!
For they had pitched their camp on an ice floe. Whipped on by the gale,the sea had risen under it, heaved it up and broken it. On a section ofthe floe several acres in extent their little camp lay, at the verybrink of a gash in the ice-field which had cut them off from the landover which they had come.
The water was raging like a millrace through the widening rift betweenthem and the shore. Caught in a swift current and urged by the furiouswind, the broken-up floe was drifting, faster and faster--_back to thesouth_!