The Heart of Unaga Part 54

Alone in the great silence. Without even the cry of desolation wrung from starving wolf, or the howl of depression which ever seems to haunt the heart of the coyote world. Alone with groping thought, with burning hope, and the undermining of doubt which the strongest cannot always shake off. Steve had taken the plunge which robbed him of human companionship.

It was the prompting of that spirit which borders so closely the line where earthly sanity pa.s.ses. It was the spirit which finds its inspiration in the Great Purpose which drives on for the achievement of the human task on earth. The dreamer of dreams is born to translate his visions into reality, or to lie broken before the task. Steve was no visionary. He was something more, something greater. His was the stern heart of purpose selected for the translation of the dream of the dreamer who had fallen by the way.

Steve permitted himself no reflection upon the spiritual appeal of his purpose. These things might concern those of a wider, deeper intelligence. Or, perhaps, those whose weakness unfitted them for the battle of the strong. It was for him to claim issue in the battle he sought. And come life and victory, or death and defeat, he was prepared to accept the verdict without complaint.

The twinkling eyes of the heavens searched down upon the infinitesimal moving figure. Their cold smile was steely, perhaps with the irony the sight inspired. Their world was so coldly indifferent to human survival.

The snowless b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the valley rose up miles away to the north and south. And between their swelling contours lay a country of lesser hills and valleys, equally snowless, and whose heart was the flood of a great river.

Sterility had pa.s.sed. Here were no barren hill-crests with a hundred weatherworn facets. Here were no fields of snow, driven by the fierce gales of the polar seas. Here were no glacial fields bound in an iron grip throughout the ages. The fires in the heart of Unaga were burning.

Their warming was in the breath of the breeze. It was in the very earth, yielding its fruit with the freedom of the temperate world.

A wood-clad country of almost luxurious vegetation, there was in it a suggestion of the sub-tropical. But under the twilight of Arctic winter it had lost the happy hues of a sunlit season. True, the conifers retained their dull, dark foliage, but, for the rest, the bare branches were alive with a new-born cloak that possessed the whiteness of fresh-fallen snow. Even the lank gra.s.s under foot was similarly awakening.

The wonder of it all must have been amazing had Steve not been prepared for some such phenomenon. Was not this crazy valley the reality of that vision he had set before Marcel? It was the melting spring of temperate lat.i.tudes transposed to the confines of the Arctic Circle. It was a land of still, wonderful, voiceless life, whose air was sweet, and heavy laden with a subtle perfume.

He wondered, as he paced on under the burden of the pack his broad shoulders were supporting. His mind was a riot with questioning. What of the rest? Would the whole dream become reality? Why not? What of the day when the sun rose again from its long winter sleep?

For answer he gazed out ahead where a pillar of fire looked to be supporting the clouded heavens. The logic of it all was plain. There was no real question in his mind. With the returning light of the sun, and the steadily rising temperature, the ghostly foliage would promptly a.s.sume Nature's happy green and the world would ripen with the rapidity of a forcing house. Then----

Steve's eyes were suddenly raised to the dark vault of the skies. The lights of the night had been largely obscured. Only the heart of Unaga still remained shining with unabated splendour. It was _raining_!

Rain had ceased. The dripping figure of Steve was at rest on the low, white-clad summit of a hill. He had no care for his condition as he steamed under the dank heat of the valley. His eyes were steadily regarding the wonder world of the west.

For a long time he stood almost without movement. He was seeking, seeking in every direction. But the rosy twilight baffled him. Unaga buried her secrets deeply, and only was there the perfume in the air which she could not conceal. This was the key with which Steve meant to open the door of her treasure house.

He raised his face and drew a deep breath through sensitive nostrils.

Then he exhaled slowly, deliberately, and his lips moved. Now there was taste in the air as well as perfume. The change had come with the rainfall.

He stooped and deposited his pack on the moist ground. Then he unfastened it. A few moments later he was standing erect again, and his face was half hidden under a curiously constructed mask. Again he turned to the west. Again he inhaled deeply. And as he did so satisfaction lit his steady eyes. The scent of the air, its sickly sweetness, had entirely pa.s.sed as he breathed under the mask.

He returned to his pack and fastened it up. Then he reslung it upon his shoulders. When he pa.s.sed from the summit of the hill the mask that was to serve him when the danger line was reached had been removed.

Steve laboured on sweatily. He had halved the weight of his pack. He had even removed his buckskin shirt. The heat was amazing. It nearly stifled him.

With each mile gained the spectacle of Unaga's fires grew in intensity and sublime fury. The whole of the western world looked to be engulfed in a caldron of fire; while the belching source of it all flamed at the summit of its earthly column, amidst a churning, rose-tinted froth of cloud banks.

Changes came in swift succession. Perhaps the most significant of all was the complete change in the aspect of the heavens, and in the sulphurous grit with which the air was laden. The stars had vanished.

The flood of northern light had lost its clearness; now only a ghostly shadow of its glory remained. There was only one moon. Its manifold reflections were lost in the mist, and the shining silver of its own light was painfully tarnished.

For all this, however, the light in the valley was no less. Its character had changed. That was all. The rosy twilight was growing to an angry gleaming.

Steve knew his journey's end was near. How near he could not tell. He reminded himself that there must be a barrier, a dividing line, beyond which no life could endure. But he also knew that the field of Adresol must lie on the hither side of it. If that were not so, what of the Indians to whom it yielded supplies for the pleasant calm of their winter's sleep?

Steve knew he was by no means witnessing a simple volcanic eruption. It was something far greater. The suggestion of it all was so colossal that he could find no concrete form in which to express his belief. In his mind there had formed an idea that here was a whole wide territory forming one great vent to the subterranean fires demanding outlet. It seemed to him that those fires had been lit just where they now burned.

Maybe they had been lit on the day that dry land was first born upon the earth, and throughout the ages had never been permitted to die out.

Fascination held him enthralled as he laboured over the weary miles of the valley. Every swamp became a potential objective for examination.

Every broken hill might conceal some secret valley where subterranean heat produced a growth foreign to the more open regions. He could afford to miss no canyon however small, lest the secret he sought lay hidden there. And all the time with the hot breath of the westerly breeze in his nostrils, the lure of the sickly perfume beckoned him on.

It was sheer mental and bodily weariness that brought Steve to a prolonged halt. The heat was overpowering him at last. This strange land with its ruddy twilight had become a labour beyond endurance. It was as if the waters of the river were being evaporated into a steam which left the air unbreathable.

Halfway to the summit of a great wood-clad hill, that jettied across from the southern slopes of the valley to the northern limits beyond, he had flung himself to rest in a wide clearing surrounded by the cold delicacy of white-hued foliage. In his moment of helplessness there seemed to be no end to his journey. He felt that the great summit he was reaching towards meant only a descent beyond, and then again another, and still another steep ascent.

Only for a few moments had he sprawled, seeking rest. He was thinking and gazing back over his long solitary trail, peering into the reverse of that upon which he had looked so long. It was intensely restful thus to turn his gaze from the belching fires. Once his heavy eyelids closed.

But he bestirred himself. Later he would sleep, but not now. His day's work was--Again his eyes closed heavily, and his hand fell from the support of his head.

It was that which wakened him. And in a moment a thrill of panic flashed through his nerves. With all his will flung into the effort, he forced himself to complete wakefulness. He sat up. He groped in his loosened pack. He pulled out of it the mask he had tested once before, and, with desperate haste, adjusted it over mouth and nostrils.

It had been near, so near. He knew now how nearly disaster had clutched at him. Furthermore he knew that even now the danger was by no means pa.s.sed. The heavy fumes of Adresol were creeping through the woods about him. They were stealing their ghostly, paralyzing way low down upon the ground, drifting heavily along until the open below brought them to the stronger air currents which would disperse them on their eastward journey, robbing them of their deadly toxin, and reducing them to a simple sickly perfume.

He had leapt to his feet. He stood swaying like a drunken man, while a strange bemusing attacked his brain and left a singing in his ears.

Staggering under the influence of the deadly drug, he fled from the clearing up towards the hill-top.

It was victory! Complete, overwhelming.

Steve was gazing out upon a wide, seemingly limitless table-land. In every direction it spread itself out, far as the eye could see. To the west it looked to launch itself into the very heart of the land of fire which was shedding its ruddy light from miles and miles away. To the north it went on till it lost itself against the slopes of the lofty, containing hills of the valley. Southward, its spread was swallowed up under a rolling fog of smoke, which settled upon the world like a pall.

It was a great, white, limitless field of dead white lily bloom, unbroken, unsullied, like the perfect damask of napery, purer in tone than virgin snow.

The great cup-like blooms stood up nearly to the height of his shoulders. They were superb in their gracious form, and suggested nothing so much as a mask of innocence and purity concealing a heart of unimaginable evil.

Steve gazed at those nearest him with mixed feelings of repulsion and delight. Nor could he wholly rid himself of the fear his knowledge inspired. His mask was closely adjusted over mouth and nostrils, and he knew that it was only that product of the dead chemist's genius that stood between him and a dreamless sleep from which there would be no awakening.

And as he gazed he became aware of a strange phenomenon. Each lily was slightly inclining its gaping mouth towards the distant heart of Unaga, which inspired its life. To him it suggested an att.i.tude of the devoutest worship. It seemed to his mind that these strange plants, containing all that was most beneficent, and all that was most deadly in their composition, were yielding a silent expression of thankful worship to the tremendous power which saved them from the frigid death to which the dead of Arctic winter would otherwise have condemned them.

His feelings yielded to the profound wonder of it all. For all his fear his soul was stirred to its depths. And his thankfulness was no less than his wonder.

Yes, it was victory at last, after years of ceaseless effort. It was a victory surpa.s.sing even his wildest hopes. Here was the wonderful field of growing Adresol in all the glory of full bloom. Here was an inexhaustible supply of the drug the world of healing science was crying out for. It was here, in its deadliest form, awaiting the reapers. A harvest such as would accomplish everything he had ever hoped to achieve.

And as the moments pa.s.sed, and his confidence in the protecting mask grew, so a wonderful spirit buoyed him. It was a condition he had parted from many years ago. A happy, joyous smile lit his eyes. It grew, and broke into a laugh. He reached out and daringly plucked a great stem supporting a perfect bloom. He stood gazing into the deep, cup-like heart for prolonged moments. He was thinking of Ian Ross and the days so far back in his mind. Fifteen years? Yes. More. And now----

He contemplated with joy the labours ahead. The return to Oolak and Julyman. The work of the harvest. The portaging of it. The packing of the sleds. Then the long, last homeward trail with a success achieved beyond his dreams. It was something indeed to have lived for and laboured for. Marcel!

CHAPTER XVI

KEEKO AND NICOL

It was all so drab, so cheerless. Outside the snow was still piled to the depth of many feet, the ice still held the river in its chill embrace. But the temperature was rising. The open season was advancing.