The Heart of Unaga Part 52

"We not mak' him--that! Oh, no!"

Julyman's tone was hushed and fearful. He moved close to the white man in urgent appeal.

"Boss Steve not mak' him. No. Julyman all come dead. Julyman not mush on. Oh, no."

"Julyman'll do just as 'Boss' Steve says."

Steve had dragged his gaze from the wonder that held it. He was coldly regarding the haunted eyes of a man he knew to be fearless enough as men understand fearlessness.

This was no time for sympathy or weakness. It was his purpose to penetrate to that blazing heart, as nearly as the object of his journey demanded. He was in no mood to listen patiently to words inspired by benighted superst.i.tion.

"Him--Unaga!" Julyman protested, his outstretched arm shaking. "No--mak'

him? Yes?"

"We mak' this!"

It was Oolak who answered him. He spoke with a preliminary, contemptuous grunt. He, too, was pointing. But he was pointing at that which lay near at hand. He stood leaning his crippled body on his gee-pole, and gazing down at that which lay immediately in front of them, groaning and grumbling like some suffering living creature.

Steve followed the direction of the outstretched arm. He had been absorbed in the distance. All else had been forgotten. He found himself gazing down upon what appeared to be a cascading sea of phosph.o.r.escent light. He recognized it instantly, and the fiery heart of Unaga was forgotten.

A mighty glacier barred the way, and the peak on which they stood was its highest point. It stretched out far ahead. It reached beyond such range of vision as the Arctic night permitted. It sloped away down, down, so gradually, yet so deeply, so widely that it warned him of the opening of the jaws of a mighty valley, through the heart of which there probably flowed the broad bosom of a very great river. The play of the phosph.o.r.escent light was the reflection of Unaga's lights caught by the myriad facets of broken ice upon its tumbled surface.

Steve nodded.

"Yes. We make this," he cried, in a fashion to forbid all discussion.

Then after a pause that gave his decision due effect: "There's a valley away out there. And I guess it'll likely hand us the things we got to know. We've beaten those darn hills. We've beaten the snow and ice--and the cold. The things we're going to find down there need beating, too."

He turned from the barrier which left him undismayed. A great light was shining in his eyes as he pa.s.sed Julyman by. They rested eagerly, questioningly, upon the unemotional face of Oolak whose keen understanding he knew to be profound.

"Well?" he demanded in the fashion of a man aware that his question is not in vain.

Oolak turned. He raised his face, and his sensitive nostrils distended with a deep intake of breath. A moment later he made a swift gesture with the gee-pole on which he had been supporting himself.

"I mak' him smell. So!"

He spoke with unusual animation.

Steve had been seeking and waiting for just such words.

"You smell--what?" he demanded.

"Oolak smell him all sweet--lak'--lak'----"

Steve interrupted with a nod.

"I know," he cried. "Like--like----"

But that which he would have said remained unspoken. There was no need for words. The rest was in his eyes, in his voice. Oolak's corroboration of the evidence of his own senses meant the final triumph he was seeking.

CHAPTER XIV

THE VALLEY OF DREAMS

Steve's dream of triumph was brief. Born at the moment of his first sight of the burning heart of Unaga it lived to provide a stimulant for jaded mind and body at a time of need. Then he awoke to realities such as he had never contemplated.

For once experience and imagination failed him. He was entering a land of wonder in the belief that he was prepared for everything monstrous in Nature. He believed that with the stupendous vision of Unaga he had witnessed Nature's most sublime effort. So, out of his confidence he was trapped as easily as a man of no experience at all.

At his bidding dogs and men moved to the a.s.sault of the glacial barrier.

The thing that they contemplated was by no means new. A hundred times had the broken surface of glacier formed some part of their long winter trail. It was never without danger, but it was never a sufficient barrier to give them pause.

The surface of the glacier appeared to be that which they all knew. The only feature for disquiet were the thunderous detonations, the deep rumbling groans that rose up out of its far-off heart, and found a hundred echoes amongst the surrounding hills. For the rest, it was a broken surface, bearing every feature of a summer thaw frozen down again by the icy breath of winter, and adorned with a patchwork of drift snow.

Half a mile from the grey headland which was their starting point, confidence received its first check. It was Oolak who made discovery.

The watchful, silent creature was unerring in his instincts, unerring in his scent of a treachery he always antic.i.p.ated. He had halted his dogs, and stood in the half light, peering out this way and that at the legions of ice spectres surrounding them. Then, quite suddenly, he hailed the white man to his side, and indicated the ice on which they were standing.

"It all him move," he said, with his peculiarly significant brevity.

Steve stood for a moment without reply. He was less sensitive to indications than the Indian. In fact he failed to realize the thing the other had discovered. He shook his head.

"Guess you're----"

But his denial remained uncompleted. It was interrupted by a sharp cry from Julyman some distance away with the rear sled. The two men turned in his direction. They beheld his lean figure busy amongst his dogs, plying his club impartially, as though in an effort to quell some canine dispute.

But that was not all. As they gazed they saw the iron-shod tail of the sled rise up. It seemed to be flung up with great force. For a moment it remained poised. Then it crashed over on its side to the accompaniment of a cracking, splitting roar, like the bombardment of ma.s.sed artillery.

Steve waited for nothing. Even with the roar of sub-glacial thunders hammering on his ear drums, he rushed to the man's a.s.sistance. Oolak turned to his own dogs.

The din subsided almost in a moment. Steve reached the sled where Julyman had beaten the dogs to the required condition. In a moment they were at work setting things to rights. After that the dogs were strung out afresh, and Julyman "mushed" them on, and brought them abreast of the train of the waiting Oolak.

The dogs crouched down on the rough surface of the inhospitable ice.

Their great limbs were shaking under heavy coats of fur, and they whimpered plaintively, stirred by some unspeakable apprehension. The men were standing by, gazing back over the ghostly field of ice, with wonder and disquiet in their eyes.

Again it was Oolak who spoke. He pointed at the headland from which they had started. It was dim, shadowy, half lost in the grey twilight.

"Him all go back," he said, as though he were making the most ordinary announcement.

Then he pointed at something nearer. It was just beyond where the sled had been overturned.

"Him all break up. So."

His tone had changed. There was that in his harsh voice which was utterly new to it.

It was the moment of Steve's awakening from the dream of triumph he had dreamed. It was the moment of the shattering of the confidence of years.

A wide fissure, of the proportions of a chasm, had opened up just beyond where the mishap had occurred. It was as Oolak said. The grey headland looked to be moving backwards, vanishing in the shadows of the Arctic night.