The Heart of Unaga Part 53

The approach to the heart of Unaga was yielding a reality that had been entirely uncalculated.

The widening chasm, stretching far as the eye could see on either hand, had completely cut off all retreat. Steve and his men were standing on a belt of ice that was moving. It was slipping away from the parent body, gliding ponderously almost without tangible motion, down the great glacial slope. They were trapped on the bosom of a glacial field in the t.i.tanic throes of its death agony; a melting, groaning ma.s.s riding monstrously to its own destruction in those far-off, mist-laden depths of the valley below.

It must have been unbelievable but for the definite evidence of it all.

Here, in the depths of an Arctic winter, with the whole earth shadowed under a grey of frigid night, a glacial field, which a thousand years could not have built up, was melting under a heat no less than the summer of lower lat.i.tudes.

It was a moment for panic. But Steve resisted with all his might.

The position was supremely critical. There were no means of retreat in face of that amazing fissure. There could be no standing still. They must go on with the dread tide of grinding ice, on and on to the end.

And for the end their trust must be in the G.o.ds of fortune for such mercies as they chose to vouchsafe.

Steve's order rang out amidst the booming of the ice. It was urgent. It was fierce in the need of the moment. The Indians knew. He had no need to explain. Before them lay the hideous downward slope with possible h.e.l.l at the bottom. And the demon of avalanche was hard upon their heels.

In a frenzy the dogs leapt at their work. There was no need for club or urging. They were only too eager to quit the quaking ice and lose their consciousness of the thunders of the under-world in a rush of vital movement.

Steve warned himself there remained a fighting chance. It was the man's courage which inspired the thought. The dogs took the only chance they knew. They at least understood the soullessness of Nature's might when arrayed for destruction.

Steve drove for the fringe of it all, where the ice lapped against the rising walls of the valley to which they were dropping. It was his only course. He felt it to be his only chance. He had no real hope. It was instinctive decision unsupported by reason. He knew that ahead lay the great valley obscured under a fog of mist, and he could only guess at the perils that lay hidden there.

No, he did not know. He had no desire to question. Instinct alone could serve him now, and instinct urged him to flee from the middle course of the glacier as he would flee from the breath of pestilence.

From the first moments of blind rush for safety all sense of time became utterly lost. So, too, with fatigue. So, too, with the matter of distance. Labour became well-nigh superhuman amidst the moving ice hummocks. And the speed, and the jolting, and pitching of the sleds transformed the chaotic world about them into still more utter confusion.

The sweaty mist came up from below seeking to enshroud them in long, gauzy tentacles.

How long the struggle endured it would have been impossible to tell.

There was thought only for the fissures that opened with a roar at their feet, for the ice driving down upon their heels, for the melting streams coursing amongst the hummocks. And--the threat of the enveloping mists.

The dogs ran with the recklessness of a stampede, and the precious burden of the sleds was a treasure upon the salving of which mind and body were concentrated to the exclusion of all else. Even the security of life and limb was a matter of far less concern.

The mist closed down. The terror of sightlessness was added to the rest.

Utter helplessness supervened. It was the final disaster. The closing down of the fog meant the last of intelligent effort. The whole outfit was left groping, blind, and conscious only of the terror of the downward rush they could no longer check. Ghostly ice hummocks rose up at them out of the darkness and buffeted like frigid legions advancing to the attack. Fissures yawned agape. The booming ice roared on, deafening, maddening. It was the struggle of brave men doomed. It was sublimely pitiful. It was a moment for the tears of angels.

Out of the west the breeze had freshened. It came in little hasty gusts, like the breath of invisible giants. The inky night seemed to lighten, and, here and there, the flash of a star shone out, while a faint, silvery sheen struggled for mastery in the stirring fog which fought so desperately to deny the eyes of the Arctic night.

A distant booming came up out of the fog. It was the softened sound of far-off thunder. There was another sound, too. It was less awesome, but no less significant. It was the steady droning of cascading waters falling in a mighty tide. It suggested the plunge into the darkness of an abyss, or even the lesser immensity of surging rapids in the course of a mountain river.

Steadily the western breeze increased. It lost its patchiness and settled to a pleasant, warming drift. Slowly the inky darkness rolled away. The peeping stars remained, or only lost their radiance in the gossamer lightness of pa.s.sing mist. The silver of the aurora shone down triumphantly upon the _snowless earth_, and the glory of the moon lit the remoteness with its frigid smile.

On the dark monotony of an earth robbed of its winter clothing a cl.u.s.ter of moving figures stood out in faint relief, and presently a light flashed out like the infinitesimal blaze of a firefly in the night. It pa.s.sed, and then it came again. Again it pa.s.sed. And again it came.

This time it lived and grew. A fire had lit, and the group of figures were crouching over it as though to protect it against the dark immensity of the world surrounding them.

The distant thunders had died away. No longer was there the ominous droning of falling waters. The utter stillness of the Arctic night was supreme.

The steady play of the western breeze came down the highway of the valley whose far-off slopes rose to unmeasured heights. To the westward the dull reflections of earthly fire lit the sky with deep, sanguinary hues, and the starlight seemed to have lost its power behind a haze of cloud. For the rest the night was lit by the aurora.

Steve and his Indians were standing on the moist banks of a broad, flowing river, the surface of whose waters served as a mirror to the splendid lights above. Away behind them, where the ground rose up towards the higher slopes, was the glimmer of the fire which marked their camp. They were all three gazing out at the western reflection of earthly fires.

For the moment there was silence. For the moment each was absorbed in his own thought. None gave a sign of the nature of that thought, but it was an easy thing to guess since their faces were turned towards the reflection of Unaga's fires.

It was Steve who first withdrew his gaze. He seemed reluctant. He turned and surveyed the snowless territory about them.

It was an extraordinary display of Nature's mood. They were treading underfoot a growth of lank gra.s.s, and the slopes of the valley were clad with bluffs of bare-poled woodlands. The air was warm. It was warmer than the breath of a temperate winter, and the low-growing scrub marking the course of the river was breaking into new growth of a whitish hue.

The amazement of the discovery of these things had long since pa.s.sed.

Steve and his Indians had returned again to the reality of things.

Steve drew a deep breath.

"We can't make another yard with the dogs," he said. "The snow's gone.

It's gone for keeps."

It was a simple statement of the facts. And Oolak and Julyman were equally alive to them.

"Then him all mak' back?"

There was eagerness in Julyman's question. The terror of that through which they had pa.s.sed was still in his mind. So, too, with the fiery heart of Unaga that lay ahead. Oolak had nothing to add, so he kept to his customary silence.

Steve shook his head.

"There's no quitting," he said simply. "Guess we've come nigh three hundred miles. We've got through a territory to break the heart of a stone image. G.o.d's mercy helped us back on that darn glacier when we were beat like dead men. It's a sort of dream I just can't remember, and don't want to anyway. Say, do you guess a miracle was sent down to us, which kept us clear of going over that darn precipice with the ice? Was it a miracle that carried us where there wasn't worse than a flow banking on the slope of this valley? Was the mercy of it all sent to have us quit now, with the end of things coming right to our hand? I just guess not. It's there ahead. Somewhere down this valley. We can smell it so plain we'll need the poison masks in a day's journey.

There's going to be no quitting. The sleds'll have to stop right here.

And the dogs. You boys, too. Guess I'm going on afoot. When I've located the stuff," he went on, his eyes lighting, and his words coming sharply, "when I locate the stuff in full growth, the harvest we're yearning to cut, why, then I'll get right back here, and we'll go afoot, all three of us, and we'll cut it, and bale it, and portage it right here to the sleds. And when we've got all we can haul we'll cast for that trail the Sleepers make in summer, and just cut out all that h.e.l.l of ice we came over. That's how I see it. And we're going to put it right through if it breaks us, and beats us to death."

Steve spoke with his eyes fixed upon the far-off lights of Unaga. His words were the words of a man obsessed. But there was nothing in his manner to suggest a mind weakening under its burden. It was simple, sane determination that looked out of his eyes.

Julyman answered him, and a world of relief was in his tone.

"Him dog. Him sled. All him Indian man him stop by camp. Oh, yes."

Steve nodded. Then he pointed out down the river.

"It's a crazy territory anyway," he said. "Those darn fires have turned it summer when winter's freezing up the marrow of things. When summer gets around I guess it's likely the next thing to h.e.l.l. But the thing we're yearning for is lying there, somewhere ahead. And I'm after it if I never make the fort again, and the folks we've left behind. Come on.

We'll get right back to camp. I need to fix things for the big chance I'm going to take, and you boys'll wait around till I get back. If things go wrong, and this thing beats me, why, just hang on till you figger the food trucks liable to leave you short, then hit a trail over the southern hills and work around back to the fort with word to Marcel and An-ina. Guess there won't be any message."

CHAPTER XV

THE HEART OF UNAGA