A Tale of the Arctic.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 1, 5 July 1911, Page 50

A Tale of the Arctic.

By

E. ELLIOT STOCK.

T'E Selwyn expedition had been successfully accomplished. Commander Selwyn had said so himself—upon his own deck—at a meeting of the two captains that morning in an almost ice-locked bay on the southern coast of one of the Parry Islands; and when Commander Selwyn, R.N., was pleased to be satisfied all han.ls felt the millennium might be expected at very fehort notice. IWo years previously the converted whaler Helvetia, now cheerfully batting the loose pack-ice about her cutwater, and proudly carrying “Farthest North” in bold lettering upon her counter, had started out to nose the possibilities of the North-West Passage, and incidentally correct the faulty position of the magnetic pole. She now lay end-on to iier relief ship, the old barque-rigged, auxiliary-screwed Plethora, her brasswork winking patronizingly in the Arctic bun in bold contrast to the Plethora's businesslike dinginess. Captain Jock Bell, of the Plethora, taw no particular sense in scientific exploration of any sort, and said so, with embellishments, when he found the old ■packet bought beneath him by a learned society as an Arctic relief ship; but the idler of three hundred pounds to carry stores and a tame doctor into Baffin’s Bay and the sounds to the north of it till lie spoke the Farthest North seemed a gift worthy of the acceptor. The outcome of the offer had spelt complete success. The society knew •their man. Two months to search the V estern Greenland coast from Cape Farewell to Upnavik; a fortnight westward through Lancaster Sound in the teeth of a biting nor'-wester; yvt another month to beat the intricate channels of the Parry Islands—and there, tucked away in a tiny bay upon which the ice had just begun to loosen its grip, Jay the Plethora’s quarry. Captain Bell, stamping the ice-glazed after-deck with young Dr. Muttlebery, imagined he could hear in the loosening ice the crackle of the good English notes he had so skilfullv earned.

Muttlebery had tumbled aboard the old ship at the last minute, packed oil’ by the society with a cosily assortment of cameras, and instructions to record the Arctic in all its moods. r I his he had done thoroughly during the three months of bucketing inside the Circle; and now the fruits of his hard labour, got at the expense of the better part of two lingers and a touch of snowblindness, lay safely stored in a sin ill bunk off the engine-room. The Plethora's chief engineer—a deaf and rather morose Scot—had seen .his snug little quarters turned info a dark-room and himself relegated to the draughty mercies of the chart-house whilst still in the Hull river. 1 he relations between the medical and engineering departments were, in consequence, rather more than fitrained. ‘■Picture-makin' i* the engine room! ’d will be a lady's boodwar next. I'm thinkin, old Andy had exclaimed, almost tearfully. “It's the society, it's no' me, Andy,’’ the skipper had replied with a grin; -‘and man. ye’ll he forget tin' the grand air and the cold water ye'll be having the use of before our charter runs oot.” Old Andy's resentment had sitvee become silently vindictive, ami only a quiet firmness on Muttlebery’s part allowed him to carry out his delicate work without serious complications. But all was now bustle and excitement, i<» the obliteration of personal matters. r l he Farthest North ha I commenced to shake ofl tin* winter's lethargy, replenish stores from her relief ship, and get into seagoing trim again. The month occupied with this woTk was a valuable one to Muttlebery, nor was he slow •to take advantage of it. Whilst th » weather hell he would tramp, liiullled to the eyes —sound iines with a couple of the Plethora's men. sometimes alone far out into the barren silences Ot ice hummock and snow plain, to retiiin hours later, frozen but contented, with a few more picture records to add ♦ o his More. At times he would wander for hours. «1] ’thoughts of work thrown a«ide, over those vast barren stretcher

merging imperceptibly into the greywhite sky-line ahead, eye and mind weary, lint drawn by a fascination he could not understand. At others the craving and monotony would be broken by a chance shot at a bear, or, more rarely still, by the appearance of a small stray Eskimo tribe, shifting to their spring quarters, the famished sledge-dogs hauling twice their own weight, and snapping as they hauled. The Farthest North, with that man-of-war promptitude which means a maximum of work with a minimum of bustle, soon resumed her sea going rig, and one bright morning in early summer both ships broke ground and butted their

way through the pack-i.-c oat into the open, under easy . aa’.ai. for the long voyage south and west. Probably no ■ of th • two ships’ companies felt a greater relief than the young doctor when the last glimpse of that dead-white land hid faded into the -grey horizon. Its awful loneliness had during the last (lays lain like an icy grip upon his very soul, holding, yet repelling. Despite a well-balanced mind and iron constitution, an eerie, resistless temptation had more than once all but forced him to leave the ship and tramp ever northward till body and mind gave out and he sank at last to perish alone among this Northern ice he had begun to love, yet which he hated with a feeling not far removed from fear. The Plethoras prosaic skipper had small time in which to study the idiosyncrasies of his fellows, even supposing lie had the inclination; but even lie began to notice Muttlebery’s growing aloofness, and at times a certain drawn look of dread expectancy that surprised trim considerably. It was not, however, fill both ships had been more than a Week at sea.- feeling their way, among the bergs and drift-ice of Baffin’s Bay, that the doctor’s actions became an uu-

easv tonic among the ships’ officers, accentuated, rather than lessened, by a F-.-.-s aiauua. Night had settled down upon the bay, icy-cold but very still and, like all Arctic summer nights, almost as light as day. A short mile away on the port bow the Farthest North steamed steadily southward, the wash from her screw showing ivory-white against the grey blackness of the sea. Jock Bell, who had just come up on deck to relieve the mate and finish a pipe in the lee of the wheel-house, felt that he had never experienced a calmer night than this inside the Circle, where deathlike calms follow violent storms in monotonous succession. . .. . The thump, thump of the engines and the creak of th? rudder-chains, as the Plethora crept along her erratic path, seemed almost a sacrilege in this soundless void, and the skipper stumped away to the wheel to shake off the impression. lie had scarcely reached the foot of the ladder leading to the little bridge, however, when h" became conscious of a motionless, fur-clad figure standing by

the taffrail a few yards away. The figure was Muttlebery’s, but something queer in its tense attitude brought Bell to a dead stop. The young doctor seemed to be standing in a kind ot trance, with his back turned to the skipper, and quite oblivious of the bitter cold or his surroundings. His head was thrown back, and his unseeing eyes were glued to the North, from which the ship .was slowly carrying him. Jock Bell’s hard calling had more than once shown him how easily a strong head may be rendered useless by long contact with privation and the ice, but here was a different ease entirely, a case that he felt his experience could not help him with, and so he stood, with his bands on the ladder-ropes, watching the rigid figure, fascinated but uneasy. The two men were still in the same attitude when the glow from Andy Macbrain’s pipe-howl appeared above the en-gine-room hatch and its owner quietly took in the weird'picture. ’ The young doctor had not moved a muscle. His attitude still denoted an Jitter oblivion of all things earthly, whilst has gaze lay along the sliip'i? wake, ns though held by some sight or force he seemed powerless to resist.

Macbrain studied the scene long and silently, then crossed over to the skipper. ‘‘What’s ailing the lad, think ye?” he asked, in an awed whisper. Bell whipped round with a startled exclamation. “It‘s you, Andy,” he answered, in as loud a tone as he dared, and put a strong hand on the older man’s shoulder and his mouth to his ear. “The North holds him, I’m thinkin’. It’s uncanny. Lord, but it’s uncanny!” “Aye, ’tis uncanny indeed, Jock. An* mark my words, he’s held by more than the ice, or me name’s no’ Macbrain.” “Speak yer meaning, mon! Ye ken something!” “Na, na,” Andy replied, cautiously. “I ken nowt for certain, but A’ve ma suspeechuns, and ■” He did not complete the sentence, however, and the reason was obvious. Muttlebery now crouched forward over the rail, with both arms outstretched before him, speaking rapidly and pleadingly, in an unknown tongue, as though to some hidden presence. But his pleading was short, and, before the two watchers had fully grasped the change, he had turned swiftly and passed them, still with unseeing eyes, to be lost a moment later in the darkness of the companion-way. For fully a minute both men stood staring at the. hatch beneath which the doctor had disappeared; and when Captain Bell spoke at last, it was in a husky, awed voice that showed his superstitious sailor-nature had been awakened to the full. “The laddie’s foil wi’ the call o’ tha ice, Andy! Heaven send it does na draw him overboard. What’ll it be he was havin’ speech wi' ? ” “His uneasy conscience, I'm thinkin’,” the old engineer replied, quietly. “I ken anither seemilar case, but ’twas i’ the South Atlantic, and three days oot frae Bio. One o’ the stokers went so. He’d killed his man, and he killed himself by wav of the bulwarks the verra next day.”

A dozen hours later the incident had entirely passed from Captain Bell’s mind. The old Plethora had run out of coal and taken to canvas. This in itself was no serious matter, but she had also rim into a thick fog-bank close in under Cape Farewell, and her skipper could snatch but a few minutes from the bridge for food and sleep. The coast, a dangerous one, was additionally dangerous under these conditions, for, although early summer, there were more large bergs about than altogether pleased him. The Farthest North had long ago outpaced her sister, and probably lay a couple of hundred miles to the eastward, rapidly drawing away from the Plethora, who blundered along the same sea-path close-reefed and lonelv.

Since the strange incident of the night before Muttlebery had kept to his berth, leaving his meals untouched; and old Andy, a mere passenger now that his beloved engine-room was closed by Bell’s order to all but the young doctor, had ample time for thought upon the doctor’s strange actions. Vast frozen solitudes, Andy was convinced, would not have this weird effect upon a stronglybalanced and well-fed man in a few months. The doctor was a powerful personality, mentally and physically, and the old engineer’s resentment against this man was well-seasoned with respect. Andy’s plan was to keep a close and secret watch upon the doctor’s future movements, and this he had laid himself out to do with all the shrewdness iof his .Celtic nature, convinced that time would furnish him with a tangible clue to theories which, though wild in the extreme, were the outcome of suspicions aroused by one small but significant incident among the Parry Islands which he alone knew of. For two anxious days the Plethora sailed, with the watch doubled, through a dense fog-bank, and when a strong sou’-wester blew it landward, she was discovered still hugging the Cape, and far too closely to be pleasant. Captain Bell could make nothing of it, and he carried a worn-out body and an uneasy mind back to the bridge that night. By sill th,e laws of navigation his ship should have sunk land by a good hundred sea-miles, and yet here lay the Cape's jagged mass dose under her port beam. His mate, a silent, but efficient Tynesider, was equally nonplussed, and showed it. ' ■ “What’s took tly? old packet, sir?” he asked, lij a awed tone. “She’s not made a knot for night twenty-four hours, and ’tis my opinion Bhe's drifting inshore. - j

This was the skipper’s opinion also, and ’the direct cause of his uneasiness; but he tried rather lamely to hide it from the mate. “Losh. mon.” he answered, irritably, .“put yer bit opinions in yer pipe; they’re more use there.” Further speech was caught in his teeth as the scared face .of Andy Macbrain appeared on a level .With the bridge planks, and the old engineer stood holding shakily to the handrail. ‘'Save us. Andy! ITae ye seen a Spook?” the skipper exclaimed. “A’ve no seen one. but as sure as death A've board one.” the old man whispered, fearfully. < Despite his hearers' uneasiness neither could resist a broad smile. “Why Andy, mon, ye couldna hear a fog-horn at three yards,” Bell replied, with a laugh. “A dunno ken how A heard it. but A’lii no mistaken. ’Twas an awful cry fine the engine-room. mon. ’Twas like a soul in ’torment.” Captain BeU's impatient laugh was cut short by the stamp of his sea-boot. “What’s come to us?” he exclaimed, irritably. “‘A soul torment ! ’ Ye're as fey as the dot tor! Get ye doon and awa and let me hear no more sic tosh. I’ve more on my mini than spooks the nirht.” and he turned curtly to the binnacle. Andy Macbiain dropped to the deck figain. dour !• it still fearful, and sought the shelter ol tlm de.k house to chew the cud of bis startled thoughts and suspicions. ’I he old man had just had a bad scare, lie knew well enoucdi tbit he was deaf very deaf. It was his bugbear. llad be pot to keep his eves glued to the indicator when standing his lonely wabk? I low. then, did this strange, distant cry roich his brain and for a moment numb his faculties? Old Andy was no cow ird as v. n gn. bid the sea breeds the supernatural to confound many theories, and \ndv Ma-. br tin was as wide a receptncle as any of his callTwo hours later the skipper ‘tumbled nfT the bridge, utterly fagged out. The fogbank had c’osed down uiwm the flhip ngnin icy n”l dense obliterating every object nt linlf a cable’s length. The worries nnd Strange lianoenings <»f the last few days had got badly on hi* nerves, rendering him .silent and irritable.

His mood, therefore, scarcely prepared him for subsequent events. With the exception of the men on duty on the bridge the decks were deserted, and only the light in the charthouse showed where old Andy had retired to ruminate. This light brought a feeling of compunction to 'the skipper’s naturally kind heart. He had certainly been abrupt, almost brutal, with the old man, and he paused in the alleyway, dog-tired as he was. A little light chaff at old Andy’s expense might put matters right between them. He had, however, scarcely placed a fur-gloved hand upon the handle when he started backward with the breath caught in his throat. From out of the fog-laden void there seemed to come a weird, despairing cry that set his every nerve tingling—a cry resembling th it of a seabird. but far more insistent and human. For a minute the skipper stood rigid, scarcely breathing, in dread expectancy of its repetition. But, though he waited with every nerve at full tension. no sound rose again above the creaking of the running-gear. A deckplate covering one of the air-shafts to the disused engine-room lay only a yard away. Could it have been by this means that this eerie wail had reached the deck? But Jock Bell was by no means sure that his ear had been the receptacle: that strange cry now seemed to him to have been more felt than heard. How long he stood a prey to a strange apprehension, utterly for ’■ • to liis nature, he could not hi’i bnv? told, but his listening attitude v- = "nt short by a sudden sharp hail from the bridge, and as he moved into view the mate’s startled “Will you come up here, sir?” brought him in half-a-dozen strides io the man’s side. All round the ship the fog bank lay ns thick ns ever, but to landward a deep rift had appeared in the veil, through which the white lino of surf conld bo plainly seen breaking against the black loom of rock in its ren r. “She’s drifted a full mile inshore during the Inst few hours, sir. without making a fool of easting! ” A glance showed Bell. t’'at, but for this providential glimps* the old sh>n would in n few hours despite all h>» efforts, have piled herself up under the Cnpe, nnd the watch jumped to work

under a volley of orders from the bridge. With the Plethora standing out to the southward on the wind, Jock Bell felt easier in his mind, but such a puzzling procession of events left an eerie atmosphere about the ship that ho could not account for, and determined to wipe away before turning in. Old Andy still sat ruminating over a pipe, and lifted a sullen, scared face when the skipper entered the chart-house. But Bell’s first words brought him to his feet, all resentment gone, and eager to share his fears with another.

“I’m takin’ back me words, Andy,” the skipper began, soberly; “I’ve heard it too. Get yon lamp and come along; I’ll be searching the engine-room.” The old engineer was into his thick pilot jacket in less than five seconds, and, snatching the swinging lamp from its bracket above the bible, he followed the skipper out on to the fog-lad-en deck.

At the engine hatch both of them paused to listen, but the black void below gave up no sound. Men, as they were, used to sudden dangers and quick decisions, this eerie happening lay quite outside any experience in their past, and as such seemed over-dangerous to meddle with.

The dull rays of the lamp, lowered at arm’s length, showed Andy that everything was in order, and that, apparently, no presence, human or otherwise, had visited his domain. Breathing more freely, and secretly ashamed of the extent to which they had shown their feelings, both men proceeded to make a tour of inspection. The skipper, followed closely by old Andy, had almost completed the circuit of the engines, and had reached the doors of two or three store cupboards, on the starboard side, when lie became uneasily conscious of a huddled heap in the alley-way.

“Sakes, mon!” the skipper exclaimed, in a startled whisper. “What’ll this be? Show the light!” Before Andy could bring the lamp to play upon it, however, the heap resolved itself into a human shape that sprang erect and backed, with arms outstretched, against one of the doors. For a moment both men were too startled to move, and then Andy, with a smothered exclamation, swung the light aloft.

The skipper’s duties during the last twenty-four hours had given him little time for thought upon other matters aboard his ship, and Dr. Muttlebery’s strange case had for the moment quite passed from his mind. It was to be brought back to him now in startling fashion.

The apparition was the doctor, certainly, but all resemblance to the spick-and-span, self-possessed young scientist had departed, leaving behind a crouching, dishevelled, haggard creature, in whoso wild eyes shone a mad, hunted terror that held its audience of two fascinated and tongue-tied.

When the skipper found his voice again it was uncertain with the shock of the sight before him. “Why—what’s come to ye, doctor?” he exclaimed, huskily.

But any answer that might have been vouchsafed was drowned by a cry from old Andy, who sprang in front of his skipper, and pointed excitedly at the door against which the madman crouched.

“The dark-room! He’ll be hiding something. . ’Tis the verra place to search, I’m thinkin’ !” the old man exclaimed, vindictively. All his pent-up resentment surged up, obliterating his fea rs.

But old Andy had scarcely taken a step forward, with the evident intention of carrying out his idea, when, with a howl like a famished wolf, the maniac—for it was now no other —sprang, and the old man went down heavily and lay stunned beneath a twelve-stone body propelled by frenzied strength. The onslaught was so sudden that the skipper had no time to shout a warning, or do more than avoid the lamp which flew past his head and Clashed against the bulk-head opposite, leaving the engineroom in total darkness.’

Jock Bell's subsequent account of that night’s events was disjointed. He could remember groping blindly’ to his engineer’s assistance, being thrown violently against the rail circling the engines, dashing up the steel ladder in pursuit of the madman, and arriving at the hatch-coping barely’ in time to see his quarry vault the rail and disappear without a cry into the fog. No boat was called away. Such an act would be useless in so thick a smo-

ther, nor could the hardiest of humans have kept afloat for many minutes in that icy sea. The startling events of the last twen-ty-four hours, culminating in the young doctor's suicide, called for some explanation. A gloomy foreboding had settled down upon the old ship, transmitting itself unconsciously from officers to crew; and 'this was not lightened when another rift in the fog bank showed the black bulk of the Cape still lying a bare mile away under her stern. Up to this point, Jock Bell had succeeded, though indifferently, in keeping the supernatural out' of his calculations, but this last discovery came as a final blow to his professional pride, and brought with it also an almost certain and uneasy knowledge that he had come indirectly into conflict with some unseen force that he had never met with before in all his experience—a force which the young doctor had evidently meddled with, accidentally or intentionally, to his own undoing. The ship’s perilous position and eccentric behaviour kept its skipper at his post for some hours after the madman’s wild leap, and it was not till Bell judged that he had made a good offing again and could leave the bridge in charge of the mate that he descended once more, in company with old Andy, now shaken and hujnble, into the black depths of the engine-room. The doctor's dark-room both men found strongly barred. The ordinary lock had been supplemented by a patent padlock with stout staples, and this fact alone gave them a grim determination to solve the mystery behind that firmly-closed door. Andy’s scientific handling of an eigh-teen-inch spanner, coupled with the skipper’s heavy shoulder, soon disposed of both obstacles, and the little cabin lay open before them. At first nothing unusual about the fittings and contents in this confined space struck either man. Temporary shelves ran round the walls, holding the doctor's store of exposed plates and other paraphernalia. The lamp and developing dishes, with their covering of dust, had not been used for weeks. Beneath the solitary bunk a few packing-eases, some open, some closed, and all full of Arctic specimens, lay piled up; whilst in the bunk itself reposed a still larger and longer case, evidently made from material found aboard the ship. The skipper’s eye wandered round the cabin again, and he was just preparing to leave it with a feeling of relief, in which a mild disappointment had a place, when old Andy, who had been examining the larger lease, started back with a stifled cry, and stood pointing with shaking finger. “Presairve us, Bell! It's human hair!” The skipper turned quickly and looked in the direction in which the old man pointed. For a moment he could distinguish nothing to account for Andy’s horror, or his startled cry: then slowly the horror of the thing laid hold upon him.

The ease had been hurriedly knocked together of light wood, and through a small space left by the uneven fitting of the lid protruded an inch or two of coarse black hair.

For some time both men stood spellbound at the discovery; then the skipper, with a smothered oath, produced his jack-knife. The lid of the ease had been but lightly nailed, and the smallest exertion sufficed to force it easily. As the lid fell away Andy swung the lamp aloft, and the two men gazed down, horrorstruck and fascinated, into the oval, waxen face of a young Eskimo girl. Old Andy was the first' to recover his speech, and his early Free Kirk training solemnly voiced his thoughts. ‘‘They that draw the sword shall perish by the sword,” he said, and he pulled his cap from his grizzled head as he said it. “Losh, Bell, but he desairved it!” ho continued, fearfully. “I had me suspeehuns. He brought the case aboard himsel’ three nights before we weighed. I could tell ’twas verra hefty. I was in the alley-way. He'll have been wi’ the tribes, ye ken, and saw the body buried. ’Tis no hard job to break it oot o’ the ice. But what did ho want wi’ it', that’s the licker!” “ ’Twas for the big price offered i* London, I'm thinkin’,” the skipper replied, wrimly. ‘‘l've hoard tell the medicos would gi’ their bit hmds for a gilid Es’ kimo specimen. But the North ean guard her ain—that I’ve kenned wool these mony years —and the poor doctor laddie kens it too, now. Bear a hind, mon; it must gang overboard or worse will come, o* it. The North to the North is the answer to this riddle.'*

The intense cold had preserved the body despite its long sojourn between decks; and the small form, with its ivory face set in a halo of raven-black hair, seemed to be sleeping peacefully, as though the slightest touch would awaken it. The two men found it a weird, trying task to place the lid again over this ■poor sleeper, so rudely severed from her Test in the eternal ice. The case and its contents made a light burden for two, and they hoisted it quietly and reverently by the steel ladder to the deck. With the exception of the man at the wheel, the bitter weather had driven the wateh into shelter, so that no other ear caught the smothered, splash which told two silent witnesses that the North had received her own again. Four hours later the old engineer broke in excitedly upon his sleeping skipper. “Bell, mon. the days of miracles are no’ past. Come awa up; there are things to see!” The skipper huddled into his clothes and followed old Andy on deck; and in the lee of the chart house the two men stood gazing long and silently into the North. The fog had quite disappeared and there, lit' by the Hist rays of the Arctic sun, and at the edge of the grey waters thirty miles astern, lay a bhvek speck. The Plethora had rounded Cape Farewell