The Magnetic North Part 62

"Well, it'll be warmin', anyway," returned the Colonel, "and I can't say as much for your fire."

It was luck that the first forty miles of the trail had already been traversed by the Boy. He kept recognising this and that in the landscape, with an effect of good cheer on both of them. It postponed a little the realization of their daring in launching themselves upon the Arctic waste, without a guide or even a map that was of the smallest use.

Half an hour after setting off, they struck into the portage. Even with a snow-blurred trail, the Boy's vivid remembrance of the other journey gave them the sustaining sense that they were going right. The Colonel was working off the surprising stiffness with which he had wakened, and they were both warm now; but the Colonel's footsoreness was considerable, an affliction, besides, bound to be worse before it was better.

The Boy spoke with the old-timer's superiority, of his own experience, and was so puffed up, at the bare thought of having hardened his feet, that he concealed without a qualm the fact of a brand-new blister on his heel. A mere nothing that, not worth mentioning to anyone who remembered the state he was in at the end of that awful journey of penitence.

It was well on in the afternoon before it began to snow again, and they had reached the frozen lake. The days were lengthening, and they still had good light by which to find the well-beaten trail on the other side.

"Now in a minute we'll hear the mission dogs. What did I tell you?" Out of the little wood, a couple of teams were coming, at a good round pace. They were pulled up at the waterhole, and the mission natives ran on to meet the new arrivals. They recognised the Boy, and insisted on making the Colonel, who was walking very lame, ride to the mission in the strongest sled, and they took turns helping the dogs by pushing from behind. The snow was falling heavily again, and one of the Indians, Henry, looking up with squinted eyes, said, "There'll be nothing left of that walrus-tusk."

"Hey?" inquired the Boy, straining at his sled-rope and bending before the blast. "What's that?"

"Don't you know what makes snow?" said Henry.

"No. What does?"

"Ivory whittlings. When they get to their carving up yonder then we have snow."

What was happening to the Colonel?

The mere physical comfort of riding, instead of serving as packhorse, great as it was, not even that could so instantly spirit away the weariness, and light up the curious, solemn radiance that shone on the Colonel's face. It struck the Boy that good old Kentucky would look like that when he met his dearest at the Gate of Heaven--if there was such a place.

The Colonel was aware of the sidelong wonder of his comrade's glance, for the sleds, abreast, had come to a momentary halt. But still he stared in front of him, just as a sailor in a storm dares not look away from the beacon-light an instant, knowing all the waste about him abounds in rocks and eddies and in death, and all the world of hope and safe returning is narrowed to that little point of light.

After the moment's speculation the Boy turned his eyes to follow the Colonel's gaze into s.p.a.ce.

"The Cross! the Cross!" said the man on the sled. "Don't you see it?"

"Oh, that? Yes."

At the Boy's tone the Colonel, for the first time, turned his eyes away from the Great White Symbol.

"Don't know what you're made of, if, seeing that... you needn't be a Church member, but only a man, I should think, to--to--" He blew out his breath in impotent clouds, and then went on. "We Americans think a good deal o' the Stars and Stripes, but that up yonder--that's the mightier symbol."

"Huh!" says the Boy. "Stars and Stripes tell of an ideal of united states. That up there tells of an ideal of United Mankind. It's the great Brotherhood Mark. There isn't any other standard that men would follow just to build a hospice in a place like this."

At an upper window, in a building on the far side of the white symbol, the travellers caught a glimpse, through the slanting snow, of one of the Sisters of St. Ann shutting in the bright light with thick curtains.

_"Gla.s.s!"_ e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Colonel.

One of the Indians had run on to announce them, and as they drew up at the door--that the Boy remembered as a frame for Brother Paul, with his lamp, to search out iniquity, and his face of denunciation--out came Father Brachet, brisk, almost running, his two hands outstretched, his face a network of welcoming wrinkles. No long waiting, this time, in the reception-room. Straight upstairs to hot baths and mild, reviving drinks, and then, refreshed and already rested, down to supper.

With a shade of anxiety the Boy looked about for Brother Paul. But Father Wills was here anyhow, and the Boy greeted him, joyfully, as a tried friend and a man to be depended on. There was Brother Etienne, and there were two strange faces.

Father Brachet put the Colonel on his right and the Boy on his left, introducing: "Fazzer Richmond, my predecessor as ze head of all ze Alaskan missions," calmly eliminating Greek, Episcopalian, and other heretic establishments. "Fazzer Richmond you must have heard much of.

He is ze great ausority up here. He is now ze Travelling Priest. You can ask him all. He knows everysing."

In no wise abashed by this flourish, Father Richmond shook hands with the Big Chimney men, smiling, and with a pleasant ease that communicated itself to the entire company.

It was instantly manifest that the scene of this Jesuit's labours had not been chiefly, or long, beyond the borders of civilization. In the plain bare room where, for all its hospitality and good cheer, reigned an air of rude simplicity and austerity of life--into this somewhat rarefied atmosphere Father Richmond brought a whiff from another world.

As he greeted the two strangers, and said simply that he had just arrived, himself, by way of the Anvik portage, the Colonel felt that he must have meant from New York or from Paris instead of the words he added, "from St. Michael's."

He claimed instant kinship with the Colonel on the strength of their both being Southerners.

"I'm a Baltimore man," he said, with an accent no Marylander can purge of pride.

"How long since you've been home?"

"Oh, I go back every year."

"He goes all over ze world, to tell ze people--"

"--something of the work being done here by Father Brachet--and all of them." He included the other priests and lay-brothers in a slight circular movement of the grizzled head.

And to collect funds! the Colonel rightly divined, little guessing how triumphantly he achieved that end.

"Alaska is so remote," said the Travelling Priest, as if in apology for popular ignorance, "and people think of it so... inadequately, shall we say? In trying to explain the conditions up here, I have my chief difficulty in making them realise the great distances we have to cover.

You tell them that in the Indian tongue Alaska means "the great country," they smile, and think condescendingly of savage imagery. It is vain to say we have an area of six hundred thousand square miles. We talk much in these days of education; but few men and no women can count! Our Eastern friends get some idea of what we mean, when we tell them Alaska is bigger than all the Atlantic States from Maine to Louisiana with half of great Texas thrown in. With a coast-line of twenty six thousand miles, this Alaska of ours turns to the sea a greater frontage than all the sh.o.r.es of all the United States combined.

It extends so far out towards Asia that it carries the dominions of the Great Republic as far west of San Francisco as New York is east of it, making California a central state. I try to give Europeans some idea of it by saying that if you add England, Ireland, and Scotland together, and to that add France, and to that add Italy, you still lack enough to make a country the size of Alaska. I do not speak of our mountains, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen thousand feet high, and our Yukon, flowing for more than two thousand miles through a country almost virgin still."

"You travel about up here a good deal?"

"He travels _all_ ze time. He will not rest," said Father Brachet as one airing an ancient grievance.

"Yes, I will rest now--a little. I have been eight hundred miles over the ice, with dogs, since January 1."

The Boy looked at him with something very like reverence. Here was a man who could give you tips!

"You have travelled abroad, too," the Colonel rather stated than asked.

"I spent a good deal of my youth in France and Germany."

"Educated over there?"

"Well, I am a Johns Hopkins man, but I may say I found my education in Rome. Speaking of education"--he turned to the other priests--"I have greatly advanced my grammar since we parted." Father Brachet answered with animation in French, and the conversation went forward for some minutes in that tongue. The discussion was interrupted to introduce the other new face, at the bottom of the table, to the Big Chimney men: "Resident Fazzer Roget of ze Kuskoquim mission."

"That is the best man on snow-shoes in Central Alaska," said Father Richmond low to the Colonel, nodding at the Kuskoquim priest.

"And he knows more of two of ze native dialects here zan anyone else,"

added the Father Superior.

"You must forgive our speaking much of the Indian tongues," said Father Richmond. "We are all making dictionaries and grammars; we have still to translate much of our religious instruction, and the great variety in dialect of the scattered tribes keeps us busy with linguistic studies."

"Tomorrow you must see our schools," said Father Brachet.

But the Boy answered quickly that they could not afford the time. He was surprised at the Colonel's silence; but the Boy didn't know what the Colonel's feet felt like.

Kentucky ain't sorry, he said to himself, to have a back to his chair, and to eat off china again. Kentucky's a voluptuary! I'll have to drag him away by main force; and the Boy allowed Father Richmond to help him yet more abundantly to the potatoes and cabbage grown last summer in the mission garden!