The Popular Magazine/Volume 92/Number 6/The Lost Aeronauts

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

Author of “The Salmon Pool,” Etc.

One evening, in the Voyagers' Club, in New York City, an unknown and strange-looking man arrived; and that was the beginning of a magnificent and terrible adventure that led a gallant major and several other people, including two lovely women, out on two long and lonely expeditions into the Canadian wilds, in search of a fantastic mystery.

A COMPLETE NOVEL

Chapter I.

“—— than a dead lion.”

John Stave was the head boy at the Voyagers' Club. His round poll was white with the passage of seventy-two winters and summers. On a certain November night of the year of grace, 1927, he sat in a Gothic chair beside the club's letter box, pleasantly engaged with his private thoughts and yet absolutely on his job. He looked alert, and at the same time plump and benevolent, in his trim livery of maroon cloth and flat silver buttons.

His mind was on his clever grandchildren; and yet he was ready to rise at a moment's notice to give respectful greeting to any incoming member, or a word of direction to door boy or hat boy or any other boy. His chair stood at the top of a flight of five wide, marble steps which lifted gradually from the level of the street to the ground floor of the club; and he happened to be glancing down at the entrance when the lad on duty there pulled open one panel of the heavy doors and admitted that which—time and place considered—may be called, without exaggeration, an extraordinary figure.

The boy let the door swing to, took a second look at what had come in, then ascended the marble steps in two startled jumps, passing the cause of his perturbation on the way.

“Pipe it, will yuh!” he whispered to John Stave.

Stave got nimbly to his feet.

“Don't disturb yourself, Alfred—nor forget where you are,” he said calmly. “Go back down to the door.”

The newcomer halted before the dean of boys, blinked, stared and smiled.

“It's you, John,” he said.

“Yes, sir. You've been out of town, I presume, sir. Permit me to take your hat and coat, Mr. Smith.”

“Smith! Smith?” repeated the other, as Stave peeled a garment of hair and hide from his shoulders and took a cap of shaggy fur from his head. “Smith? That's it!”

Stave passed those unusual articles of attire to the boy in the coat room, and handed to their owner the numbered metal disk which he received in return. He looked at them, puzzled.

“Smith, of course,” added the member.

“Of course, sir,” returned John, with that boyish, fatherly smile for which he is justly famous.

Mr. Smith hesitated a moment longer, then sighed and smiled and passed on into the recesses of the club.

“Don't tell me that's a member, Mr. Stave,” said the hat boy.

“That gentleman is most certainly a member,” replied John, with dignity. “And in good standing,” he added.

“A hair cut wouldn't do him no harm,” volunteered the boy.

“Members of this club, Walter—of the Voyagers' Club—can afford to wear their hair long or short or not at all.”

“Could he afford to take a bath?”

“Undoubtedly. Do you mean to imply, Walter, that Mr. Smith needed a bath?”

“And a shave. Looks like a tramp to me. But he might be workin' on a pitcher. Frozen north. That would account for all the hair an' leather an' whiskers.”

“I regret to say that I cannot mistake your meaning, Walter. But permit me to inform you that this is the Voyagers' Club. No member of this institution has any connection with the moving-picture industry. Try to keep in mind the fact that this is the best club in New York.”

John Stave returned to his Gothic chair beside the letter box. It was a quiet night at the Voyagers'.

 

In what is known as the Founder's Study, a small writing room on the second floor, a man who had been given the privileges of the club for two weeks sat writing a letter. The only light in the room was that of the shaded lamp on his table. The writer believed himself to be alone; and when a voice addressed him suddenly from the shadows, he was somewhat startled.

“Hope I don't interrupt you,” said the voice.

“Don't mention it,” returned the letter writer, whose manners were as sound as his nerves.

The owner of the voice advanced from the surrounding gloom and flopped into a deep chair at a corner of the little table. His appearance contrasted strikingly with his environment. Untidy dark whiskers covered two thirds of his face. The hair of his scalp hung in elf locks. His clothing, which appeared to be all of wool and leather, looked ragged and greasy. His dark eyes shone and glowed.

“My name's Smith,” he said.

“Mine's Wembly,” returned the other. “A cigarette?”

Mr. Smith accepted a cigarette, and a light for it, and sank back again into the depths of the chair.

“I'm a member,” he said. “All this is familiar to me. I knew it the moment I saw the light over the door, so I walked right in—and there was John Stave. His name came to me in a flash—but I didn't know my own until he addressed me by it. Smith. That's it. I knew it the moment he said it. But the devil of it is, that's all I do know about myself—all up to a certain point, that's to say—a certain point in comparatively recent and rather unusual experiences.”

He paused as if for comment, regarding Wembly with glowing eyes. Wembly, believing him to be an escaped lunatic and hoping only that his instincts were not homicidal, made no comment.

“I call them unusual experiences,” continued Smith, “in spite of the fact that I have no memory of previous experiences with which to compare them. My power of reasoning, which is unimpaired, tells me they were unusual. Have you ever heard of people losing their memories?”

Wembly admitted that he had heard of such cases.

“From what causes?” asked Smith.

“Why, I believe that brain fever sometimes causes it,” returned Wembly patiently. “And head wounds. I know two chaps who had all memories of their pasts knocked out of them, for six months in one case and over a year in the other.”

Smith nodded. “That's what happened to me, as far as I can work it out; Do you know anything of a man named Gaston Duvar?”

After a moment's reflection, Wembly shook his head.

“He had a balloon,” prompted Smith hopefully.

“A balloon? Duvar? But that was a long time ago. I read about it when I was a boy. Gaston Duvar? Yes, that was the name. He went looking for the north pole in a balloon. But that was a great many years ago. He's never been heard of since. Why do you ask?”

“My reason for asking you about Duvar was to prove to you that I am speaking of realities. You say that you read of his attempt to reach the north pole in a balloon, when you were a boy. Doubtless I read of it at the time, too—when I was a boy. That's one of the things I've forgotten. Yes, it was a long time ago. Thirty years ago. And you say he's never been heard of since. I've heard of him since. You don't know what became of him, I take it. I know what became of him.”

“How's that?” asked Wembly, puzzled.

“If I had a drink I could tell you.”

Wembly pulled a flask from his hip.

“Demerara,” he explained. “Thirty over proof. I brought it down from Canada with me.”

Smith drank from the flask.

“I didn't know where I was or who I was,” he said. “The first thing I noticed was the queer feel of my head. I put up a hand—my left hand—and felt leather and bark and Heaven only knows what else all around and over my head as big as a—well, as big as that scrap basket. But my mouth and eyes were uncovered. I saw a sloping roof of poles and skins above me, with sunshine on it. My right arm was in splints. I saw black eyes staring down at me from a wrinkled, brown face. Those are my earliest memories. Not my earliest now, for many things have come back to me since coming in here.

“The owner of the wrinkled face was my doctor and nurse. He spoke a language I couldn't make head nor tail of; and his name was as long as my leg. I called him 'Bill' for short. Five sleeps after my first noticing my strange surroundings—but I didn't remember any other surroundings—Bill got me onto my feet and began teaching me to walk.

“Other people came in to look at me—men and women, young and old. They all belonged to the same breed as Bill. I knew there were other breeds of humans in the world, though I could not remember any other. I had reason without memory. Bill took one or two layers of wrappings off my head, and eased the splints on my right arm. I knew it was my right arm. I knew things like that, and their names, the moment I saw them; but though I recognized myself for a man, and one of a different race from Bill and the other people around me, I didn't know my own name. I didn't know my name until half an hour ago, when John spoke to me. Queer, that. Where was I?”

“I don't know. Somewhere in the woods with a bunch of Indians, far's I can make out.”

“Yes—but in my story. What was I telling you?”

“The old man was teaching you to walk.”

“That's right. Well, it didn't take him long. I was soon able to walk out and around. I saw broken hills black with stunted fir and spruce, and a lake of gray water—that water was as gray and clear as air—and brown barrens and knolls of granite. Northern country. I was down at the edge of the lake when I first saw Julia. Somebody spoke behind me in that crazy language but a different voice; and I turned, and there she was. She stood and gazed straight in my eyes with what might be termed an eager and yet inscrutable look.

“There was more than that in the look. There was pleasure, for one thing. You might even call it joy. And her eyes were not like the eyes of the other people in that place. I knew what the difference was, in a flash. It was not in their beauty only, for savages may have bright eyes capable of flashing and darkling, capable of expressing anger and affection and all the emotions—savages, yes, and animals.

“But hers were the eyes of civilization. She was white. Half white, I suppose, to be exact. But she looked pure white. I was seized by a strange excitement. I think her look must have set a thousand memories struggling for release. But they were not released. It was as if my heart remembered and my brain failed absolutely to respond. I called her Julia—but why Julia, I don't know. I spoke to her by that name—just that one word; and she smiled and extended her hands to me. I took them both in my left hand. I was deeply moved.”

He paused. He had not returned Wembly's flask, and he now took a second long pull at it.

“That stuff's thirty over proof,” cautioned Wembly.

“I called her Julia,” resumed Smith. “Her hands were slender. She was slender. I can't describe her, but I can see her vividly enough!”

“Don't try,” soothed Wembly, leaning sidewise and, with a long reach, relieving the adventurer of the flask. “Won't you have a cup of coffee or something? What about something to eat?”

Smith's eyes were agleam with tears. He brushed the tears away with soiled fingers.

“Coffee be damned!” he cried, sitting straight. “I have something else to do than drink coffee.” Again he slumped back in the soft chair. “I've much to tell you,” he went on in his former drawling tone of voice. “I must tell it before I sleep, for fear I should forget it in my sleep. The human memory is a tricky thing; and I am sleepy. And I must impress you with the vital importance of this matter before I rest. I must return for Julia—but I can't do that alone, without help. I'll need your help. She's there—Gaston Duvar's daughter—waiting for us to go back and bring her out. She's waiting for me. My first idea was that we should attempt the escape together, but when I discovered that one or another of those people was always spying on her, I realized that it couldn't be done.

“The only thing to do was to get away alone and find help, organize an expedition, and return with a force sufficiently powerful to release her from those people. She belongs to civilization. Her mother must have been one of those Indians, but she has nothing in common with them except the language. I learned only a few words of that language, and she knew nothing of English or French—only a few words of English I taught her; but we understood each other. She knows why I left her. She awaits my return.

“I have a map. Drew it as well as I could, on my way out. I had a compass which had belonged to her father, but I lost it on the way out. I'll show you the map and explain it to you, for you are the only person I've talked to since my return who hasn't looked or behaved as if he doubted my sanity. I don't blame them, for I didn't know my name then nor that I was a member of this club. I lost the compass, but I have the map here—yes, and something else.”

He sat up, slipped a hand into his breast and drew forth an oblong package. This was eight or nine inches long, about five inches wide and perhaps half an inch thick. It was wrapped in some kind of thin, oily skin and wound about with leather thongs. Smith plucked at a knot with fumbling fingers.

“Let me do that,” offered Wembly, wondering how best to get the poor fellow back to whatever public or private institution he had escaped from without hurting his feelings.

Smith relinquished the packet and sprawled back in the chair. Wembly made short work of the knots and unfolded the oily skin. Inside that wrapper he found another. The second was of soft leather. He unfolded the inner wrapper.

“What's this?” he asked, after a minute's silence.

“That's the diary,” drawled Smith. “Didn't I tell you about it? Gaston Duvar's diary. My map's on the back of the last page.”

“But where'd it come from? How did you get hold of it?”

“I've told you all that. She gave it to me—Julia—Duvar's daughter. How the devil would I've known who she was but for that diary? French. I could read it without any trouble; and as soon as I'd read two or three pages I remembered about that Frenchman and his balloon—though I must have been very young when it happened. It's his log. Look at the last six pages. They're written in pencil—only six pages, but they cover six years. After drifting round in a fog for days, the old bag picked that little lake to collapse into, and Duvar had to swim ashore. They thought he was a god, or a devil, but they wouldn't let him go. It makes interesting reading. His marriage. He mentions the fact, but not a word about his wife. That's queer. Julia must have been two years old when he died. That's my map on the back of the last page. The mother must have died when Julia was born.”

Wembly turned the pages of the diary with a trembling hand, pausing now and then to peer at a particular passage, or a marginal date, with incredulous eyes. He stared at the back of the last page, turning it this way and that.

“But how the devil did you get there?” he exclaimed suddenly, out of a silence of minutes.

“I don't know,” replied Smith in a sleepy voice, without changing his flabby position in the deep chair. “Can't remember. Couldn't learn from those people—not even from Julia. Not in a balloon. Don't know anything about balloons.”

“How did you get out?”

“Walked three days and nights due south by compass. Struck a good river running eastward and built a raft. Two days—and my raft went to pieces. Bad water for a raft. Good enough for a canoe. Hoofed it four or five days and rounded big falls and came upon a family of Indians netting and smoking salmon. One of them took me down to salt water in a canoe; and a half-breed who lived at the mouth of that river took me south along the coast to a Moravian mission. I was taken ill there. I was ill for weeks. But I know my way back. No trouble at all. That mission's on the maps. So's that river. Then up the river to where I first struck it—it's on my map there—and due north, by my map, to Julia.”

“Who are you?” asked Wembly. “What's your other name?”

“Smith. That's my name.”

“But your first name? You must have two, at least. Try to recall it. Is it John? John Smith?”

“No. I'd know it if you said it. John? That's old Stave's first name.”

Wembly turned back to the writing table with contracted brows. He gripped the arms of his chair with tense fingers. His lips moved without sound and his eyes darkened and dulled with a fixed, introspective look. He, too, was trying to recall a name. But his efforts were in vain. He got swiftly and suddenly to his feet.

“Excuse me for a minute,” he said, and hastened from the room.

He went downstairs and straight to John Stave's post of duty. John stood up at his approach. He came to a halt very close to John and spoke in eager yet guarded tones.

“This Mr. Smith, the gentleman in—ah—somewhat pronounced winter outing costume and a beard. I've been talking to him. Can you tell me which Mr. Smith he is?”

John reflected for a moment.

“We have six of them, sir. But one's a major, and another's an English baronet. That leaves four misters, so to speak. Yes, sir, I can tell you. The gentleman you refer to is Mr. Gilroy Smith.”

“Gilroy!” echoed Wembly, and his voice shook. “That's the name I was trying to recall. But you can't mean that he's the Gilroy Smith? The airman? Commander Benn's companion in the east-to-west Atlantic flight of last summer? You can't mean that!”

John looked perplexed.

“Well, sir, he might be that one. I've always thought our Mr, Gilroy Smith was a literary gent of some kind—but he may be a flying gent, too. I can't just say, sir, offhanded—but I can find out for you in half a minute.”

“Are you trying to be funny? Great Heaven, man, that was last summer! And they've not been heard of since—not since the crew of a Newfoundland schooner heard a plane going over in a fog! The papers were full of it. Commander Harvey Benn and Gilroy Smith. You couldn't have escaped hearing of that flight if you'd tried.”

“Sorry, sir, but I'm not much of a hand with the newspapers. I do most of my reading now in Charles Dickens' novels and my grandchildren's school books, sir.”

“Good Lord! But how long is it since you last saw this Gilroy Smith? Weeks? Months?”

“It's quite a while, sir. That's what I remarked to him when he came in this evening. It might be all of four months. But I know who could give you the information, sir. Mr. Ankerly. Great friend of Mr. Smith's, sir. He came in only ten minutes ago.”

“Lead me to him.”

They found Mr. Ankerly standing alone with his back to a large fire. His attitude was graceful and assured. His cheeks were smooth and pink. The expression of his mouth and eyes suggested complete satisfaction with himself and life. His attire was formal, and faultless to the minutest detail. As they confronted him, he treated Wembly to a glance of polite curiosity and a slight bow, and John Stave to an encouraging, inquiring smile.

“Mr. Ankerly, sir, here's a gentleman wants to speak to you very particular,” said John.

“My name's Wembly,” said the Canadian, almost before John had the last word out. “Not that my name matters. But can you tell me if the Gilroy Smith who tried to fly from Paris to New York with Commander Benn is a member of this club?”

“Certainly. That's to say, he was a member. Poor Gil. One of the best. Salt of the earth. But why do you ask, Mr. Webster?”

“Wembly—not that it matters. But surely there were two Gilroy Smiths in this club?”

“Two Gilroy Smiths? Certainly not—not in the Voyagers', nor anywhere in the world that I ever heard of. There was only one Gilroy Smith—Harvey Benn's companion. I financed that tragic venture. But why do you ask?”

“Because I've been talking to him to-night.”

Some of the pink went out of Ankerly's smooth cheeks; and his eyes narrowed and glittered.

“If that's meant for a joke, it's in damn poor taste!” he exclaimed harshly.

“I'm quite serious,” returned Wembly. “Gilroy Smith is upstairs in the little writing room.”

The rest of the pink slipped from Ankerly's face. Even his lips lost their color. Wembly turned abruptly and strode toward the stairs. Ankerly followed, after a moment's hesitation. John Stave went last. Ankerly knocked against a padded chair and brushed a corner of a table. He muttered to himself.

“It's impossible! Gil's dead! The man's a fool—or worse!” He stumbled twice on the stairs.

The Founder's Study was empty except for the sprawled figure in the deep chair near the table at which Wembly had met and talked with Gilroy Smith. Wembly led straight to that corner. The light from the shaded lamp on the table did not reach quite to the back of the chair and Smith's upturned face.

“I believe he's asleep,” said Wembly. “He spoke of being sleepy. Do you recognize him? Shift the lamp this way a bit, John.”

Ankerly stooped over the sleeper.

“It's him, all right!” said old John Stave, with a truculent note in his voice. “Don't I know our members? Every single one of them, drunk or sober, dirty or clean, dead or alive!”

Ankerly straightened his back, stood swaying for a moment, then retreated unsteadily and sat down hard in the chair which Wembly had recently occupied. His smooth, plumpish face was gray.

“I don't believe it!” he exclaimed, staring blankly at the puzzled Canadian. “He's lost. Early in August. He's dead.”

“Pull yourself together,” advised Wembly, producing the flask of rum. “Take a nip of this.”

Ankerly snatched the flask and tilted it to his lips with a shaking hand.

John Stave, standing beside Gilroy Smith's chair, uttered a cry of dismay.

“What the devil's the matter with you?” demanded Wembly sharply.

“He's dead! Mr. Smith here! He's dead!”

 

Mr. Ankerly and John Stave left the room. Wembly resumed his seat at the little writing table. He took up the pen with which he had been writing a letter when poor Gilroy Smith had disturbed him. He glanced at the unfinished letter, then at the late Gaston Duvar's diary. The diary lay open, exposing the back of the last written page. He dipped the pen and, on a page of the unfinished letter, he copied the dead man's map. He dried his handiwork on a blotter, folded the letter and placed it in the inner pocket of his dinner jacket. Then he closed the lost balloonist's diary and lit a cigarette.

Half a dozen people entered the room a minute later; and lights flashed on from the walls and ceiling. They were all members of the club. One was the honorary secretary. Another was a physician. All had been acquainted with Gilroy Smith, and now they recognized the body in the big chair. The doctor made a swift examination.

“As dead as if he'd died last summre,” said the doctor. “But we must not move him until the medical examiner says so.”

Wembly drew their attention to the diary, which lay on the table in its unfolded wrappers of oiled skin and leather. It was passed from hand to hand. It excited astonished and puzzled comment. Wembly was eagerly, and somewhat confusedly, questioned concerning his interview with the dead hero. He answered all the questions to the best of his knowledge and as clearly as possible—but he did not stress the young woman who had given Gaston Duvar's diary to Smith, nor did he draw anybody's attention to the rough map on the back of the last inscribed page.

The examiner arrived, accompanied by a police officer in a bowler hat and a fur-lined overcoat, and old John Stave. The medical examiner studied the sprawled, stiff figure in the big chair and found and declared it to be devoid of life. The detective searched the body thoroughly, questioning Wembly and John Stave and others the while without appearing to listen to their answers. He drew the examiner's and Doctor Vane's attention to a scar on the head.

“That's where he lost his memory,” he said, glancing at Wembly. “It's too bad he couldn't remember what happened to Commander Benn.”

“Benn must have been killed when they crashed, and been buried by the Indians,” suggested Wembly.

The only other discovery worthy of remark was a written statement dated October, and signed by J. Bols, Moravian missionary, to the effect that the bearer, who had lost his memory, quite obviously by an injury to the brain, had been brought to the mission by a half-breed from the north, who had taken him over from a mountaineer Indian from up Smoke River—and so on and so on.

The missionary's account of poor Smith corresponded with Smith's own account of himself, as told to Paul Wembly. It went on to say that the bearer was a highly educated man and doubtless an explorer or scientist of note with anxious and important friends; it commended him to the best attentions of the reader, and charged the world in general with his transportation to New York and his admittance to a good hospital.

“He surely sidestepped the hospital—or he wouldn't smell so much like a wet sheep,” said the detective. He lit a cigar and turned to the medical examiner. “I'm satisfied if you are, doctor.”

“Quite so,” replied the other. “Doctor Vane agrees with me. He died from natural causes, in his own club. But it's an extraordinary case, from a romantic point of view.”

Every one nodded. The man from headquarters glanced at Mr. Ankerly and rolled his cigar from one corner of his wide mouth to the other.

“Speaking of the romantic point of view, Mr. Ankerly,” he said in a very smooth voice. “This is outside my province, but let me advise you to consult your lawyer first thing in the morning. I'm entirely satisfied that everything here”—he gestured with a thumb toward the still figure in the deep chair—“is as it should be, mind you; but you don't want to ball things up for the want of a little law and readjustment.” He glanced around the circle of attentive, puzzled faces. “You see, gentlemen, a charge of bigamy might start a whole lot of trouble. There's no saying what the newspaper boys mightn't try to make of it. The widow of Mr. Gilroy Smith there was married to Mr. Ankerly at noon yesterday—but she wasn't a widow then, you understand. Well, gentlemen, I'll be stepping along.”

Chapter II.

The romantic major.

Wembly roomed at a middle-sized, middle-priced, middling sort of hotel within four blocks of Gramercy Park and the Voyagers' Club; and there, in his bedroom, ladies and gentlemen of the press caught him at breakfast in pajamas and bath robe bright and early on the morning following his extraordinary meeting with the late Gilroy Smith.

A great many of his visitors sat on his bed.

“The facts are in the morning editions, and what we want now is the human-interest stuff,” said a young lady with impressively long legs and a short face. “Are you married, Major Wobbly? And if so, how much? And what are you a major in?”

“Wembly,” corrected the Canadian. “Not that it matters in the least. No, I'm not married. I was a major in a war. But what's that got to do with the story?”

“How long have you known Gilroy Smith?”

“I'd never set eyes on him before last night.”

“Didn't you have an appointment with him?”

“Certainly not. He happened to wander into that room, and I was the only other person there. So he talked to me. I thought him an escaped lunatic until he produced that diary—Gaston Duvar's log.”

“I know all about that Frenchman and his balloon. I read him up in the encyclopedia this morning. Old stuff. But what did he tell you about the girl?”

“What girl?”

“Gaston's daughter. The girl who gave him the diary.”

“Well, just that. She gave him Duvar's diary.”

“You're hopeless. Who cares about the diary of a crazy Frenchman who went ballooning for the north pole thirty years ago? How many heart throbs does that get? Be your age. What Gilroy Smith confided to you—talked himself to death about—was his love for that girl. Don't try to deny it. He told you that he meant to go back and rescue her from those Indians. He raved about her eyes, didn't he? Be a gentleman, Major Webbly, and say 'Yes.'”

Wembly looked surprised.

“As a matter of fact, I don't recall his saying a word about her eyes. If he did, I missed it. But it is perfectly true that he intended to return and get her away from the Indians.”

“There!” exclaimed his interrogator. “I knew there was a heart story in it somewhere.”

She scribbled like one possessed; and the others scribbled; and Wembly looked on in wonder. She turned a page and again lifted her friendly but somewhat mocking gaze to Wembly.

“She's a beauty, of course. She'd be dark, wouldn't she? French and Indian. What did he say about her looks.”

“He didn't describe her,” replied Wembly, good-naturedly. “I got the impression, however, that he considered her very attractive. But I was wrong when I said that he did not speak of her eyes. He said they differed from the eyes of the Indians in looking 'civilized.' Rather a vague description, it seems to me. He used one other term that you may possibly make something of. He said she was slender.”

“Great!” exclaimed the girl. “Leave the rest of it, including her costume of sables and wampum, to us. You're a pukka sport, as we say at Sikandarabad. Much obliged. So long.”

Left to himself, Wembly resumed his seat before his cold breakfast. He was amused and slightly bewildered. His uninvited guests had drained the coffee-pot and emptied a sizable box of cigarettes.

“Human-interest stuff,” he murmured. “Heart-throb stories. So that's how they're manufactured. But surely they could work up some dashed good throbs with the business of Ankerly and the widow who wasn't quite a widow. Heart-interest stuff there, all right!”

Somebody rapped lightly on his door.

“Come in,” he invited; and the young woman with the long legs came in.

“Please don't hurl your ruined breakfast at me,” she begged. “I simply had to come back to tell you that I'm not absolutely dumb. We've been warned off that story of Mr. Ankerly and Mrs. Gilroy Smith. That's why we have to pick on the half-breed girl for heart interest. Have a cigarette. That swarm of locusts and wild honey left you destitute, I know. But they're decent kids, really.”

Wembly took and lit the cigarette.

“Do you mind if I ask you one more question? I should hate to make a pest of myself to a—a man like you.”

Wembly bowed.

“Do you know Mrs. Harvey Benn—or Mrs. Catherine Benn—wife or widow of Commander Benn, as the case may be?”

“No,” he said.

“You will. And then, good night! And now do you mind if I tell you something?”

“Please do. Delighted. Anything.”

“You plan to go north on the quest of the balloonist's daughter.”

He stared.

“But—good Lord! I——”

She laughed musically, kindly, yet with a little note of mockery. She moved to the door. He reached the door first. He opened it for her, but with an air of indecision suggestive of reluctance. She paused on the threshold and smiled at him.

“But why do you think so?” he asked.

“Because you're so darned romantic. But I won't tell. It would make a great story—but it's safe with me.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you—you're so darned simple—and polite.”

And then she left him without another word or glance.

He closed the door and paced slowly around the room, muttering.

“Romantic? Who, me? Perhaps she's right. Simple? Simple! She's crazy! Lucky guess, that's all. But what about Mrs. Benn? What the devil did she mean by that—if anything?”

It had been Paul Wembly's intention at two o'clock that morning, when he flopped into bed, and at nine thirty when he scrambled out of bed and phoned for his breakfast, to check out at noon and commence his homeward journey at one thirty. Now he rang up the office and ordered cigarettes—but he didn't say a word about checking out.

“It would be only polite to wait over for poor Gilroy Smith's funeral,” he told himself. “And I may as well try to live up to my reputation in that line,” he added.

He lunched at the Voyagers' Club. Two of the members, whom he had met the night before in connection with the remarkable affair of Gilroy Smith, joined him and talked of the deceased.

“It's a strange thing that he happened on you to have his last talk with in this world—very likely the only man in the club he didn't know personally,” said one of them. “An extraordinary case in every way. A close call for Ankerly, that—and the lady. I'm glad Ankerly has money and pull enough to keep the papers off that aspect of the case. Not that I care a hang about G. V. Ankerly, mind you! Or the lady. I'm thinking of Gilroy and the club. We don't want Gil's good name and posthumous fame touched and cheapened.”

“We've been through that diary from cover to cover,” the other member informed Wembly. “It's Gaston Duvar's log, no doubt of that. We hoped to find something of Gilroy's in it, and possibly some mention of Commander Benn. If Gil could read, surely he could write. But there's nothing of his except a few scrawls which he evidently intended for a map of some sort; and his wife's name scribbled all over one page—which I'll say was a waste of both time and sentiment, all things considered.”

“What's her name?” asked Wembly.

“Julia,” they told him.

“Ah!” exclaimed the Canadian. “What I mean to say is, that's evidently the only thing he remembered—the only name that survived the crash. What happened is this, in my opinion: Harvey Benn was killed when the plane crashed, and buried before Smith regained consciousness. If I had identified Smith soon enough—but for a long time I believed him to be crazy—I could have reminded him of his companion. That's the way his memory was working. He recognized the front of the club the moment he saw it, you know—and John Stave—and his own name when Stave addressed him by it. He remembered all he had read about Gaston Duvar the minute he saw the name in that diary—a memory of thirty years ago. Benn's dead and buried, beyond a doubt—in my opinion. If Smith had seen him after the crash, he would have remembered him.”

One of the two agreed with him and the other didn't.'

“I'm with you in thinking that Gil would have remembered and mentioned the commander if he had seen him after the crash. But why take for granted that the reason he didn't see him is that Benn was dead and buried?”

“Its the simplest reason I can think of,” said Wembly, good-naturedly.

The member not in agreement tapped the tablecloth with a blunt finger and said that he, for one, would not be satisfied with anything so simple; that simplicity was not the whole of life; and that the club would be doing no more than its duty if it dispatched an expedition for the purposes of confirming Gilroy Smith's statements, and ascertaining the fate of Commander Harvey. Benn, and investigating the case of the lost French aëronaut's daughter.

“Is there any chance of that?” asked Wembly.

Both his companions replied that the thing was highly probable.

It was two thirty when Paul Wembly got back to his hotel. There he was handed a special-delivery letter that had arrived about an hour before. He read it at the desk:

Dear Sir: I am very anxious to see you in connection with the dramatic and pathetic return and death of poor Gilroy Smith. I shall be at the Brevoort from five to six this afternoon, in the room on the left of the entrance, at a table in the third window from the door—expecting you,

Yours sincerely,
Catherine Benn.

One of the leggy young newspaper woman's cryptic remarks flashed to his mind—“You will; and then, good night!” He reread the note and somehow, in a vague way, got the impression that the writer felt very sure of herself, or of him.

“She seems to take it for granted that I knew who she is,” he reflected. “Which is quite natural, under the circumstances. I do know who she is. Wife or widow of Commander Harvey Benn. Does she think that Smith told me more than I repeated? She doesn't waste words in idle explanations. Accustomed to having her own way, evidently.”

The letter did not make a hit with him. It puzzled him without exciting his sympathy. It scarcely touched his curiosity. It offended him, if anything.

But, at ten minutes past five, Paul Wembly entered the portals of the hotel.

“This is what comes of being polite,” he said. “But I'll be damned if I'm simple!”

He turned to his left.

The lights, low and shaded, were on the occupied tables only. For the rest, the big room was in shadows and soft gloom. Wembly counted the long windows; and at sight of the figure at the little table in the third window from the door, pleasurable astonishment seized him and urged him forward. In his first response to that urge he bumped into a waiter—it may even have been a head waiter—and was scarcely aware of the fact.

It was not until he was within a single stride of his objective that he realized his mistake. He had never seen this person before. His expression changed from that of delighted surprise to one of bewildered disappointment. She was looking up at him with smiling inquiry. He bowed.

“Mrs. Benn?”

“You are Major Wembly, aren't you? Please sit down. I've just ordered a large pot of tea and toasted muffins and blackberry jelly—bramble jelly, as you call it.”

“Yes—but how do you know that? We've never met before. I've a rotten memory, but——”

She lowered her glance for a second; and that slight action conveyed the impression that she had bowed in acknowledgment of his implied compliment. But he had not intended a compliment. Not exactly. Not quite. She was too dashed sure of herself and her attractions already. He almost wished that he had remained away until half past five. He was flustered, and angry with himself for being so; and he was angry with her for supposing—he suspected her of supposing it—that his agitation was a tribute to her charms. The truth is, at the first glimpse he had mistaken her for the young woman who had led the contingent of scribes against him that morning, and his agitation was due to disappointment.

“You are the Paul Wembly who wrote 'Migrating Herds,' aren't you?” she asked.

He admitted it.

“So now you know how I learned of your taste for bramble jelly. The description of the tea party in the preface. It's delightful. So that mystery is explained. But now you are wondering why I sent for you.”

She was wrong—but he smiled politely. He had ceased to wonder what she wanted of him. Not that he knew. He had simply lost interest in the subject; and the matter of his wondering was that the possessor of that perfect nose, of those radiant eyes and exquisite lips, of that, flawless chin and those slender hands, should inspire him with no other emotion than an impulse to crown her with the silver dish of toasted-and-buttered muffins which had just then been placed between them.

She poured the tea. She propped her slender, rounded elbows on the table.

“Will you please tell me everything poor Gilroy Smith said to you?”

He told her.

“But that's no more than the papers have,” she protested.

“It's all there is,” he returned.

“And not a word of Harvey Benn?”

“I'm sorry about that. Smith would certainly have mentioned his heroic companion if he had remembered him, and he would surely have remembered him if he had seen him after the—the accident. There's no doubt of that in my mind. Any one of a dozen things may have happened. Commander Benn may have been carried off by a different party of natives. The only thing I am sure of is that Smith didn't see your husband after his recovery—Smith's recovery—nor the plane, nor any part of it—or it would have come back to him. That's the way his memory was working.”

The lady veiled her fine eyes with exceptional lashes and bowed her head. Wembly tried to feel sorry for her. He was puzzled by his failure to feel sorry for her, for he knew that he had a sympathetic nature and a soft heart.

“You think he is alive?” she whispered, after a minute's silence.

“I hope so,” he answered. “His chances were as good as Smith's.”

“I'm going up there to find out,” she said. “It's that that I must talk over with you. You know that country. I need your help.”

She lifted her glance then to read the effect of this announcement in his eyes—but she was not quick enough. The author of “Migrating Herds” was staring into his teacup with the fixed gaze of a fortune teller. A flicker of displeasure touched her eyes and lips.

“Who has a better right to go?” she continued. “Not the Voyagers' Club, certainly! I'm his wife—or widow.”

Wembly shifted his gaze to the little dish of blackberry jelly.

“I've never been up that particular river,” he said, with the tone and air of considering every word carefully before uttering it. “I have been farther north along the coast, and inland both to the north and south of it. Yes, I suppose I do know that country. In what way can I be of help to you? Do you want my advice?”

“Yes. That, at least.”

“Then I advise you to keep out of it.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn't like it. A hard trip, at any time of year. You couldn't stand the gaff. What do you know of that kind of work, or that kind of country?”

“Nothing, really—except what I've read in your book.”

“That isn't enough,” he said dryly. “Even if you had read the two books I've published since 'Migrating Herds,' which are much more to the point, it wouldn't be enough.”

“But I do not intend to go alone,” she corrected him gently. “I shall be the leader of the expedition in name only. I am asking you to be the actual leader, Major Wembly.”

 

Paul Wembly walked, and murmured or muttered every now and then. Some of the people he passed thought him a poet or a philosopher in creative travail. He entered and crossed Washington Square.

“Why did she pick on me?” he asked himself for the fiftieth time. “She's practical, if I'm any judge of character—as practical as beautiful. Hundreds of admirers, dozens of important men eager to help her prove herself a widow—or I miss my guess. But she picked on me.”

He walked aimlessly for more than an hour, taking the corners as they came. He thought hard all the while, but so confusedly that little came of it.

At last he decided to return to his hotel, or to Gramercy Park, where he could think comfortably and at the same time steady his mental activity with food—with food and perhaps a few nips of safe and superior rum. He had brought five flasks of that rum south with him, of which two remained; and one of the two reposed even now on his hip. He halted and looked around him inquiringly. He was in a narrow street of four-story houses and area railings. Seeing a taxicab at the curb some six or seven doors away, he hastened toward it. He saw that the driver had the door open and his head and shoulders inside; and as he came abreast of the vehicle he heard high words from within. He stopped; and at the same moment the driver backed out and into him, swearing furiously.

“What's your trouble?” asked Wembly.

“Its Duff,” said the driver, in a voice of utter disgust. “If it wasn't, I'd wring his neck. That's the third time—and the last!”

A man in a dark coat and light hat emerged from the cab. He held a large, silver cigarette case extended in his right hand. He rested the case, and the hand that held it, against the driver's chest, and seemed glad of the support thus afforded him. Wembly saw that he was slight and young and smiling.

“Hereyer, Tom,” said Duff. “Gift. Token of frien'ship an' 'steem. No room f'argument.”

“Keep yer damn cigarette case!” cried the driver. “All I want's a dollar. What the hell? I don't want yer jewelry. I want my fare. You tried to make me take a gold watch last time. What the hell?”

“Allow me,” said Wembly, who not only admired the stand taken by the taximan but was interested in the appearance and condition of the gentleman in the light hat; and he handed the former a dollar.

“Wazzat?” asked the passenger, turning from the driver to Wembly. “Wash great idea? Washername? Wazzer name—'f you get wash I mean?”

“Perfectly,” returned Wembly. “You feel that I've taken.a liberty in paying your fare. But your name's Duff, isn't it?”

“Duff? Zas right. Duff. Scosh name.”

“I knew it. And mine's Wembly.”

Mr. Duff considered this statement gravely. He nodded, evidently satisfied.

“There's no harm in him, sir,” said the taximan to Wembly; and he waved a hand and drove away.

Duff pointed his cigarette case at the illuminated entrance of the house before which they stood.

“Lesh dine,” he said.

They were attentively received within. Their hats and coats were taken, but Duff refused to give up his walking stick. Wembly saw that his companion was well known in the place.

Food brought about a swift change for the better in Duff's condition. His tongue thinned, for one thing.

“We know each other, no doubt about that,” he said, when they had been at table less than half an hour. “I didn't catch your name—in no condition for catching anything, just then—but I know your face. I've seen you very recently—to-day or yesterday. Where was that?”

“My name's Paul Wembly,” returned the Canadian. “At the Voyagers' Club, very likely. I've spent a good deal of my time there during the past six or seven days.”

“Wembly!” exclaimed the other. “The Voyagers! That's it. No wonder your face is familiar! I've been admiring your physiognomy, as reproduced in the afternoon editions of the Herald-Star, Times-Mercury and Daily Scream for hours, So you're the man who listened to poor Gil Smith's last words.”

“Do you mean to say that they ran my photograph?” asked Wembly.

“It's yours, no doubt of that.”

“But where the devil did they get it?”

“Not from me, that's certain. But you were interviewed, I suppose.”

“Yes, I was interviewed—at the club last night and in my bedroom this morning. But I didn't see any camera.”

Duff smiled at that and sent for the latest papers. When they arrived, he soon found what he wanted—a bust photograph of Paul Wembly in a bath robe with a high, rolling collar. He passed the paper across the table. Wembly took it, stared, swore, then began to read:

The romantic major practically admits his intention of heading an expedition for the relief of the beautiful captive of the wilderness, of whose existence he first heard last night from Gilroy Smith. Major Wembly is at once a dreamer and a man of action, and therefore a sentimentalist. That Gilroy Smith's disclosures, his last earthly communications, should have been made to this romantic soldier-explorer writer from the north, may seem nothing more than a matter of chance to some, but will impress others as an act of fate.

That was enough for Wembly. Anger, disgust and disappointment shook him so that the folded sheets rustled between his hands. Of the three emotions, disappointment cut deepest and shook hardest. He was bitterly disappointed in that girl whose name he did not know, she who had guessed his secret and then assured him that it was safe with her. He felt as if an old friend had played him false.

“She was right when she called me simple!” he muttered.

But Duff paid no attention to his agitation. Duff, who had unfolded the very latest edition of the Times-Mercury, appeared to have discovered matter sufficiently significant to concentrate

“You damn fool!” he exclaimed.

Wembly was startled out of his bitter reflections. Duff looked across at him with a grimace of scorn and pity.

“If it isn't too late—if she hasn't sunk her hooks too deep—listen to me,” said Duff, his voice at once sneering and earnest. “Back out, man! I'm telling you because I know. I'm telling you because I like you. Chuck it! Beat it! Go home and crawl under the barn—or hang millstones round your neck and jump into the lake. Anything but this!”

“What the devil are you talking about?” demanded Wembly.

“How long have you known her?” returned Duff. “Or thought that you knew her,” he added, with a crooked smile.

“Who?”

“Your partner in the Benn-Duvar relief expedition.”

“What? The what?”

Duff sighed and shoved the Times-Mercury across, indicating a certain paragraph with a finger.

“That may refresh your memory,” he suggested wearily:

A beautiful woman in search of lost hero husband will face perils and privations of mysterious northern wilderness. Mrs. Harvey Benn, who was known as Catherine Cavendish to followers of the silent drama previous to her marriage with Commander Harvey Benn two years ago, will lead a relief expedition to northern Labrador in search of her missing husband who, with Gilroy Smith, late well-known airman and clubman, who expired last night at the Voyagers' Club, flew the Atlantic from France to North America and crashed in the northern wilderness.

The intrepid lady will also investigate the case of the alleged daughter of the late M. Gaston Duver, a French aëronaut, who disappeared into the mysterious north thirty years ago, in an attempt to reach the north pole in a balloon, and of whom nothing has been heard since, until Gilroy Smith's dramatic reappearance last night with the lost balloonist's diary and talk of a half-breed girl whom he believed to be the French aëronaut's daughter.

Major Paul Wembly, who has sprung into sudden fame as the recipient of Gilroy Smith's last words, will act as second in command of the Benn-Duvar relief expedition. His first-hand knowledge of the hinterland of Labrador, gained as a naturalist and hunter, should prove of value. It is generally felt that Major Wembly is not only peculiarly fitted for the post, but is deserving of the honor.

At the first reading, Wembly doubted the evidence of his eyes. He brushed a hand across his eyes and read again. He was possessed by a cold fury, an icy calm.

“Whoever wrote that is a liar, and whoever believes it is a fool,” he said, raising his glare from the printed words and meeting his companion's derisive gaze. “A dirty liar! A damn fool! If you believe it—if you were twice as big and twice as good as you are, I'd slam you one that would scramble you from hell to the horse lines.”

“Please tell me all about it first, for I'm a bit vague about the location of the horse lines,” returned Duff.

So Wembly told him of the note from Mrs. Benn and the subsequent meeting at the hotel over tea and toasted muffins. He told it all.

“You turned her down!” exclaimed Duff incredulously.

“Ab-so-lutely. But politely, I hope.”

“Good Lord! Are you a man of wood?”

“No—but she was too sure of herself—her personal attractions—for my taste. Kept my head—and my manners, I hope—and refused to consider her idea. And look at this!”

“Are you positive that you didn't weaken at the last?”

“Positive, absolutely. To be quite frank with you, I was afraid of something of the kind and so didn't take a chance. I realized that I had to sacrifice something—clinked my manners and clung to my self-respect and walked out on her. Didn't even risk remaining jong enough to pay the bill—for I'm not a man of wood. And I take my work seriously.”

Duff said that he had never expected to live to hear such a thing as that. He called Wembly one of the seven wonders of the ancient and modern worlds.

“You refused to go expeditioning with Catherine Benn! And then you walked out and left her to pay for the toasted muffins! You are either less or more than human. Nothing like that has ever been done before. I congratulate you from the fullness of my heart—and I know what I am talking about—for you see in me a horrible example of what Catherine can do to the average romantic male fool. But you are above the average. You are—I don't know a name for it; but take my word, you are the first man who ever left her to pay for anything.”

“And it is the first time I ever left a woman to pay, to the best of my knowledge and belief, and I'm sorry it happened that way,” said Wembly. “But what's her game? Why did she pick on me? She must know hundreds. of more important men to make fools of.”

“Publicity's her game—free advertising, with a very definite end in view—the ears and eyes and messy hearts of the tens of millions. To be 'The World's Best Beloved,' that is her ambition—and it can be attained only in her old field of endeavor, the silver screen. But the competition is keen, and she's been out of the race over two years now, and she was never among the very best.

“She wouldn't have married Benn if she'd been entirely successful—but why she wasn't, I don't know. She has the looks, no doubt of that—to put it mildly. Lack of heart, perhaps, for she has no more sap of human kindness in her than—than one of the diamonds on her fingers. But she has cleverness, of sorts. Take your case. She saw your importance to her schemes in a flash—a figure created exactly to her purpose in one day by the messy sob writers. Don't you get it?

“Look at yourself as the world sees you to-night—and weep. The he-man from the North who alone of all the world heard the last words of Gilroy Smith—the last message of one of the only two men who have flown the Atlantic from east to west. If that were all it would be enough. But what else? You are not only a he-man, you are a clubman—a thing very dear to our citizenry—though what the devil a clubman is exactly, I, who shall soon be posted in six or seven clubs for nonpayment of dues, haven't a notion.

“But even that is not all. You are the he-man clubman who, at the mention of the existence of a beautiful daughter of a lost balloonist, laid your hand on your heart and swore to seek and find and rescue her, and restore her to civilization, though it should cost you your life.”

Wembly moaned. He clutched ail the newspapers and flung them to the floor.

“You are made to her purpose as if to her order,” continued Duff, with a suggestion of mirth in his grin for the first time. “You and Catherine and Indians and dogs and a good camera man—Lord, the possibilities! Catherine in search of her hero-husband, and the strong, silent he-major in search of the beautiful, mysterious——”

“Shut up, damn you!” exploded Wembly. “Try some of this—try it in your coffee—thirty over proof—and talk about something else, for Heaven's sake!”

He passed the flask across the table. It was well received.

Chapter III.

The deserted skipper.

Paul Wembly did not remain to take part in the imposing semiofficial funeral of the late Gilroy Smith—a ceremony which was attended by representatives of the President of the United States of America and the ambassadors of six foreign powers, by the governor of the State and the mayor of the city and seventy-six members of the Voyagers' Club in high hats.

The major headed for his northern home without further loss of time, taking Henry Melrose Duff along with him and leaving behind him, for the press, a flat denial of the statement concerning his connection with the so-called Benn-Duvar relief expedition.

Wambly was not only a bachelor, but an orphan. He was a bachelor by accident rather than intention, for he possessed a warm heart and a romantic outlook on life. One thing and another had kept him single. He had made his first extensive trip into the wilderness for the purpose of considering his chances with a certain girl, had become involved by an ancient imaginative trapper in the vain quest of a legendary white moose which had kept him absent from the object of his affections from early June until October, and had won back to civilization just too late to tell the girl that he had come to the conclusion that his chances with her were good—for she had set out on her wedding tour the day before. Being very young then, he had made a quick recovery—this with the help of his recently awakened interest in the legends and fauna of the North. In another case, the late war had played the part of the white moose. And so on.

Wembly's home was an old house in a small town. His combined housekeeper and caretaker was a man with an artificial leg who had been his platoon sergeant at St. Julian in 1915.

Wembly and Duff reached the old house at seven o'clock of a cold evening and found a hot dinner awaiting them.

“How's this, Gus?” asked the householder. “I forgot to warn you.”

In answer, Gus handed him a sheaf of telegrams. He tore them open in anxious haste, and upon reading each he passed it to Duff without comment. But he kept the last one in his hand for a full minute, regarding it with a puzzled frown. Two wires were from publishers and three from editors, all expressing flattering readiness to present the literary by-products of the Benn-Duvar relief expedition to the world. These five had been retelegraphed by the manager of the hotel, according to Wembly's instructions. But the sixth had come directly to the old house in the small town. It read as follows:

Have just seen your denial stop my mistake stop sorry.

It was unsigned.

“What have you there?” asked Duff, tossing the other messages into a chair with a contemptuous gesture.

Wembly handed it over, with the remark that he supposed it was from Mrs. Harvey Benn.

“Not it,” returned Duff, after a glance at the yellow sheet. “She never admits a mistake. Guess again. It sounds feminine to me—but don't tell me if you don't want to. The less I hear about women from now on, the better I'll be pleased. But don't mind me. What's her name, and what's she sorry for?”

“I don't know her name,” said Wembly. “It's a mystery to me. I know very few women in New York.”

He took that telegram from Duff's hand and, ignoring Duff's skeptical smile and curious glance, folded it carefully and stowed it away in a breast pocket.

It was still Paul Wembly's intention to be the first to the relief of the late Monsieur Gaston Duvar's daughter, though the sentimental impulse to fly to her rescue was not now as keen as it had been at the moment of learning of her romantic existence and desolate situation, from the bearded lips of poor Gilroy Smith.

Something had happened to him since that night that had somewhat dulled the glamour of his mental picture of the lost aëronaut's daughter—but as to the identity of that something even he, himself, felt no more than a suspicion in his heart which his head condemned as absurd.

So he did not mention it to Henry Duff. He would very probably have sat in comfort until spring, and completed a sequence of sonnets and a book on ice-riding pinnipedia, if he had not been aware of the intentions of Mrs. Harvey Benn and the Voyagers' Club to undertake the same enterprise.

Even so, he was inclined to take his own time about setting forth, arguing that it was unlikely that the others would venture to move before March at the earliest—but Duff made light of his arguments and demanded immediate action.

“You don't know Catherine as I do—and you should be thankful for it—or you'd be on your way this minute if you want to beat her to it. She's all out to cash in on Smith's story and Benn's death; and if you reckon on her sitting back until spring, with the news value and heart interest of her stunt lessening every day, you'll find yourself out of luck. If you want to be before her, start now, if not sooner, and keep as far ahead of her as possible all the way, and sidestep her ever afterward—or you'll find yourself paying for that tea and those toasted muffins until you're beggared in pocket and reputation.”

“You can't scare me with that line of melodramatic bilge,” retorted Wembly—but he immediately set to work at overhauling his winter campaigning kit.

 

Wembly and Duff arrived at St. John's, Newfoundland, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the tenth day of December, and left the city by rail on the evening of the same day. They left the train at two o'clock of the morning of the eleventh.

In Figgy Cove they hired two strong men in whiskers and skinnywoppers, and a sturdy craft of the variety known on those coasts by the name of “bully.” In the bully they crossed many bays and arms of cold, green water and skirted many miles of ice-fringed land-wash. They told the bully's bewhiskered crew that they were missionaries; and the simple fellows replied that they had never before encountered missionaries who were so open handed with the rum—high-proof stuff, too.

Wembly had been on that coast before—though never before in midwinter—and he had a good chart and good maps; so he was able to avoid the larger settlements. He did not want to leave any trace of his passage for the information of the Benn-Duvar relief expedition or the Voyagers' Club expedition. Confound them! Let them for themselves discover the most practical methods of coasting the northern bays of Newfoundland in December!

Early in the afternoon of the fifth day of its coasting, the Wembly party was forced ashore by one of those elemental disturbances which in those parts are inadequately termed “flurries,” but which are known as blizzards elsewhere. The bully groped desperately for shelter through a whirling, freezing, breath-snatching, blinding white obscurity. The winds, all thick with frozen snow, struck at it from every point of the compass simultaneously.

The crew pulled on the long oars with all they had. Duff bowed his head and shut his useless eyes, and strained air for breathing purposes through his mittened hands. His courage was not shaken—but the thought came to him that it was pleasanter to read about this sort of thing than to endure it. Wembly stood up and tried to pick a prevailing wind and come to a decision on direction, turning his face blindly this way and that—but all in vain. He stooped, took a stumbling pace forward and found Nick Waddy with his groping hands. He stooped lower and shouted in one of the hairy ears:

“How're you heading? What you steering by?”

“Swell ọ' de lan'-wash,” shouted Waddy in answer, ejecting ice and snow from lips and mustache.

They rammed the thin, elastic, black shore ice fifteen minutes later. Nick Waddy's nose had not failed him. The heavy cutwater of the big boat splintered the edge of the ice, then slid up unto it before the efforts of the oarsmen and broke through with the weight of timber and gear.

“Hold 'er into it—an' I'll git a line ashore!” shouted Waddy.

Wembly manned Waddy's oar; and he and Stote stroked their best, thus keeping the boat's bluff bows wedged into the ice, while Waddy stumbled forward with a coiled line, made one end of the line fast to a chock and scrambled outboard. Waddy lowered himself cautiously to the bending ice. He did not let his weight settle on his feet, for he knew the wisest methods of treating all kinds and thicknesses and conditions of ice. In this case, his weight would have to be spread as widely as possible. So, to use his own words, he “slithered 'imself all aboard.”

The thin, black film of tough sea ice bent but held under his stomach and chest and flattened thighs and wide-spread arms. Even his bearded chin was pressed against it. He wriggled. He squirmed away, shoreward into the white and whirling blindness. Inshore, the ice was thicker; and he reached the rocky land-wash in safety. There he took a turn of the line around a convenient boulder and hauled it taut and made it fast.

The others came to land across the ice one by one, following the line. By this time the ice was undulating to the run of the rising seas. Then all four manned the tow and dragged the bully clear out of the water and fetched her skating ashore. The four huddled, crouching, under her lee. Nick Waddy said that if Trigger Cove was not within a mile of them, they had his permission to call him a liar.

He lit a lantern at the fifth attempt and headed westward along the edge of the frozen tide. Wembly and Duff and Stote followed him closely. The density of the flying drift and the violence of the wind increased; and every now and again one or another of the travelers was forced to halt and crouch so as to catch his breath and clear his eyes and nostrils of choking ice and snow. Duff had been down and up again four times when Waddy turned to the left and commenced climbing among tumbled rocks. The others climbed after him without question, groping blindly for toe hold and finger hold.

They found Skipper Tim Heeny in his little tilt under the top of the cliff. The skipper was smoking his pipe beside his little “bogie” stove, with his thoughts on the days of his youth and deep-sea voyages and foreign ports, when the door flew open and Nick Waddy staggered in with a blast of snow-choked wind behind and about him. A black crackie uncoiled behind the stove and set up a rattle of barking.

The little room was filled with the frost and flurry of the storm; snow hissed and melted on the hot stove; and the skipper could see nothing more of his unexpected visitor than the yellow blur of the lantern. The old man made a dash for the open door, to shut it against the storm; and he trod on the barking crackie, collided with the lantern bearer and barked his shins on a stool before his objective was gained. He shut the door; and the air cleared in a second. He turned to see who had honored him with a visit on such a night—and, to his astonishment, he beheld four intruders instead of one.

In this middle life, Tim Heeny had been the big man of Trigger Cove. Now he was the only man of Trigger Cove. The place had been inhabited for generations. In Tim's prime it had boasted a population of fifteen families—but now, when the skipper's whiskers were white and his joints stiffening, it was a desolation. Death had done something toward depopulating it, but the wood-pulp operations on the Exploits River had done more. Who would not exchange the perilous life and chaney rewards of a bay fisherman for safe work and steady wages ashore in a mill? The last of Skipper Heeny's neighbors had departed for Exploits in 1925; and now, in December, 1927, the skipper was beginning to feel lonely. He told his sad story to his visitors.

“I'd quit Trigger Cove meself could I find a purchaser for me goods an' gear an' fore-an'-after,” he said. “An' I'd move up sout' along to “Arbor Grace an' live soft an' sociable. This 'ere bain't no reasonable life for a sociable man.”

Nick Waddy asked him why he had not freighted the fore-and-after with his goods and gear and sailed away and disposed of the entire bag of tricks in Harbor Grace long ago. It was apparent to all that this was a new idea to the old man, for his countenance was open and expressive despite its mask of whiskers—but he did not admit it. After a minute of embarrassed silence, he explained that he could not sail the Shooting Star single-handed, though he was still a smart man. And to Nick's retort that all the lads in Notre Dame Bay were not working in the pulp mills, he replied with an air of offended dignity that Skipper Tim Heeny was not one to ask a favor of any man.

“Let 'em come to Trigger Cove if they wants to sign on wid me,” he added.

“Ye bes a proud man, skipper,” said Nick.

Heeny admitted it readily and related a number of incidents illustrative of his pride. Waddy and Stote listened with lively interest, but Wembly and Duff paid very little attention to three stories which struck them as feeble and pointless. The fourth story soon gripped their interest, however—to put it mildly.

Two days before—so the skipper said—just when he was about to sit down to his dinner, the crackie dashed out from behind the stove with all his hair on end, and laid his nose to the bottom of the door and snorted and puffed something desperate. So what could he do but open the door to look for the cause of all the excitement? And as he did so a devil of a hullabaloo smote his ears and a queer sight met his eyes.

He stood gaping in the doorway like a man with a witchy spell on him; and the crackie took just one look at what he had been in such an infernal sweat to see, and turned round and went back behind the stove with his tail tucked in.

For down there on the land-wash and the shore ice along the land-wash were sights and goings-on such as had never before been witnessed in Trigger Cove and maybe nowhere else in all the world—twelve dogs and three sledges and two human figures as hairy as the dogs, all mixed up in one grand shindy, and five other humans standing off a piece, and one of them twisting a handle on some manner of contraption up on three sticks, and yelling like damnation. It was minutes before the skipper could break the grip of the spell of astonishment that was on him, but when he did he stepped back into the house and loaded his old swilin' gun. Then he stepped out and down toward the infernal ructions with the gun in his two hands, and he let a few yells out of him—for his temper was flaring by then at seeing all those good dogs getting ripped and chewed.

Most of the strangers looked up and pointed at him, and the fellow with the queer machine swung the machine fair on him. But they couldn't daunt him. His temper was up on end. He waded in among the fighting dogs; and what with batting them about with the butt of his gun and pulling them apart and heaving them abroad with his two hands, it wasn't long before they knew who was skipper of Trigger Cove.

Then he headed for the queer contraption up on three sticks, but before he could get to it four of the strangers were hanging to him like weed to a rock—and then he noticed that two of them were females.

“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Duff. “And a camera!” He gave Wembly a desperate look. “Didn't I tell you to get going?”

“There're other women in the world, and other cameras,” returned Wembly. “And he says two women. Don't be a fool, Henry!”

“Certainly there were two women,” retorted Duff. “You don't know your Catherine as I do.” He grabbed the hermit of Trigger Cove by the shoulders. His face had lost most of its new color and his voice shook. “Tell me this, before you go on with your story. About those two females? Dressed the same, weren't they? The same size, weren't they? Same height and shape and so on?”

“Aye, like two pa'tridge berries, or two tots o' rum,” replied the old man, nodding his white head. “Ye couldn't pick one from tother widout ye laid 'em gunnel to gunnel.”

“And one of them was in among the fighting dogs, wasn't she?”

Again the old man nodded.

“What are you driving at?” asked Wembly of Duff.

Duff smiled sardonically and requested the skipper to get to the end of his story. Here is the gist of the remainder of the old man's yarn: Four of the dogs were in bad shape after that battle—lame and unfit for work; and the three teamsters, who were from White Hare Bay, said they didn't hire out to have their dogs chewed up. One of the females—not the one who had been in the dog fight—soon fixed it with the lads from White Hare Bay.

Then, after she had talked a few minutes with the others, she pointed to the little fore-and-after, which was frozen into the shore ice, and asked the skipper who owned it. He told her. She asked him what he was doing with it; and upon hearing that the Shooting Star was idle for want of hands, she told the skipper that it was a lucky day for him that she had happened along. She was going to save him from starvation and set him right up on his feet again by taking him and his little schooner north onto the Labrador with her; and she told him to step lively and show them the way aboard—humans and dogs and sledges and goods and gear.

But the old man's queer pride was already ruffled; and before he could find words for the expression of his displeasure at her high-handed attitude, she added that he had better move fast, as she wasn't accustomed to being kept waiting and knew that she could charter a bigger and better schooner than his farther along at a place called Black Pot Harbor.

That was too much and then some more for the proud skipper of Trigger Cove. After that, he wouldn't have so much as turned his hand over once for that female for the price of a new fore-and-after; and so they went on their way with fleas in their ears and the crippled dogs riding the toboggans.

“What the hell was they wantin' on the Larbordor this time o' year?” asked Nick Waddy.

The skipper did not know and could not guess.

“Its the Benn-Duvar relief expedition, with its beautiful leader, its second in command, its camera man, and its fair unknown to double for Catherine in dangerous scenes, all complete,” said Duff.

“Aye, Benn-Duvar was the name she told me,” said the old man.

Chapter IV.

Seen through field glasses.

Paul Wembly told Skipper Tim Heeny of Trigger Cove the whole story; and Tim tried to look as if he grasped it in its entirety, but succeeded only in looking flattered and bewildered.

“And now it's up to you, skipper,” continued Wembly. “If I don't get down north along to Smoke River ahead of that outfit, I'll be discredited and scuppered; and that's the way I am this very minute—a poor, ruined man sitting here beside your warm stove—unless you take pity on me and my friend. There's only one man in the world can save our faces, Skipper Heeny—and that's yourself. You've got the knowledge of seamanship and the grand fore-and-after, and all I've got's the need of them.”

“I got me pride,” returned the other. “I knows the Larbordor like the palm o' me hand, an' I knows a civil man when I sees one. I'll sail ye out o' the bay an' acrost the strait an' down along nort' as far as any livin' man could sail ye. I'll be proud to save ye from ruination, sir.”

The blizzard blew itself out during the night. In the morning the bully was launched and fetched around into Trigger Cove by Waddy and Stote. Then all hands set to work at preparing the little fore-and-after for sea. That was no light job, though her hull and spars were sound. Deck and spars and rigging and running gear had to be cleared of snow and ice. Gear and rigging had to be spliced in a dozen places. There was mending of sails to do and even some sail making. That was a busy day; and then they patched and spliced until far into the night.

Sundown of the next day found them ready, with all stores, including the skipper's woodpile, snugly stowed. Bright and early on the following morning they chopped the Shooting Star loose from the grip of the thin sea ice, spread patched sails to an offshore breeze and slipped out of Trigger Cove with the bully towing astern. They rounded into the big bay and headed due north.

The breeze held. The patches on the sails, even those of Henry Melrose Duff's stitching, held tight. Black Pot Harbor was passed early in the afternoon—gray drying stages and gray tilts against a dark cliff and above a round haven three miles to windward. The skipper pointed it out to Wembly and Duff.

“I hope Catherine made it before the blizzard,” said Duff. “I don't wish her any real harm—well, nothing as serious as being frozen to death, anyway. But she made it, don't worry. She's that kind. I only hope that she's there—and damn well stuck there till spring!”

“She's there,” said Wembly, who was examining the little harbor through field glasses. “Making a picture, at that. The camera man and the whole outfit—dozens of people—all the inhabitants, evidently—down on the ice doing a mob scene. Good Lord! They're all trying to board a fore-and-after that's frozen in—all of them except those who're manning the craft and fending them off with ears and things. And the camera working like a coffee mill! So that's her idea of a relief expedition! Thank Heaven I left her to pay for the muffins!”

Duff snatched the glasses from his friend and clapped them to his own eyes. He gazed for half a minute, then laughed sardonically.

“She knows what she wants, and that's a picture—and she'll get it,” he said. “Thats the way to succeed at her game, though not the best way of hunting for a lost husband and rescuing a lost Frenchman's daughter. We must go see that picture some night. Don't forget.”

 

With favorable winds and clear weather, Skipper Tim Heeny's fore-and-after sailed her course admirably until Cape Bauld was passed with a safe offing, and the strait was crossed and better than three hundred miles of the desolate, ice-fringed coast of Labrador lay astern.

Hamilton Inlet was reached without accident; and then the skipper detected signs of an imminent change of weather and beat up for the shelter of that great arm of the sea. He made the entrance just in the nick of time. The wind went around and sprang to a gale, flung the Shooting Star from her course, drove her into thin ice to leeward for half her length and all but laid her on her beam.

The helmsman, Nick Waddy, lost his hold on the wheel and took a slide. The skipper went into the scuppers. In the cabin the little round stove broke loose and rolled, disgorging glowing embers and blazing brands of birch and many sparks. The jibs tore clear and flew shoreward like gigantic bats, the foresail exploded at every patch and the mainsail split from gaff to boom. And then the fore-and-after lurched back to a level keel and lay rocking gently in her cradle of new ice; and the skipper and Waddy and Stote dived below and helped Wembly and Duff overpower the stove and extinguish the fire.

Upon learning that dogs and sledges and teamsters were to be had for the hiring right there at the mouth of Hamilton Inlet, Wembly decided to go the rest of the way to and up Smoke River afoot.

So the schooner was left in that safe birth, anchored fore and aft, with the skipper and Ben Stote to guard her and to make and bend new sails. There she could weather any blow; and even if she had to await Wembly's return until March, when the great ice floes from Greenland would strike and grind along all that coast, not enough of that vast pressure to damage her could reach her there: The skipper said so, and he was entirely familiar with that coast and the ways of the southward-drifting arctic floes.

But Wembly expected to be back at Hamilton Inlet by the first of March, at the latest. If he wasn't—but the skipper had full instructions what to do in that case, all written out in ink. The skipper could read.

Major Wembly resumed his advance with Mr. Duff, Nick Waddy, Peter Sunday, John Christmas and eight dogs. Peter and John were Eskimos by their own telling—and what else? Micmac, more than likely; and the length of Peter's legs suggested a dash of mountaineer-Indian blood to Wembly, who knew a good deal of such things. The dogs, too, suggested at least three strains of blood. They were as high and long and heavy as timber wolves. Their shifting eyes were hostile and calculating.

They traveled the ice and made good time. In the course of the second day, Wembly had to check Peter Sunday twice for lashing his dogs with unnecessary violence.

On the morning of the third day, with everything sliding along prosperously, Sunday laid into his team again without rime or reason. Wembly called a halt of the whole party and grabbed the butt of Sunday's whip. Sunday tried to retain his hold on the whip, but was not good enough.

“I won't stand for that,” said Wembly. “Don't think that I want you to kiss and cuddle the brutes—I've been on this coast before—but I won't have you or anybody weakening them, and slowing us up, for no more reason than your dirty temper. Get that straight! Who owns this team, anyway? If you do, you're a fool as well as a beast.”

“Belong me,” said John Christmas, pointing first at the team under discussion, then at the other.

“Then why do you let this fellow knock them about when there's no need for it?” asked Wembly.

Christmas, his flat face expressionless, made a helpless gesture with one mittened hand. An enigmatic smile touched Sunday's wide lips for a second.

“If I have to speak to you again for slashing those dogs without reason, it will be the last time,” warned Wembly, staring into the round and insolent eyes of Peter Sunday until they blinked and shifted.

The expedition strung out and moved on again. Nick Waddy led the way by right of his knowledge of ice. John's team went next, with John sometimes in rear of the sledge and sometimes up beside the dogs; then Peter Sunday and the second team. Wembly and Duff went last.

“You helped yourself to trouble when you picked him,” said Duff. “Didn't you see his face before you hired him?”

“The devil take his face!” returned Wembly. “But I had no choice. There weren't any other dogs within twenty miles, so John told me—and were in a hurry. It was Christmas and Sunday or no dogs. I don't see anything the matter with Johnny Christmas—except that Sunday seems to have something on him.”

“And what if he calls your bluff?”

“Bluff, Henry? Who's bluffing?”

“If he tears into his dogs again, and you fire him, according to your threat—what about it?”

“Well, what? Nothing. If Nick can't handle the second team, I can. I've handled as bad, if not worse. I'm not worrying about Peter Sunday—but I confess that I'm uneasy about the activities of Mrs. Benn.”

Chapter V.

The river of mystery.

The Moravian mission was reached by the Wembly expedition without any further trouble from Peter Sunday. There Wembly met the Reverend Jan Bols, the missionary and physician who had succored poor Gilroy Smith when that unfortunate, memoryless aviator emerged from the Smoke River country. The Reverend Jan had doctored and nursed Smith, clothed him and given him money, procured a passage to Battle Harbor for him and furnished him with a letter of commendation which had enabled him to reach New York and the Voyagers' Club.

No sooner had Wembly mentioned his name than the doctor spoke of Gilroy Smith; for the full story of Smith's amazing disclosures and pitiful death were known to that good man.

“But I didn't expect to see you before spring,” he informed Wembly. He chuckled at Wembly's and Duff's expressions of astonishment. “I'm not cut off entirely from the great world,” he explained. “I know you to be the romantic major and the only living person who heard that poor gentleman's story from his own lips. That much, and more, was rebroadcast from St. John's. I have an excellent radio here, but no broadcasting apparatus. To tell you the truth, I expected you to arrive in company with that dauntless lady, Mrs. Harvey Benn.”

Wembly and Duff exchanged significant glances.

“Then you did not get the whole story,” said Duff. “There was nothing to that—except in the lady's-eye. Stout old Paul Wembly wasn't having any of it. You would appreciate that more if you knew the lady, sir. This living up here, wherever you call it, has its advantages; and you'll understand my meaning when you meet the leader of that relief expedition. That may be any day now. So don't say I didn't warn you.”

The missionary was puzzled and not a little embarrassed by the matter and manner of Duff's remarks. He was a simple soul, and his life was one of many privations, in spite of the radio.

“But I am an admirer of romance,” he hastened to say. “I am, in fact, most romantically inclined myself. The thought of that beautiful young lady—for as such she was broadcast—suffering fatigue and hardship in the quest of her heroic husband, moved me deeply; as does the thought of Major Wembly in the quest of the young woman of poor Mr. Gilroy Smith's dying story.

“Yes, I am deeply moved—in spite of the fact that, romantically constituted as I am, I cannot bring myself to believe that unfortunate gentleman's story. I think of the wound on his head, and of the extraordinary expression of his eyes, and I consider the natives of this wilderness as I know them by long experience, and my faith in his story of that beautiful captive is shaken. Shaken. Nay, shattered.”

“But he brought Gaston Duvar's diary out with him,” protested Wembly. “The Voyagers' Club has it now—the diary of the French aëronaut who tried to reach the north pole in a balloon thirty years ago. There's no denying that. Why doubt his story of the existence of the Frenchman's daughter? Not that I have any sentimental interest in her, mind you! What the papers said in that connection is all bilge—the piffle of the mind of a piffling, irresponsible girl. I'm a naturalist, a scientist. But didn't Smith show you the diary, sir?”

“I saw it,” admitted the missionary. “He was in a high fever at the time. I thought it might be his own diary. I could make nothing of it, as I have absolutely no knowledge of the French language, written or spoken.”

“But didn't he speak of Duvar's daughter to you?”

“He named one Julia, muttering the word occasionally in the delirium of fever. That was all, I'm sure. But while in my care he was not even as nearly normal as when he talked to you, for he was suffering from sickness and exhaustion, as well as from the injury to his head.”

“And have you never heard a rumor of a half-breed girl away up that river?” asked Duff.

The missionary considered that, shook his head, then appeared to reconsider it.

“Not of a half-breed girl,” he said. “But that is a river of rumors and mystery. There's an old story—it was old when I first came to this post seventeen years ago—but it will keep very well until after dinner, gentlemen, with your permission, when we can talk and listen at our ease.”

The Reverend Jan was a hospitable man. His assistants, a young medico named Olsen and an elderly ex-mariner named Andersen, were hospitable men. Captain Andersen was something of a cook; and among the medical stores were liberal supplies of Hudson Bay rum, schnapps and ancient brandy. That dinner was a success.

There were six at table—the three white men of the expedition and the three missionaries; and a very fat Eskimo with a game leg, an ex-patient and a convert to Christianity, waited, making up with enthusiasm what he lacked in dexterity. And there was good talk, and plenty of it, and a long sea ditty by Captain Andersen, ably supported by the waiter.

When the platter which had held the plum pudding, or figgy duff, had been removed and all the glasses had been refilled, the Reverend Jan told the promised story.

It was an old story, but short for its age. Doctor Bols had first heard it seventeen years ago, from the missionary then in charge. Seventeen or eighteen years before that a stranger had arrived at the mission, told an amazing tale and then lapsed into unconsciousness and died. He had not given his name, but he was a white man and spoke in English. He was from one of the Hudson Bay posts far to the westward. Perhaps he had named the post—but if so, the doctor either had not been told it or had forgotten it long ago. The name of the post doesn't matter now, it happened so long ago.

The man was a chief trader, probably—something important, anyhow—one moving with authority from factory to factory. That is what the old missionary had gathered from his talk and transmitted to young Jan Bols seventeen or eighteen years later. He had visited that post, from stations to the south or west no doubt, in the performance of his duty; and there he had found a white woman. A white woman, mark you, in the Hudson Bay country thirty-five years ago!

“No trick to that, as I've told you fifty times already, doctor,” interrupted Captain Andersen, the old sea dog. “She come through Hudson Strait in a supply ship. What was to hinder her, at the right time o' year, and with a husband waitin' for her?”

The captain chuckled a deep-sea chuckle and mixed himself another glass of schnapps and sugar and hot water.

The chief missionary went on with the story in his own way.

However she had come there, there she was, wife to the factor of that post. Young and attractive and buried alive in that desolation with a husband she had grown to fear and hate. The other man, chief trader or whatever he was, had pitied her, then had fallen in love with her. He had, evidently, won her love in return. He had advised the husband to send her home next summer; and the husband, drunk as usual, had cursed her and struck her. The visitor had flung the husband away from her; and, in the fight that followed, the husband had suffered a broken neck.

Then the man and woman had fled eastward into the wilderness. They had ascended the river at the mouth of which the post was situated—Whale River, probably. In deadly fear of pursuit, they kept to the cover of the tangled bush.

After weeks of struggle they reached the height of land, a desolation of rock and barren and bog, which they crossed in search of a river to furnish them a path to the eastward and the coast of Labrador. Once on the coast, all would be well with them. The man had been in the service of the H. B. C. ever since his boyhood and had done well for it and by it. He had invested his earnings in his old home, England or Scotland.

On the coast they would find some means Of passage to one of the northern ports of Newfoundland, and from there passage to Liverpool or London well in advance of any news or rumor of the tragedy in the wilderness. He would lift his money and they would disappear.

They won across the height of land and found the headwaters of a promising river. They had not followed the course of the stream many miles when they were met by a party of hunters of a tribe unknown to the man. The Indians appeared to be friendly.

But when a little village beside a lake was reached, the man was attacked treacherously, wounded, disarmed, overpowered and bound. He was blindfolded and, in a canoe of some sort, was taken on a long journey down water sometimes swift to madness. Sometimes the canoe slid quietly on smooth water. The man's wounds were dressed. He was fed occasionally. He raved and cursed. Once, still bound and blindfolded, he threw himself out of the canoe, only to be dragged ashore and flung back into the canoe. On other occasions he fought his unseen captors like a madman. His wounds reopened.

He was at the mouth of the river when they unbound his eyes and cut his bonds and left him. He was crawling on his hands and knees when first seen by the people of the mission. They dressed his wounds and gave him brandy; and he told his terrible story and then died.

“And what then?” asked Wembly, staring gravely at the Reverend Jan. “Was it true? Was the woman found and rescued?”

The missionary regretted to have to say that the story had never been proved or disproved. The excellent man from whom he had first heard it seventeen years ago had immediately organized a strong party of Christian Eskimos and Indians and led the way up that river many weary days, innumerable weary miles. But he had neither seen nor heard anything of a white woman, nor anything of a village beside a lake. He had not traveled the full length of the river, 'twas true. His companions, those converted Eskimos and Indians, had begun to drag a leg and turn back before a third of the journey was done. They had met a family of salmon fishers who had told them tales of devils above the falls—of one as tall as a tree, with three eyes in its head, and of a monster of whom no human had ever seen more than the footprints and lived to tell of it—but those footprints were longer and wider than the door of a white man's house and always wet with blood. The good missionary had done his best, refusing to turn back until the very last of his company was on the verge of deserting him.

“Others have gone up Smoke River on that quest, both before and since my time,” continued the doctor. “There was an English sportsman, for one, who was accompanied by two white guides and two Micmacs from Newfoundland. They reached the height of land—and saw nothing to the purpose, either ascending or descending—not even a village beside a lake. But the Englishman shot a very large bear and was content. I myself have made three attempts to explore the upper reaches of that river, but have not once got beyond the great falls. My followers always refused to follow at that point. I must confess that I don't like that river.”

“I don't believe in devils,” announced Captain Andersen. “But I'll tell you what I do believe in. Mermaids. Did I ever see a mermaid?” He made a long arm and tapped the Reverend Jan Bols on the chest. “Did I? Lord bless you, doctor, I kissed two of 'em once—or maybe they kissed me.”

Then the old sea dog sat back in his chair and closed his eyes and slept.

 

That hospitable mission furnished its guests with beds—narrow beds, but soft and well supplied with blankets. The guests were ripe for sleep by the time those beds were reached. Wembly's sleep was filled with confused dreams, of which a fragment of one remained with him for long enough after waking to record itself on his memory.

He stood at the edge of a frozen lake, in a weird twilight, confronted by a man in fur and leather who talked and gesticulated. The man was in a state of desperate excitement. He told strange and terrible things. He had been a prisoner here for six years, but well housed and fed even when the savages themselves were hungry. They believed him to be a god of some sort. They had given him a white woman to wed—six years ago. He had won her love, after years of devotion; and both had been treated as sacred beings—until the arrival of their child. They had lost their sacred character, and their infant had gained it. Their infant daughter was the goddess of these terrible people. Now that the child had no further need of its mother they, the mother and father, were to be sacrificed—a burned offering—to the new divinity.

Wembly awoke, trembling from the horror of that dream.

“Awake?” asked Duff. “It must be time to turn out and get on with our high and serious purpose. These missionaries are a distraction. How did you sleep?”

“I had rotten dreams,” replied Wembly. “One in particular. Monstrous! I can scarcely believe my imagination to be capable of such a horror.”

“A horror, was it? That was the brandy. I stuck to rum punch.”

Wembly lit the candle on the stool between the beds and looked at his watch. It read seven thirty. He flung off his blankets and commenced dressing hurriedly. The air and the uncarpeted floor were distressingly cold; but Wembly's shivers were not due entirely to the low temperature of the room. He was still numb with the chill of that dream, still enveloped in that weird twilight over ice and rock and black bush. He could still see the despairing eyes and pitiful gesticulations of the man in fur and leather; and those terrible words, and their incredible meaning, still rang in his ears and pinched his heart.

“You look as if you'd seen a ghost,” said Duff, in a changed voice. “Do you feel ill, Paul? Turn in again. I'll fetch one of those doctors.”

“A ghost!” exclaimed Wembly, pausing sharply in his hurried movements and staring strangely at his friend. “Perhaps I did see a ghost. What the devil's a ghost, anyway? What I did see——”

Sudden interruption came in the form of Nick Waddy bearing a lighted lantern and registering a high degree of excitement. He announced, with force and brevity, that Peter Sunday was gone and with him the dogs and loaded sledge in his care.

“Which way?”

“Down nort' along.”

“With half our grub!” exclaimed Duff.

“Damn the grub! My Lewis gun's on that sledge!” cried Wembly.

Wembly and Waddy were on their way fifteen minutes later, each with snowshoes and a light pack on his back and a rifle in his hands. The Newfoundlander had breakfasted before discovering Sunday's flight. The major did not wait for breakfast or farewells. He simply told Duff to follow with John Christmas and the rest of the outfit at his earliest convenience, and beat it.

Both Wembly and Waddy were long and strong of leg and wind; and no time was lost in searching for the trail, for it lay plain as print on the thin crust of snow which covered the shore ice. The way was level, the footing was good. Wembly led off at an easy jog, slowed to a fast walk, jogged again, walked again. Nick Waddy kept right at the elbow. They had no breath to spare for conversation, but occasional remarks were exchanged.

“What's his idea, heading north?”

“It be a mystery to me, sir,”

And later: “He's got the legs of us on the ice—but wed gain on him in deep snow—or rough country.”

“Aye, 'and over 'and, sir.”

And yet later: “He can't shake us, that's a cinch.”

“Not widout he t'rows off the load.”

“That would suit me.”

They halted shortly before noon for a cold snack and a half-hour rest. They reached the wide mouth of the frozen river within an hour of resuming the pursuit; and, to their astonishment, they saw that the tracks of the Eskimo and the sledge turned sharp to the left and ran inland along the southern bank of the river. The track was plain on the skin of crusty snow which covered the river ice.

“This is our way—up. Smoke River!” exclaimed Wembly. “What d'ye make of it, Nick? What's his game? Is he crazy? He often acted like it. Perhaps he doesn't mean to steal the sledge and stores, after all. It may be he's just in a hurry to solve the mysteries of the river—in too much of a hurry to wait for the rest of us.”

Waddy replied that whatever Sunday's game might be, there was some devilment at the bottom of it.

The snow lay deeper over the ice as the river narrowed. The pursuers had not gone more than three miles from salt water before they were sinking halfway to the knees on the level and to above the knees in the drifts; and such crust as there was in that snow was so thin as to let them through at every step. The depth of the trail told them that the loaded sledge was making heavy going of it. They halted only long enough to transfer their snowshoes from their backs to their feet. Wembly's webs were of eastern Canadian manufacture and pattern, long and wide and requiring plenty of foot room for the best results, but Waddy's were of Newfoundland origin and the style known locally as “pot lids” because of their shape. Wembly's were the better shoes for the river.

Half an hour later, Wembly halted again and pointed to the drift beside the trail. Waddy came up alongside at his best pace, stepping high and flappingly on his round webs.

“He's unloading,” said Wembly.

They uncovered two boxes of canned stuff in the drift—apple and several kinds of jam. After stacking the boxes fair in the trail, they went on.

“If he'd jettison the brown duffel bag he could go straight to hell with the rest of it, for all of me,” said Wembly.

A Lewis gun and six drums of ammunition were in that bag, well stowed in extra clothing and blankets, for Wembly had set out with the intention of putting the fear of an old soldier who knew his stuff into the people of Smoke River, if driven to it; and now, since hearing the missionary's story of the fugitive from the west, he felt that he might let off a few drums at the village beside the lake without much driving. He hoped that Peter Sunday was ignorant of the importance of that duffel bag to his scheme of operation.

Chapter VI.

A human beast at bay!

Wembly and Nick Waddy made camp at sundown. They moved aside from the track of the sledge to the slope of the bank and there dug themselves into the deep snow and tangled brush, using their webs as shovels. They found enough dead, dry brush near at hand for a fire sufficient for the boiling of the kettle and the frying of bacon.

They were in their sleeping bags by seven o'clock; and they were out of them again seven hours later; and they were on their way again long before the first hint of dawn. The cold was intense but the air was perfectly still. The frosty stars furnished light enough to follow the track by.

They had not been afoot much more than an hour when they found a large sack of hard bread beside the trail. Wembly searched around in the deep snow in the hope of finding the duffel bag as well, but failed to do so. He began to fear that the Eskimo knew the character and value of the contents of the duffel bag. He discussed this point with Waddy as they hurried onward. Waddy derided the idea that Peter Sunday knew anything of Lewis guns.

Waddy dealt with the matter logically. He named the various articles that had comprised the original load of the stolen sledge. Two cases of canned fruit, a bag of hard bread, two small bags of flour, a bag of mixed groceries, the duffel bag, two stone jugs of rum and a supply of frozen capelin and other fish for the dogs.

He, Nick, had helped to load that sledge alongside the fore-and-after in Hamilton Inlet. He remembered that the canned goods had been placed right up at front of the load, on the nose of the sledge—a bad position for such heavy articles. He had thought so at the time, but had let it pass, supposing that the Eskimos knew more about loading sledges than he did. But what more natural than that the canned goods should be the first to be jettisoned when deep snow demanded a lightening of the load? And the big bag of hard bread, weighing well over one hundred pounds, had lain fair on top of the load; so, of course, it had been the next thing to go.

“And if he throws off some more, what next?” asked Wembly.

“'Twill be yer duffel bag, divil a doubt o' it,” answered Waddy, without hesitation. “For it lays atop the bags o' flour, dat be why. And if she bain't light enough for his. fancy then, the flour will be hove off, an' the tay an' sugar an' prunes an' bakin' powder nex'. But even if he was to desart the sledge itself, ye'll nary see yer rum ag'in, sir. Divil a fear of it! Be he mad or sane, ye'll nary see naught o' dat rum ag'in save maybe the empty jugs.”

“I hope you're right,” returned Wembly. “But what's his game? Where does he think he's going? And why? Perhaps he knows this river better than we do—or perhaps he's been sucking at one of the jugs already and only thinks he does. I hope so. Hope he's either drunk or crazy—not wishing him any harm, of course. But he hasn't been traveling like a drunken man. The track and the signs appear purposeful to me.”

Soon after that, they came to where Sunday had rested and fed his dogs. Here were the holes in the snow where the dogs had slept after their feed of frozen fish. But no sign of fire was to be seen.

“No hot tea,” commented Wembly, with a note of satisfaction. “That should mean a few gulps of rum—a few, at least—to wash down the cold victuals. It looks as if he couldn't have had more than a two-hour start on us, after all—two or three. And we must have been gaining on him ever since getting into the deep snow. I bet ten dollars we'll sight him in the next twenty miles—if he's drinking rum in place of tea.”

Waddy agreed. The pursuit was resumed at a smart pace, in high hopes. Dawn broke clear. The sun came up small and colorless, bright but without warmth, and glistened on a desolate landscape of lifeless black and white. There was no smoke of human habitation against the frozen hills or the cold horizon; there was no bird in the pale sky, nor any sign or sound of beast or bird on the white waste of the river. Save for the track which they followed, Wembly and the man from Figgy Cove might have thought themselves the only creatures of warm blood in a lifeless world.

“He be loopin' 'is feet,” remarked Waddy. “He be t'rowin' a few fancy curves into 'is course.”

Sure enough, the trail ahead showed frequent and unnecessary curves and kinks.

“Here be a bag o' flour,” remarked the observant Waddy.

There was a corner of it protruding from the snow close to an edge of the narrow trail. And a few hundred yards beyond that they came to a more significant thing than the jettisoned flour. A circular patch of trampled snow showed that the sledge had been turned on its side and dragged this way and that, and that the dogs had jumped and clawed in every direction, and that Peter Sunday had done some lively stepping on his webs of Hamilton Inlet pattern. Drops of blood and tufts of hair on that trampled snow proved that Sunday had been plying his whip with even more than his customary brutal severity.

“He's just about finished, damn him!” exclaimed Wembly. “Drunk as a fool, or raving mad, to be laying into his dogs like that if he's trying to keep ahead of us. It won't be long now. We'll sight him round the next bend, or the next.”

But before they caught sight of Peter Sunday himself they came upon another piece of his brutal, mad handiwork. This was a crawling, wounded dog. The Eskimo's lash had actually cut the poor beast in a dozen places. Wembly cursed savagely and was about to put it out of its agony with a bullet through the brain, when Waddy pushed him aside and performed the merciful act with one blow of his belt ax. Then, stepping around the pitiful carcass, they broke into a run.

They rounded a bend and beheld their quarry out on the white expanse and not more than a mile away. He was in front of the dogs, but the track he was making for them was so crooked that even strong and willing dogs would have had difficulty in following it. Wembly drew slightly ahead of his companion, for his long snowshoes were better for open running than the round pot lids, and his eagerness to come up with the Eskimo was perhaps a little hotter than Waddy's. He was less than half a mile of the sledge, and Waddy was not more than thirty yards astern and still flapping along, when Peter Sunday turned and saw them. Wembly slowed to a walk at that, brushed a hand across his eyes and opened and closed the well-oiled bolt of his rifle.

Peter Sunday stood like a man of wood for half a minute, with the short-stocked, long-lashed whip held high and motionless. Then he lowered arm and whip. The dogs had halted and lain down at the moment of his turning. He ran back to the tail of the sledge and yanked it broadside to his pursuers and crouched behind it.

White smoke belched from the sledge; and Wembly and Waddy flopped flat in the snow before the report of that discharge reached their ears. Nothing worse than the sound came anywhere near them, though that was terrifying enough.

“That's something you forgot about,” said Wembly dryly.

Waddy admitted a lapse of memory. That sealing gun of Peter Sunday's had gone clean out of his mind. But it was an ancient piece, slow in the loading and short in the shooting—and Sunday was half blinded with rum—so why worry?

“We'll work around the sides,” said Wembly. “Don't damage him or the dogs—but don't let him get away with that duffel bag. If he takes to the woods empty handed—with nothing but his own gun—let him go, and we'll pick him up later.”

They scrambled to their feet and separated, running hard. Wembly went on a left incline toward the nearer shore and Waddy on a right incline toward the middle of the river. Each kept an eye on the sledge as he ran. They saw an praised arm in motion and knew that the Eskimo was using the ramrod at top speed. At the second belch of smoke, they flopped again. Wembly heard a whisper in the air. He was up again in a moment and running harder than ever.

It was then that Peter Sunday's nerve and luck both failed him. He decided to run for cover without waiting to reload the old sealing gun—to leave sledge and dogs and the unconsumed rum, but to carry off the bag containing the Lewis gun and the six drums of ammunition.

Though he knew nothing of machine guns, light or heavy, he had guessed the nature and something of the possibilities of the Lewis gun and the circular containers of cartridges. He had even made several unsuccessful attempts to solve the mysteries of their mechanism. He had recognized the weapon as an article of power and destruction.

Now, unnerved by the sudden appearance and swift advance of the white men—the rum had fooled him into an entirely false estimate of the speed of his flight—he made a wild grab at the duffel bag. He fumbled it; and the dogs chose that moment in which to spring aside and yank the sledge completely around in its tracks and start for home.

He scrambled to his unsteady feet and gaped blankly after the departing sledge. There he stood with the empty sealing gun in his hands—with that and nothing else—bereft of sledge and dogs, of food and the precious rum and the yet more precious duffel bag—defenseless and offenseless and wide open to the world and his enemies.

He couldn't move. He couldn't think. He saw his pursuers change their courses and close in on the dogs. He saw the dogs slow to a trot, to a walk, to a halt. He saw the white men at the sledge, one of them examining the bag, the other breaking out frozen fish and feeding the dogs. He felt very sorry for himself. This was nothing like the great thing he had imagined so grandly and so craftily planned.

His mind, such as it was, began to function again—but sluggishly. He considered his position dully. His pockets contained a pipe, a clasp knife, a little box of matches and half a plug of tobacco. In his hand he held an empty gun. On the snow at his feet lay a whip. Even his powder horn and bullet pouch had departed from him on the sledge. A helpless position. He would have to change his plans. He sat down in the snow and filled and lit his pipe.

Major Wembly came up and halted beside Peter Sunday and stared down at him; and Sunday continued to draw on his short pipe and gaze downward at the trampled snow.

“You're a fool,” said Wembly.

Sunday had nothing to say to that. He was in no position to argue. He felt no impulse toward argument. The fumes of his potations were passing from his brain and he was trying to think.

“Or worse,” added Wembly. “What was your game?”

“Drunk,” replied the Eskimo, without an upward glance or the slightest change of position. “Damn drunk.”

“Not when you started, when you left the mission,” returned Wembly. “You held too straight a course. Crazy, perhaps, but certainly not drunk. Crazy—or why did you head north? And why did you run this way, up this river? Are you an idiot?”

“Drunk.”

“To the devil with that! I know when you started in on the rum. That wasn't long before you began to travel crooked and beat up your dogs. You must have been mad with the rum when you cut up that dog—but you're a dirty beast, drunk or sober, and for two pins I'd lay into you with that same whip, you coward! Lord! it would do me good to hear you yell and see you bleed. You're bad, whatever else. Crazy or sane, drunk or sober, you're bad!”

Sunday continued to sit motionless, and silent save for that one reiterated word. He was thinking hard. Wembly stooped and gripped him by a shoulder.

“Snap out of it! What was your game? Why did you stick to that duffel bag? Why did you head north instead of south, and up this river? What use is this river to you? Get onto your feet, confound you! Tell me the truth.”

Sunday arose with difficulty and propped himself upright with the long gun. He glanced once at Wembly, but only for a fraction of a second.

“Out with it!” exclaimed Wembly. “What d'ye know about this river? Where were you heading for? Come across—or you'll wish you had never, left home!”

He stooped quickly and picked up the whip. He stepped back a few paces and swung the long lash and snapped it in the air. But Peter Sunday did not speak. Neither did he flinch. He leaned heavily on the old gun and gazed fixedly at nothing. He was thinking hard. His abstraction was disarming. Wembly did not strike him, but swore at him warmly and ordered him back to the sledge. He obeyed in silence.

Wembly decided to make camp and wait for Duff and Christmas and the other sledge to come up with him. Waddy broke trail to the nearer bank by the shortest way. The dogs, each heartened by a few pounds of frozen fish, followed willingly. Sunday went next, stepping wide every now and again; and Wembly went last. They trampled and cleared a circular space in the deep snow and tangled brush of the bank, floored it with brush, collected fuel and made a little fire. The three dogs curled up and slept. The three men sat down and smoked. Wembly and Waddy talked together in guarded tones.

“I'll put it up to him,” said Wembly. “And if he turns out to be nothing worse than the vicious idiot you think him—well, that will be soon enough to tackle that problem.” He turned to Sunday and spoke high and harsh: “Listen to me. I'm sick of your thieving, murdering tricks. I know you're a fool, but I don't believe you're as silly a fool as you look and act. You're up to some devilment, in my opinion—and you are going to tell me all about it—the truth, mind you!—or I'll give you enough grub to last you back to the mission and kick you out. And when I say kick I mean kick! And devil a cent of wages! Are you ready to answer my questions, or do you want to fill your pockets with hard bread and get to hell out of this?”

Sunday pondered for a full minute, gazing at the fire, then glanced swiftly at Wembly from the corners of his eyes and nodded.

Chapter VII.

A fantastic tribe.

Peter Sunday answered Major Wembly's questions; and the gist of his disclosures was as follows: He knew all about Smoke River, having learned it from his own father, who had been a member of that tribe which held all that country above the great falls. But those people did not live on the river, but to the north of it, in a hidden place. But all the river above the falls, and all that country, were theirs.

They were strong people, and theirs were strong gods. The gods of Smoke River were stronger than the gods of the white missionaries, but they were not merciful. These people had always a white priest, or a white priestess, to stand between them and the wrath of their merciless gods. It had been so ever since the beginning of the world.

Sunday had been told all this by his father who had left that people and that country in his youth and in a hurry—but for what reason, Sunday did not know. But he knew for a fact that his father had never ventured back that way, even as far as the mouth of the river.

Sunday, himself, had been up as far as the great falls three times, netting and spearing salmon. That was as far as any people of the coast dared to go in that direction.

Upon realizing that Wembly's expedition was bound for the upper reaches of Smoke River, with the hidden village of that mysterious and formidable tribe as its final objective, Peter Sunday had conceived a daring and ambitious design. He had always felt a strong curiosity concerning those people.

His father, who had been one of them, had told him extraordinary things about them; and persons who had never been beyond the great falls had told him yet more extraordinary things. It was generally believed by the coast dwellers that, even as the men of that mysterious tribe were the strongest in the world, the women of the hidden village were the most beautiful in the world. Scores of the fantastic tales had to do with the beauty of the women. And Peter Sunday confessed to a strong interest in feminine charms. Nothing but fear of the men of the upper reaches of Smoke River—and perhaps a little of the gods and devils—had kept him from investigating the truth of those rumors of beautiful women.

So, upon grasping the object and purpose of Wembly's expedition—to discover that secret town and attack it with the strange and powerful Lewis gun—he had seen what had looked like his opportunity. He had overheard remarks passed between Wembly and Duff which had convinced him of the importance of the queer little gun. He would steal that gun and, with it, get to the secret town ahead of the expedition. His father had told him at what point to leave the river and head due north. He would win the favor of those fierce men by warning them of the impending attack, and showing them the potent weapon to prove his story, and giving them the weapon.

“I didn't think you had it in you,” said Wembly. “And you hadn't. Why didn't you throw off all that stuff at the very start—or before starting? And you hadn't sense enough to leave the rum alone! Any one but a vicious fool like you would have got away with it, with the start you had on us. But not you! You have a crazy imagination, but no brains—dragging a full load all that distance, and gulping rum, and murdering good dogs! But I'm very glad you tried to pull your stunt when you did, for you might have got away with it if you'd waited until we were nearly there. But that was your only chance. From now on you'll be as harmless as a dead dog.”

 

Duff and John Christmas came up half an hour later, men and dogs alike heavily loaded. They had picked up and fetched along everything that Peter Sunday had discarded in his crazy flight. Wembly explained the situation to them briefly—the mad reason for Sunday's flight, the jettisoned goods, the dead dog.

Duff had plenty to say in return, but John Christmas did not utter a word. His flat face was like a mask. Not a word did he say about his dead dog. He did not so much as look at Peter Sunday, so far as the white men could see. He appeared to be totally indifferent.

The sledge loads were broken out, overhauled and redistributed; and about fifty pounds' weight of canned stuff was cached in a hole well up the bushy bank.

After that and a hot feed, the advance was resumed. Sunday went ahead and Wembly next, breaking trail. Sunday was unarmed, but Wembly toted a rifle. Christmas and his four dogs followed, then the three dogs and Nick Waddy, and Henry Duff brought up the rear.

They made good time. They halted once during the afternoon, long enough to boil the kettle and drink hot tea. They did not make camp until the last tinge of daylight had faded from the southwestern sky. After the evening meal and smoke, Peter Sunday was made fast in his sleeping bag with lashings of strong rope, bound humanely but securely.

During next morning's march they heard a vague, vast sound from far ahead. It was the voice of the great falls, and it grew louder in their ears throughout the day, shaking all that frozen desolation.

On the following morning they came to broken, piled-up ice, and by noon to open water and the great falls. In all that time on the river, in all those white miles, they had not seen any sign or sound of any other life than their own. It was depressing, that lifelessness, and to it now was added the terrific, shaking thunder and slosh and crash of the falls. Christmas did not like it. He said so; and you could see in his face that his mind was running on devils and merciless gods.

They went ashore below the churning black pool and climbed up around the falls. It was heavy going. It was slow, hard work. The sledges had to be unloaded and the loads packed up. But they did not halt and rest when the upper level was reached, nor even when they could leave the difficult shore and return to the ice.

Christmas said that he could hear, through the bellow of the smashing waters, the voices of seven devils whom he knew by name and reputation—and even Wembly and Duff almost believed him. They slogged ahead until the daunting roar of the falls sank to a pulsing hum. They made camp then, ate heartily and rested until the morrow's dawn.

Wembly tried out the Lewis gun, just to make sure that all was in order. He flipped off fifteen rounds in five seconds and was satisfied.

The weather held fair, indescribably cold but clear and windless, right up to their point of departure from the valley of the big river—to that point from which they were to head due north, according to Wembly's calculations.

There they cached flour, tea, sugar, bacon, rice, matches and dried peas, in a waterproof bag. There a narrower valley pointed the way north; and Wembly led them up it until dark.

When they halted, a wisp of wind flicked a cloud of dry snow into their faces. While they were digging in, gathering fuel and making camp, the wind swooped upon them a score of times. It was soon blowing hard and steady, and the night was blind with snow as dry and harsh as sand.

The wind continued to blow. Wembly and his companions dug yet deeper and sat tight. They had plenty of grub. Dry brush for the fire was to be had for the burrowing. They sheltered the little fire with blankets and brush. The nights were white and the days were gray with the tides of snow which swept ceaselessly around them.

The Eskimos said that it was the doing of local gods and devils, and that it would continue until every man and dog of them was buried, dead or alive. Duff said that he had never imagined there to be so much wind and snow in all the world. Nick Waddy said he had known a flurry to last a week.

But that blizzard did not last a week. Three nights and two days was the best it could do. The air was clear and still, and the colorless sun shone bright, when Major Wembly's relief expedition began to dig itself out. That was no light task. The little valley, up which they had started on the new course, was choked with snow. John Christmas and Peter Sunday refused to move another step to the northward. Breakfast, and three mugs of hot tea apiece, failed to give them courage to advance farther on that course. But two issues of rum did the trick.

By noon they had dug themselves out and up to higher ground. They kept to higher ground, from which most of the snow had been blown, throughout the short afternoon.

During the next three days Wembly did a great deal of tree climbing. Whenever he spotted a comparatively tall tree in a commanding situation, he made his way to it and climbed it and trained his powerful glasses north, west, south and east over that dismal and monotonous landscape—but mostly, and most intently, northward.

For three days his searching gaze went unrewarded. For three days he saw only the black of stunted spruce and the white of drifted snow, the gray of wind-swept rock, the pale blue of frozen sky—no smoke to tell of human habitation, no wing in the air, no fur or hide astir on crest or flank of any one of those innumerable dreary knolls and hills. It was a lifeless, hopeless, difficult world; and even Paul Wembly's tempered spirit and tough muscles began to feel chills of doubt and weariness.

But when he spotted another likely tree at ten o'clock of the morning of the fourth day, he turned aside to it and climbed it vigorously, hopefully. His first eager survey of the surroundings, made with unaided vision, was discouraging. He saw nothing; nothing but that jumble of lifeless black and white—the very embodiment of nothingness. Maintaining his insecure position with legs and elbows, he pulled the field glasses from their case and brought them to his eyes and took another look to the northward.

Smoke! Smoke, devil a doubt of it! Azure smoke and whitish smoke and ash-gray smoke lifting and thinning above and against the black of distant woods.

“What do you see?” called Duff, from below. “Devil or god of wind—or one of Sunday's imaginary ladies?”

“Smoke,” replied Wembly. “Wood smoke, man smoke—and plenty of it.”

He continued to gaze a full minute. It was not the smoke of a single fire, but of a score or more of small fires. He took its bearings carefully, then descended to the snow and told Duff and Waddy all about it. The three held a war council, at which it was decided to use trickery rather than force against the: lakeside village—trickery first, anyway. The Lewis gun would be brought into action only in the case of extreme necessity.

Wembly explained that all they wanted of the savages was the white girl, if she existed. Failing her—if investigations should prove that her sole existence had been in the late Gilroy Smith's imagination—they would have to look for some sort of proof of Commander Harvey Benn's fate or of Gilroy Smith's or Gaston Duvar's sojourn there; transportable proof, for choice. But the girl, the alleged daughter of Gaston Duvar, was the vital thing. He had never doubted her existence seriously for a moment. But for his belief in her he would never have moved a yard in the matter.

 

Major Paul Wembly stood alone on the white lake, facing the village of little lodges on the western shore. He estimated the distance between the nearest point of shore and himself at three hundred yards. A stout, crotched stick stood upright beside him, its butt sunk deep and packed firmly in the crust and snow. The Lewis gun lay at the base of the crotched stick in a folded blanket.

Wembly was smoking a cigarette when the lift of a clear dawn disclosed him to the view of the village's earliest riser. This particular individual riser was an elderly squaw on her way to the community water hole at the edge of the lake. At sight of that solitary figure standing out there against the colorless fire of the dawn, she let fall her buckets of rawhide and the ax with which she had intended to break the night's ice in the deep water hole.

Against that tintless glare the apparition looked gigantic, black and menacing. She did not indulge in a second look but turned and ran for home, yelping like a frightened pup.

Wembly continued to stand and wait, apparently ready for whatever might happen. If he felt any uneasiness, he did not show it. He smoked the cigarette slowly, calmly, and kept a sharp watch on the rocks and brush and clustered lodges before him. Now and again he turned his head for a quick glance to his flanks and rear, but he did not shift his big webs by so much as an inch. He did not carry a pack of any sort, nor a rifle—but the lower pockets of his short, wool-lined coat bulged slightly.

Wembly dropped the stub of the cigarette just as half a dozen men appeared at the edge of the lake and halted there. He saw that one of them was armed with a weapon that resembled Peter Sunday's sealing gun. The others carried short bows. They gazed out at him under pent hands. He hoped that he looked imposing and mysterious with the white lake and the flare of the new day for background. That is what he was there for—to look like a god, or at least like a very important devil; and as he glanced down the loosely folded blanket, and then at the bulges of his pockets, he felt both godlike and devilish.

“Start whatever you want to,” he said. “I don't like you.”

He turned down the cuff of his left mitten and looked at the watch on his wrist. By this time the group on the shore had increased to a crowd of twenty-five or thirty. Some of them moved to the right, along the edge of the ice, and others to the left. They strung out, as if contemplating an enveloping movement.

Wembly raised his right arm straight aloft to its full extent. All movement ceased for a minute, only to be resumed at a word of command or encouragement from the man with the sealing gun. The villagers continued to extend right and left from the center, but as yet neither flank had advanced onto the level of the lake.

Wembly lowered his arm.

Wembly and Duff and Waddy had matured two plans for the rescue of Duvar's daughter. In both plans, Wembly was to be discovered by the savages in his present position. According to Plan “A” he was to attract and hold the attention of all the savages, while Duff found the young woman and with her made a get-away to where Nick Waddy and the sledges and the Eskimos awaited them.

Wembly was to keep the villagers interested as best he could until a certain time, but without driving them back to their lodges; and he was then to deal with the savages according to the demands of the situation and follow his companions. Duff, with two rifles and plenty of ammunition and other explosives, would wait for him at the point of departure of the sledges. So much for Plan “A.”

Plan “B” differed from the other only to conform with a possible change of behavior on the part of the young woman who was to be carried off. She might take part in the rush to the lake front, instead of remaining alone and unguarded in her lodge; and in that case, Wembly would have to persuade her to join him out on the ice and then do the best he could—with Duff causing a diversion in the villagers' rear—to battle a way to the waiting sledges.

Paul Wembly admitted to himself that neither plan was absolutely foolproof nor safe. But neither he nor Duff nor Waddy could think of any safer or surer method of attempting the rescue. The only way to deal with those people was to get them all out in the open and under his eye, with the men separated from the women and children, if possible. He did not mean to run any risk of shooting up women and children.

The savages on the flanks of the enveloping movement stepped out from the snowy shore to the snowy surface of the lake. Wembly was relieved to see them sink to their knees, and deeper. They had forgotten their snowshoes in their haste. It was evident to Wembly that they reckoned on taking him alive, and he congratulated himself on the forethought which had prompted him to leave his rifle with the sledges and present himself to the attention of the savages in an apparently defenseless and inoffensive condition.

The enveloping movement progressed slowly, cautiously and in a profound silence. Wembly counted thirty-two men in that line; and he saw scores of women and children and old people gazing out at him from the black thickets and white drifts. But he saw nobody who could possibly be the girl of whom Gilroy Smith had told him in the Founder's Study of the Voyagers' Club in Gramercy Park. That seemed to him a long time ago and a long way off.

He looked at his watch again. Five minutes, and he would be free to extricate himself from a position which was growing momentarily more embarrassing—to put it mildly—and which was beginning to fret even his steady nerves. He lit a second cigarette. It was one of those fat, Oriental cigarettes, of a special brand and known as Voyagers' Club Specials.

Four minutes to go. Ten men were out on the lake by this time, six to the right and four to the left. The leading man on each flank was almost in line with Wembly but about two hundred yards distant. They were armed with bows and spears. They moved heavily in the deep and crusty snow. The center of the line, facing Wembly, had advanced ten or twelve yards onto the ice but now stood firm again. Now Wembly counted three guns on his front—but they all appeared to be of ancient, muzzle-loading pattern.

Three minutes to go. Wembly took something from a pocket, examined it closely but swiftly, then glanced quickly to his right and left. He suddenly became conscious of an uncomfortable dryness of the mouth and throat. Nervousness, evidently. He told himself to brace up.

Two minutes to go; and now several of the villagers were slightly in his rear. He didn't like that. He wanted them all where he could keep his eye on all of them at once. He stooped and lifted the Lewis gun and rested it on the crotched stick; and at that the men on his flanks and rear halted and most of those on his front flopped and lay flat. But they didn't all flop. The three with the ancient guns knelt and aimed. Wembly unshipped the Lewis gun and lay flat just as the three sealing guns belched and bellowed. A flock of lead passed low over him. He scrambled up, replaced the gun and cut loose three short bursts, aimed, then a longer burst high over the village. At that, one of the men who had shot at him collapsed, the other two flung down their guns, all the other warriors cast away their bows and spears and raised their arms and shouted.

The savages shouted all together—once, twice, thrice; and at the third deafening shout they all advanced with their arms still held high and wide.

Wembly looked around him in desperation. All the men in sight, and many of the women behind them, were approaching him with upflung arms; and again they shouted three times, all together. There was nothing of hostility or menace in that outcry. There was something of fear in it, but more of exultation. It was imploring and ecstatic. It was the voice of worship; and Wembly recognized it as such. He had hoped to figure as a god or a devil for a little while, but to find himself an object of active and general worship was more than he had expected.

“This is going too far!” he murmured. “To hell with it!”

He unshipped the Lewis gun, secured it and the drums of ammunition in the blanket, pulled a Roman candle from his pocket, lit the fuse at his cigarette and held it high. The balls of fire lobbed up, white in the pale sunshine, and the golden sparks spurted in enveloping showers.

At that exhibition of godlike or devilish power, the entire group of worshipers halted and prostrated themselves in the snow.

Wembly immediately shouldered the blanket-swathed gun and started for his rendezvous with Henry Duff. He went the way he had come before dawn. He marched at a dignified pace, with the gun on his left shoulder, a lighted cigarette between his lips and his right hand in a pocket; and as he passed between two of his worshipers—they were all on their knees by this time and chanting again—he pulled out and touched off another Roman candle. This second piece threw red balls. The worshipers flattened again.

He marched steadily on his way; and when the chanting was resumed behind him he let off a display of blue balls and green sparks. It was magnificent, but it silenced the outcry and checked the advance of the worshipful and fascinated savages for less than half a minute.

Ashore now, and in cover, Wembly fished out a Very pistol and shot a star shell low over his shoulder. He quickened his pace for a hundred yards or so, then decided to remind the villagers that he was as dangerous as magnificent. He turned and gave ear. They were advancing but still out of the way of danger. He lobbed a Mill's bomb back on his track and lay low until after the smashing explosion. He scrambled up, took one glance at the hole in the snow and tangled brush, then turned again and legged it.

“That will give them something new and extra to shout about,” he reflected. “And it will let Henry know I'm on the way.”

Five minutes later, he let go another bomb astern. The chanting of the worshipful savages came faintly to his ears.

Chapter VIII.

Fire.

Buff was at the rendezvous, with one rifle slung and the other in his hands. “All right?” he asked, as Wembly came up with him.

“All serene. Find the girl?”

“Yes. She's well away. She—she's amazing!”

“Lets go.”

They jogged along the deep trail which twisted in and out among thickets and drifts and rocky knolls. Duff was in the lead. They halted every now and then and gave ear. Nothing. Absolute silence.

“Those bombs shut them up,” said Wembly.

“Any bloodshed?” asked Duff.

“Had to put a burst of ten into the chief. That was all. Used fireworks after that, and the bombs just to show them what I could do if I had to.”

“Wait till they find that the girl's gone.”

“Wait nothing! Did you have any trouble with her?”

“Walked right into the biggest lodge, and there she was trying to get out past an old man. I said, 'Good morning, Julia,' and biffed the old man on the ear. She's as white as we are. I pointed to a pair of snowshoes; and she stepped right into the straps and away we went. She was dressed all ready for an outing. By Jove, Paul, she's—she's just——”

“Hark! D'ye hear it?”

“The loudest yell they've let out of them yet. They've missed the girl. No wonder they yell! Who wouldn't?”

Wembly unblanketed the Lewis gun and handed it and the drums to Duff and told him to keep going. Then he spread the blanket to its full length in the deep trail and emptied his pockets on the far end of it. A Roman candle, a package of small firecrackers, four Very lights, a coil of slow fuse in a rubber tobacco pouch, two grenades and the pistol. He repocketed bombs and pistol, then broke open the crackers, attached an end of the slow fuse to their braided fuses and folded them around the heads of the Roman candle and the Very lights. Then he took a turn or two of the long fuse around the whole. He uncoiled more fuse and laid it out on the dry blanket, made a quick calculation, broke the fuse and lit it. Then he went after Henry Duff at his best pace.

Wembly overtook Duff in ten minutes and relieved him of the Lewis gun. They continued to slog along, with an occasional brief exchange of speech and an occasional pause to harken to their rear. But there was nothing to listen to.

“We've got the legs of them,” said Wembly.

It was past noon when they came up with the sledges. Their prize, the late Gaston Duvar's daughter, was riding John Christmas' sledge in front. John was showing his dogs the way with all the will in the world. Sunday was at the tail of the second sledge and Nick Waddy in rear of all.

Wembly ordered a halt and the immediate feeding of the dogs and boiling of the kettles. He deposited the Lewis gun on the rear sledge, warned Duff to keep an eye on it and on Peter Sunday, then chopped out a seven-foot fir, knocked off its lower branches and carried it back along the trail a distance of twenty or thirty paces.

He set the fir up in the middle of the way and draped it with a blanket. It had an appearance of standing with widespread, warning arms. He topped it off with a red-flannel shirt which he had brought all the way from Trigger Cove.

They were all on their way again forty minutes later. Wembly brought up the rear, a hundred yards behind the second sledge, armed with a rifle and six Mills bombs. Duff, similarly armed and with three drums for the Lewis gun in his haversack, kept close to the tail of the second sledge, ready to grab the little machine gun from the top of the load and fall back to Wembly's support in case of need.

So they traveled until the last red wash of day was smudged from the horizon, without sight or sound of pursuit. Camp was made on a treeless knoll in open ground. It was a cold camp site, but it commanded useful fields of view and of fire. The Lewis gun was mounted on a convenient rock. Wembly stood the first watch, Duff the second and Nick Waddy the third. Nothing happened; and they were on the move again at the first icy-gray glimmer of dawn.

Nothing was seen or heard of any pursuer during the second day of the southward flight. The fugitives traveled fast, for the weather was clear, the trail was undrifted and packed, the dogs were well fed and in good fettle and every one was eager to get as far away from that country as possible in the shortest possible time.

Again camp was made on high ground commanding adequate fields of view and fire in all directions—and this within a few miles of the point at which they had turned northward from the river on the eve of the great blizzard. Duff stood the first watch and Wembly the middle watch.

It seemed to Wembly that something moved among the indistinct shadows to the south of the knoll. He started and stared, but the light was bad and there was frost on his eyelashes and he could make nothing of it. He bared a hand and pressed it to his eyes for several seconds, then looked again. The vague shadows of thicket and drift and rock to the south appeared now to be absolutely motionless. He turned slowly and examined all the dim shades in his circumscribed field of vision. He failed to detect any movement anywhere.

“Inflamed eyes,” he told himself. “They couldn't have passed us, at the pace we've been going. Frozen eyesight and rotten nerves.”

He looked to the south again, then to the north again. He stared northward, then jumped to the Lewis gun and flung aside its protective blanket. The trail by which they had reached the knoll was black and alive.

He fired the first burst high, The dark advance checked, but only for a moment. It widened and came on again.

“The poor fools!” he exclaimed. “They don't believe me—because I only killed one of them.”

He let off another burst of ten, short this time. The dark advance checked again, wavered, came on again.

“This won't do,” he said. “I must stop ten or twelve of the poor fools for good and all—or they'll get us some night—to-morrow or next night or next. Sorry—but here goes!”

He let go thirty rounds, neither high nor low but with a slight lateral wavering of the muzzle. As he replaced the empty drum with a full one, he glimpsed Duff at his elbow. The little camp behind him was on its feet. He heard Nick Waddy swearing vigorously and Peter Sunday praying. He ripped off the second drum without a hitch.

“Here's another,” said Duff.

“To hell with it!” exclaimed Wembly, releasing his hold on the grip of the gun and letting it slip from its rests into the snow. “I've done my bit! Bow-an'-arrow men! But it was coming to them. Had to be done. Had to get it sooner or later.”

“What's that?” exclaimed Duff, turning sharply to the south. D'ye hear it? Look there!”

Wembly heard a breathless, desperate cry even as he turned; and he saw a single dark figure moving among stationary patches of vague darkness at the southern base of the knoll—moving, wavering, stumbling forward. The cry rose again on the frosty air. It was a woman's voice.

“From the south! The other outfit!” he exclaimed; and he started down the snowy slope on the jump.

She was slumped in the snow, limp and speechless, when he reached her. He shouldered her and turned and retraced his steps laboriously. Halfway up the slope, he was met by Duff.

“Your friend Catherine—all alone—and all in,” he gasped.

“Don't believe it,” said Duff. “Let's look. Set her down.”

Wembly lowered his slender, inert burden to the snow and supported her in a sitting position with his right arm and shoulder. Duff stooped and struck a light.

“Thought so!” he said. “It must be the girl she had doubling for her back in Trigger Cove. Trust Catherine to play safe!”

Wembly craned his neck and peered into the fur hood on his shoulder.

“Good Lord! I know her!” he cried.

The woman opened her eyes at that, just as the match dropped from Duff's fingers.

“I'm sorry,” she murmured, “an' all in. Wired you to that effect—didn't I?”

Wembly gathered her up tenderly.

“Nip ahead and start a fire—and damn the expense!” he said to the bewildered Duff.

Then he plunged forward and upward again toward the summit of the knoll, wondering confusedly if he were dreaming but hoping vigorously that he was wide awake. He checked and staggered for a moment as a fur-clad arm slipped up and around his neck—but only for a moment.

Chapter IX.

Jane Casselis.

The menace from the north was clean forgotten by Major Paul Wembly. He who had refused to allow so much as a spark of fire the night before and earlier this night, now urged his followers to the gathering of fuel and demanded hot water in a hurry.

He administered a tot of rum to the young woman whom he had toted up the southern slope of the knoll. He tucked her into his own sleeping bag and took off his fur cap and fanned the new-lit fire with it, shouting all the while for more and drier fuel. He mixed beef tea as soon as the melted snow in the kettle was hot, and fed it, and several cakes of hard bread soaked in it, to the girl in his sleeping bag. She responded nobly to that treatment.

“They all got cold feet—all of them, sooner or later,” she told him, between swallows of soaked biscuit. “Your trail to travel in, too—until that blizzard struck us. Bill Doran was the last to quit—dogs and all—and tried to make me go back with him—but I pulled a gun on him. Knew the best way—safest—to keep on your trail. It showed in places, blown clear again. Better than going back—with those cowards. Sure to come up with you, or meet you coming back—with any luck. Made the turn all right, but lost my way to-night—and my nerve, too—till I heard the battle. What was it all about—that battle?”

“We found that girl and made a clean get-away. She's around here somewhere. I entertained the villagers while Duff grabbed her off. I didn't scare them quite enough, so they followed us. Came up on us in force to-night, so I had to shoot them up. No other way to get rid of them. But you mustn't tire yourself talking now. Plenty of time for that later. Drink the rest of this.”

“What does she look like?”

“Who?”

“That girl you came to rescue.”

“I've only seen her once. Duff says she's white. Drink the rest of this now and go to sleep.”

She obeyed; and Wembly joined Duff and Waddy, who had set up the Lewis gun again and were now peering anxiously to the north.

“Was that by appointment, too, like tea with Mrs. Benn?” asked Duff, with an edge on his voice.

“By appointment! I thought she was in New York. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw her.”

“Is that so? Damn fortunate thing for us the Indians didn't come on again with a few feathers! Who is she? And how and why?”

“I don't know her name. Met her in New York the morning after my talk with Gilroy Smith. She was reporting for one of the papers.”

“For Catherine Benn, you mean.”

“I don't know anything about that. All I know, she's over there in my sleeping bag now. The rest will keep.”

Duff sighed and nudged his leader with a drum of Lewis-gun ammunition.

“We'll all keep very well if you don't snap out of it—frozen stiff—till warm weather. How many of these are left?”

“What? Oh, those! Don't worry. We've seen the last of our pursuers. The poor, benighted fools! But it was coming to them for their foolhardiness. I had to do it.”

The three white men talked out the remaining hours of darkness. When dawn showed a light, Wembly and Duff went down the northern slope and northward along the trail a distance of a few hundred yards. They found nothing there but a wide area of trampled snow.

“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed Wembly.

“For what, in particular?” asked Duff.

“For this. Don't kick the snow about! They've carried off their casualties—and covered up the blood. Let it go at that.”

 

Paul Wembly was right. Nothing more was seen or heard of their pursuers. They made the return journey to the mission without accident, picking up their jettisoned supplies as they went. Miss Jane Casselis told her story on the way.

Miss Casselis had read Mrs. Catherine Benn's announcement of her intention of leading an expedition into the North in search of Commander Harvey Benn, in company with Major Paul Wembly, and had immediately reversed her opinion of the major. That was not the kind of man she had thought he was. So she had immediately sent her own piece to the paper, dealing with Wembly's romantic interest in the mysterious girl of the secret village. She admitted to a spirit of spite in that action.

Then, still in a spirit of spite and derision, she had called on Catherine Benn and offered her services as secretary or companion; and, after a talk with the camera man, Catherine had engaged her.

Later, upon learning that Wembly had refused to join the Benn-Duvar relief expedition, Jane Casselis had hastened to Wembly's hotel and from there wired to his northern home. But she did not mention Wembly's name to Catherine Benn.

The expedition, with its camera and films, had left Black Pot Harbor in a new fore-and-after. Poor Jane was black and blue by that time from doubling for Catherine. They had sailed all the way north to the mission, without a hitch; and there they had heard, tor the first time, that Wembly was ahead of them. Catherine had thrown hysterics and retired—but not until she had ordered the others to advance in Wembly's tracks with as much speed as the recording of perhaps half a dozen dramatic scenes on the way would permit.

So Mark Hands, the actor, Jane, the camera man, three Newfoundlanders and two sledges and eight dogs and Jane had gone on down the coast and up the river. Gully and Flint had deserted at the falls, with one of the sledges. Mr. Mark Hands had turned at noon of the same day, after explaining that his action was not influenced by fear but by a sense of duty to his wife and children, and returned at top speed.

Then the blizzard had descended upon them, and the camera man had hit the homeward trail as soon as the blizzard had blown itself out, leaving his camera and films on Bill Doran's sledge.

Bill Doran had held on, though very much against his will, scaring himself, and trying to scare Jane, with stories of Smoke River horrors which he had heard at the mission. But at last even Bill had quit—but not without an effort to take Jane back with him.

“You're a wonder,” said Wembly. “Isn't she a wonder, Henry? How'll Mrs. Benn feel when she reads our official report? 'When five miles north of the Smoke River valley and in the act of repulsing an attack in force by the savages, we were joined by Miss Jane Casselis, the only member of Mrs. Catherine Benn's expedition to venture west of the Great Falls.' How'll that read?”

“Fine,” returned Duff. “But despite all the reports and statements in the world—yours and mine and Jane's and Nick's and the three missionaries—Catherine will present her pictures to the eager public; and pictures speak louder than the statements of facts.”

“Oh, no she won't,” said Jane Casselis. “I fixed that first lot of fakes at the mission, while she was having hysterics; and I did in the second lot, and the camera, too, just before my parting with Bill Doran.”

 

Paul Wembly is in New York, writing, in solitary industry, every morning and afternoon but dining with Miss Jane Casselis almost every evening. His new book will be well worth two dollars. His and Henry Duff's reports of their expedition into the Smoke River country—with statements by the Reverend Jan Bols, Doctor Olsen, Captain Andersen and Mr. Nick Waddy attached—have not only aroused much interest and some excitement in the breast of the general public but have led to the official recognition, by the French government, of a certain young woman as the daughter and heiress of the late Gaston Duvar. Mademoiselle Duvar sailed for France last week. Mr. Henry Duff, reinstated in the good opinions of his father, will sail for France next week.

It is rumored that Mrs. Catherine Benn is engaged to marry Mr. Mark Hands—but very few people are interested.

Major Paul Wembly, now a full member of the Voyagers' Club, yesterday received a hint from the North that he is soon to be elected to a fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada.