Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 47

"Anyway," Lewson went on, "we killed seals all the open season with that Russian, and I've no fault to find with him. In fact, I figure that if he could have fixed it he'd have left us on the island that winter, but when a schooner came to take the killers off and collect the skins Smirnoff was on board of her. That"--an ominous gleam crept into Lewson's eyes--"was the real beginning of the trouble. He had us hauled up before him--guess the other man had to tell him who we were--and when I wouldn't answer he slashed me across the face with a dog whip."

Lewson clenched a lean brown fist. "Yes" he added, hoa.r.s.ely, "I was whipped--but they should have tied my hands first. It was not my fault I didn't have that man's life. It was 'most a minute before three of them pulled me off him, and he was considerably worse to look at then."

There was silence for a minute or two, and Wyllard, who felt his own face grow warm, saw the suggestive hardness in Charly's eyes. Lewson was gazing out into the darkness, but the veins were swollen on his forehead and his whole body had stiffened.

"We'll let that go. I can't think of it," he said, recovering his composure. "They put us on board the schooner, and by and by she ran into a creek on the coast. We were to be sent somewhere to be dealt with, and we knew what that meant, with what they had against us. Well, they went ash.o.r.e to collect some skins from the Kamtchadales, and at night we cut the boat adrift. We got off in the darkness, and if they followed they never trailed us. Guess they figured we couldn't make out through the winter that was coming on."

So far the story had been more or less connected and comprehensible. It laid no great tax on Wyllard's credulity, and, indeed, all that Lewson described had come about very much as Dampier had once or twice suggested; but it seemed an almost impossible thing that the three men should have survived during the years that followed. Lewson, as it happened, never made that matter very clear. He sat silent for almost a minute before he went on again.

"We hauled the boat out, and hid her among the rocks, and after that we fell in with some Kamtchadales going north," he said. "They took us along, I don't know how far, but they were trapping for furs, and after a time--I think it was months after--we got away from them. Then we fell in with another crowd, and went on further north with them. They were Koriaks, and we lived with them a long while--a winter and a summer anyway. It was more, perhaps--I can't remember."

He broke off with a vague gesture, and sat looking at the others vacantly with his lean face furrowed.

"We must have been with them two years--but I don't quite know. It was all the same up yonder--ever so far to the north."

It seemed to Wyllard that he had seldom heard anything more expressive in its way than this sailorman's brief and fragmentary description of his life in the wilderness. He had heard from whaler-skippers a little about the tundra that fringes the Polar Sea, the vast desolation frozen hard in summer a few inches below the surface, on which nothing beyond the mosses ever grew. It was easy to understand the brain-crushing sameness and monotony of an existence checkered only by times of dire scarcity on those lonely sh.o.r.es.

"How did you live?" he asked.

"There were the birds in summer, and fish in the rivers. In winter we killed things in the lanes in the ice, though there were weeks when we lay about the blubber lamp in the pits. They made pits and put a roof on them. I don't know why we staked there, but Jake had always a notion that we might get across to Alaska--somehow. We were way out on the ice one day when Jim fell into a crevice, and we couldn't get him out."

He stopped, and sat still a while as one dreaming. "I can't put things together, but at last we came south, Jake and I, and struck the Kamtchadales again. We could talk to them, and one of them told us about a schooner lying in an inlet by a settlement. The Russians had brought her there from the islands, and she must have been a sealer. Jake figured it was just possible we might run away with her and push across for the Aleutians or Alaska."

Charly looked up suddenly. "She--was--a sealer--Hayson's _Seminole_. I was in Victoria when we heard that the Russians had seized her."

Wyllard turned to Overweg, who nodded when he asked a question in French.

"Yes," he said, "I believe the vessel lies in the inlet still. They have used her now and then. It is understood that they were warranted in seizing her, but I think there was some diplomatic pressure brought to bear on them, for they sent her crew home."

Lewson went on again. "Food was scarce that season, and we got 'most nothing in the traps," he said. "Besides, there were Russians out prospecting, and that headed us off. We figured that some of the Kamtchadales who traded skins to the settlements would put them on our trail. When we went to look for the boat she'd gone, but we hadn't much notion of getting off in her, though another time--I don't remember when--we gave two Kamtchadales messages we'd cut on slips of wood.

Sometimes the schooners stood in along the coast."

Wyllard nodded. "Dunton of the _Cypress_ got your message," he said. "He was in difficulties then, but he afterwards sent it me."

"Well," said Lewson, "there isn't much more to it. We hung about the beach a while, and then went north before the winter. Jake played out on the trail. By and by he had to let up, and in a day or two I buried him."

His voice grew hoa.r.s.e. "After that it didn't seem to matter what became of me, but I kept the trail somehow, and found I couldn't stay up yonder. That's why I started south with some of them before the summer came. Now I'm here--talking English--talking with white men--but it doesn't seem the same as it should have been--without the others."

He talked no more that night, but Wyllard translated part of his story for the benefit of Overweg.

"The thing, it seems incredible," commented the scientist. "This man, who has so little to tell, knows things which would make a trained explorer famous."

"It generally happens that way," said Wyllard. "The men who know can't tell."

Overweg made a sign of a.s.sent, and then changed the subject.

"What shall you do now?" he asked.

"Start for the inlet, where we expect to find the schooner, at sunrise.

I want to say"--Wyllard hesitated--"that you have laid an obligation on me which I can never repay; but I can, at least, replace the provisions you have given me."

"That goes for nothing," declared Overweg, with a smile. "I have, however, drawn upon my base camp rather heavily, and should be glad of any stores from the schooner that you could let me have. The difficulty is that I do not wish to go too far toward the beach."

They arranged a rendezvous a few days' march from the inlet, and in another half-hour all of them were fast asleep.

When the first of the daylight came Wyllard set off with his two companions, and since it was evident that Dampier must have now lain in the inlet awaiting them a considerable time, they marched fast for several days. Then, to their consternation, they came upon the Siwash lying beside a river badly lame. It appeared that in climbing a slippery ridge of rock the knee he had injured had given way, and he had fallen some distance heavily, after which the Kamtchadale, finding him helpless, had disappeared with most of the provisions. None of the party ever learned what had become of the faithless courier, but they realized that the situation was now a rather serious one. Charly, who looked at Wyllard when he had heard the Indian's story, explained it concisely.

"I'm worrying about the boat we left on the edge of the ice," he said.

"I've had a notion all along it was going to make trouble. Dampier would see the wreckage when he ran in, and I guess it would only mean one thing to him. He'd make quite certain he was right when he didn't find us at the inlet." He paused and pointed towards the distant sea. "You have got to push right on with Lewson as fast as you can while I try to bring the Siwash along."

Wyllard started within the next few minutes, and afterward never quite forgot the strain and stress of that arduous march. The journey that he had made with Overweg had been difficult enough, but they had then traversed rising ground from which most of the melting snow had drained away. Now, however, as they approached the more level littoral there were wide tracts of mire and swamp to be painfully floundered through, while every ravine and hollow was swept by a frothing torrent, and they had often to search for hours for a place where it was possible to cross. To make things worse, they were drenched with rain half the time, and trails of dingy mist obscured their path, but they toiled on stubbornly through every obstacles, though it was only by the tensest effort that Wyllard kept pace with his companion. The gaunt, long-haired Lewson seemed proof against physical weariness, and there was seldom any change in the expression of his grim, lined face. Now and then Wyllard felt a curious shrinking as he glanced at Lewson, for his fixed look suggested what he had borne in the awful solitudes of the frozen North.

Slowly, with infinite toil, they crossed the weary leagues, lying at night with a single skin between them and the soil, for they traveled light. Wyllard was limping painfully, with his boots worn off his feet, when one morning they came into sight of a low promontory which rose against a stretch of gray lifeless sea. His heart throbbed fast as he realized that behind it lay the inlet into which Dampier had arranged to bring the _Selache_. He glanced at Lewson, who said nothing, and they plodded forward faster than before.

The misty sun was high in the heavens when they reached the foot of the steep rise, and Wyllard gasped heavily as they crept up the ascent. He was making a severe muscular effort; but it was the nervous tension that troubled him most, for he knew that he would look down upon the inlet from the summit. He blamed himself bitterly for not sending a messenger to Dampier immediately after he fell in with Overweg. There had certainly been difficulties in the way, for the increase in the scientist's party had made additional packers necessary, and Wyllard felt that he could not reasonably compel the man who had succored him to leave behind the camp comforts to which he had evidently been accustomed. In spite of that, he had been at fault in not disregarding every objection, and he realized it now.

Somehow he kept pace with Lewson, but he closed one hand tight as he neared the top of the promontory. When he reached the summit he stopped suddenly, and his face set hard as he looked down. Beneath him lay a strip of dim, green water, with a fringe of soft white surf, while beyond the beach there stretched away an empty expanse of slowly heaving sea. There was no schooner in the inlet, no boat upon the beach.

In another moment or two they went down the slope at a stumbling run, and then stopped, gasping by the water's edge, and looked at one another. There were marks in the sand which showed where a boat had been drawn up not very long before. The _Selache_ evidently had been there, and had sailed away again.

Wyllard sat down limply upon the shingle, for all the strength seemed suddenly to melt out of him, and it was several minutes before he looked up. Gazing out at sea, Lewson was still standing, a shapeless, barbaric figure in his garments of skins. The hide moccasins he wore had chafed through, and Wyllard noticed that the blood was trickling from one of his feet.

"Well?" Lewson asked harshly.

Wyllard laid a stern restraint upon himself. Their case looked desperate, but it must be grappled with.

"We must go back and meet the rest," he said. "That first--what is to come afterwards I don't quite know." A faint gleam of resolution crept into his eyes. "The schooner the Russians seized lies in an inlet down the coast."

Lewson made a sign of comprehension. "There are four of us. There will be birds by and by. I can trap things."

He flung himself down near his comrade, and for an hour neither of them spoke. Wyllard was worn out physically and limp from the last few hours'

mental strain, while Lewson very seldom said more than was absolutely necessary. They made a very frugal meal, and long afterwards Wyllard was haunted by the memory of that dreary afternoon during which he lay upon the shingle watching the slow pulsations of the dim, lifeless sea.

They set out again early next morning, and, as it happened, found a little depot of provisions that Dampier had made, but it was several days before they met Charly and the Indian, and another week had pa.s.sed before Overweg reached the appointed meeting-place. The scientist listened to Wyllard's story gravely, and then appeared to consider.

"You have some plans?" he asked.

Wyllard admitted that this was the case, and Overweg smiled behind his spectacles.

"It is, perhaps, better that you should not tell me what they are," he said. "There is, however, one thing I can do. You say you left some stores you could not carry at the depot, which I will take, for provisions are now not plentiful with me, but at my base camp there are still a few things you have not which are almost necessary, and"--he made a gesture of rea.s.suring significance--"after all, if I have to go south a little earlier than I intended it is not a great matter."

He wrote on a strip of paper which he handed to Wyllard. "You will take these, and nothing else. I may add that Smirnoff is stationed at the inlet where the schooner lies."

Wyllard thanked him, and then looked him in the eyes. "There is a long journey before us, and you have only my word that I will take nothing but these things."

Overweg nodded quietly. "Yes," he said, "it is perhaps permissible to a.s.sure you that it is sufficient for me."

Little more was said, and in another half-hour Wyllard and his companions were ready to set out. He and the little spectacled scientist grasped each other's hands, and then Wyllard abruptly turned away.

Looking back a few minutes later, he saw Overweg standing upon the ridge where he had left him, silhouetted against a low, gray sky. The scientist raised his cap once, and Wyllard, who answered him, swung around once more, and strode faster towards the south.