by Frank Norris
“He would have had a great time with that girl.”
“I say, what’s he got written on the back?”
In the midst of a great silence, Brunt turned the cigarette picture to the light and read:
“Think how close one may come to an interesting story and never know it.”
END OF THE BEGINNING
A SHORT STORY FROM THE WAVE OF SEPTEMBER 4, 1897.
The story of the “Freja” disaster is best told by one or two extracts taken from the record left by Lieutenant Ferriss at Cape Sheridan, and by certain passages from his Ice Journal.
(Extracts of record left in instrument box at Cape Sheridan.)
U. S. Cutter “Freja,” —
On the ice off Cape Sheridan, Grant Land, Lat. 82° 25’N., Lon. 61°30 W., 12th March, 1891.)
* * * * *
We accordingly froze the ship in on the last day of September, 1890, and during the following winter drifted with the pack in a northwesterly direction.
* * * * *
On Friday, August 2d, being in Lat. 82° 25 N., Lon. 61° 30 W., the “Freja” was caught in a severe nip between two floes and was crushed, sinking in about two hours. We abandoned her, saving a hundred days’ provisions and all necessary clothing, instruments, etc.
* * * * *
I shall now attempt a southerly march over the ice, and with God’s help hope to reach Tasiusak, or fall in with the relief ships or steam whalers on the way. Our party consists of the following eighteen persons.
* * * * *
All well with the exception of Mr. Bennett, the chief engineer, whose left hand has been frost-bitten. No scurvy in the party as yet.
Hamilton Ferriss, Lieut. U. S. N. Commanding “Freja” Arctic Exploring Expedition.
(Extracts from Lieutenant Ferriss’ Ice Journal, three months later than above.)
June 13, 1891 — Monday. — Camped at 4.05 p in about one hundred yards from the coast. The ice hereabouts is breaking up fast. If we had not been compelled to abandon our boats — but it is useless to repine. We must look our situation squarely in the face. At noon served out last beef extract, which we drank with some willow tea. Our remaining provisions consist of four-fifteenths pounds pemmican per man, and the rest of the dog meat. Where are the relief ships? We should at least have met the steam whalers long before this.
June 14th — Tuesday. — The doctor amputated Mr. Bennett’s other hand to-day. Living gale of wind from S. E. Impossible to march against it in our weakened condition — must camp here till it abates. Made soup of the last of the dog meat this afternoon. Our last pemmican gone.
June 15th — Wednesday. — Everybody getting weaker. Clarke breaking down. Sent Hansen down to the shore to gather shrimps, of which it takes fifteen hundred to fill a gill measure. Supper a spoonful of glycerine and hot water.
June 16th — Thursday. — Clarke died during the night. Hawes dying. Still blowing a gale from S. E. A hard night.
June 17th — Friday. — Hawes and Cooley died during early morning. Hansen shot a ptarmigan. Made soup. Dennison breaking down.
June 18th — Saturday. — Buried Hawes and Cooley under slabs of ice. Spoonful of glycerine and hot water at noon.
June 19th — Sunday. — Dennison found dead this morning between Bennett and myself. Too weak to bury him or even carry him out of tent. He must lie where he is. Divine services at 5:30 p m. Last spoonful of glycerine and hot water.
Ferriss paused in his writing at this point, and, looking up from the page, spoke drearily and in a thick, muffled voice: “How long has this wind been blowing, Bennett?”
“Since last Wednesday,” answered the other. “Five days.” Ferriss continued his writing:
“* * * Gale blowing steadily for five days. Impossible to move against it in our weakened condition. But to stay here is to perish. God help us. It is the end of everything!”
Ferriss drew a line across the page under the last entry, and, still holding the book in his hand, gazed slowly about the tent.
There were nine of them left — eight huddled together in that miserable tent — the ninth, Hansen, being down on the shore gathering shrimps. In the strange gloomy half-light that filled the tent, these survivors of the “Freja” looked less like men than like animals. Their hair and beards were long, and seemed one with the fur covering on their bodies. Their faces were absolutely black with dirt, and their limbs were monstrously distended and fat — fat as things bloated and swollen are fat. It was the abnormal fatness of starvation, the irony of misery, the huge joke that Arctic Famine plays upon those whom it afterwards destroys. The men moved about at times on their hands and knees; their tongues were round and slate-colored, like the tongues of parrots, and when they spoke they bit them helplessly.
Near the flap of the tent lay the swollen dead body of Dennison, the naturalist of the expedition. Four of the party dozed, inert and stupefied, in their sleeping-bags. The surgeon and Muck-tu, the Esquimalt dog-master, were in the center of the tent boiling their sealskin foot-nips over a fire built of a broken sledge-runner. Ferriss sat upon an empty water-breaker, using his knee as a desk. Near him, sitting on one of the useless McClintock sledges was Bennett, both of whose hands had been amputated in consequence of frost-bite. A tin spoon had been lashed to the stump of his right wrist.
The tent was full of foul smells. The smell of drugs and mouldy gunpowder, the smell of dirty rags, and of unwashed bodies, the smell of stale smoke, of scorched sealskin, of soaked and rotting canvas that exhaled from the tent cover — every smell but that of food.
Outside, the unleashed wind yelled incessantly, like a sabbath of witches and spun about their pitiful shelter and went rioting on, leaping and somersaulting from rock to rock, tossing handfuls of dry dustlike snow into the air, folly-stricken — insatiate — an enormous mad monster gamboling there in some hideous dance of death, capricious, headstrong, pitiless as a famished wolf.
In front of the tent, and over a ridge of barren rocks, was an arm of the sea dotted over with blocks of ice, careening past silently, while back from the coast and back from the tent and to the north and to the south and to the west stretched the illimitable waste of land — flat, grey, harsh, snow and ice and rock, rock and ice and snow, stretching away there under the sombre sky, forever and forever, gloomy, untamed, terrible, an empty region — the scarred battlefield of chaotic forces, the savage desolation of a primordial world.
“Where’s Hansen?” asked Ferriss.
“He’s away after shrimps,” responded Bennett.
Ferriss’ eyes returned to the note-book and rested on the open page thoughtfully.
“Do you know what I’ve written here, Bennett?” he asked, adding, without waiting for an answer: “I’ve written ‘It’s the end of everything.’”
“I suppose it is,” admitted Bennett, looking vaguely about the tent. “Yes, the end of everything. It’s come at last. Well?”
There was a silence. One of the men in the sleeping-bags groaned and turned upon his face. Outside the wind lapsed suddenly to a prolonged sigh of infinite sadness, clamoring again upon the instant. “Bennett,” said Ferriss, returning his note-book to the box of records, “it is the end of everything, and just because it is I want to talk to you — to ask you something.”
Bennett came nearer. The horrid shouting of the wind deadened the sound of their voices — the others could not hear it, and by now it would have mattered very little to any of them if they had. Ferriss picked up an empty rubber bottle that had contained lime juice, and began fingering it.
“Old man,” he commenced, “nothing makes much difference now. In a few hours we shall all be like Dennison here.” He tapped the body of the naturalist, who had died during the night. It was already frozen so hard that his touch upon it resounded as if it had been a log of wood. “We shall all be like this pretty soon,” continued Ferriss, “but there’s a little girl back in the world we left, that I loved — that I cared for,” he added, hurriedly. “I don’t
know as I can quite make you understand how much I — how much she was to me. I would have asked her to marry me before I came off, if I had been sure of her, but I wasn’t sure, and so — well — so I never spoke. She never knew how much I cared, and I never knew if she cared at all. And that’s what I want to ask you about. It’s Helen Parry. You’ve known her all your life, and you saw her later than I did. You remember I had to come down to the ship two days before you, about the bilge pumps.”
While Ferriss had been speaking the last words, Bennett had been sitting very erect upon the sledge, drawing figures and vague patterns in the fur of his sealskin coat with the tip of the tin spoon. Helen Parry! Ah, yes, Ferriss was right. Bennett had known her all his life, and it was just because of this intimacy that she had come to be so dear to him. It was she who had made everything he did seem worth while. Hardly for a moment had she been out of his thoughts during all that fearful voyage.
“It seems rather foolish,” continued Ferriss, turning the rubber bag about and about, “but if I thought she ever cared — for me — in that way, why it would make — this that is coming to us, seem — oh, I don’t know — easier to be borne. I say it very badly, but it would not be so hard to die if I thought that little girl loved me — a bit.”
Bennett was thinking very fast. He wished now that he had overridden Helen’s objections, and had allowed her people to announce their engagement before the expedition sailed. He had even half guessed something of this sort. But they two were so happy in their avowed love for each other that they had shut their eyes to everything else. They only knew that they were to be married within a month of Bennett’s return. Bennett could never forget that evening when he had said good-bye to her on the porch of the old New Hampshire homestead, and had gone away to join the “Freja.” She had kissed him then for the first time, and had put a hand on each shoulder and said to him:
“You must come back, Dick — you must come back to me. Remember, you are everything to me — everything in the world.”
“You’ve known her so well,” continued Ferriss, “that I am sure that she, understanding that you were my very best friend, must have said something to you about me. Tell me, did she ever say anything — give you to understand — that she cared for me — that she would have married me if I had asked her?”
Bennett wondered what to say to him. On one hand was Helen, the girl that was to be — that would have been his wife, who loved him and whom he loved. On the other was Ferriss, his chief, his friend, his hero, the man of all others whom he loved, as Jonathan loved David — such a love as can come only upon two men who have lived together, and fought together, and battled with the same dangers, and suffered the same defeats and disappointments. Bennett felt himself in grievous straits. Must he tell Ferriss the bitter truth? Must this final disillusion be added to that long train of others, the disasters, the failures, the disappointments and deferred hopes of all those past months? Must Ferriss die hugging to him this bitterness as well?
“I sometimes thought,” observed Ferriss, with a weak smile, “that she did care a little. I’ve surely seen something like that in her eyes at certain moments. I wish I had spoken. Did she ever say anything to you? Did she ever say she cared for me?”
The thing was too cruel. Bennett shrank from it. But suddenly an idea occurred to him. Did anything make any difference now? Why not tell his friend that which he wanted to hear, even if it were not the truth? After all that he had suffered why could he not die content at least in this? What did it matter if he spoke? Did anything matter at such a time, when they were all to perish within the next twenty-four hours? Ferriss was waiting for his answer, looking straight into his eyes.
“Yes,” said Bennett, “she did say something once.”
“What was it?” exclaimed Ferriss, dropping the rubber bag and bending forward.
“We had been speaking of the expedition and of you,” answered Bennett, looking fixedly on the bag as it lay on the ground. “I don’t know how the subject came up, but it came in very naturally at length. She said — I remember her words perfectly — she said, ‘He must come back — you must bring him back to me. Remember, he is everything to me — everything in the world.’”
“She said that?” enquired Ferriss, looking away. “Yes,” answered Bennett. “I remember it. Those were her words.”
“Ah!” said Ferriss, with a quick breath; then he added, “I’m glad of that. You haven’t an idea how happy I am, Bennett, in spite of everything.”
“Oh, yes, I guess I have,” assented Bennett.
“No, no, you haven’t,” replied Ferriss. “How can you have any idea of it? One has to love a little girl like that, Bennett, and have her — and find out — and have things come all right to appreciate it. She would have been my wife after all. I don’t know how to thank you, old man. Congratulate me.”
He rose a little feebly, holding out his hand. Bennett rose and instinctively extended his arm, but withdrew it suddenly. Ferriss paused abruptly, letting his hand fall to his side, and the two remained there an instant, looking at the stumps of Bennett’s arms, the tin spoon still lashed to the right wrist! There was a noise of feet at the flap of the tent.
“It’s Hansen,” muttered Bennett.
Hansen tore open the flap of the tent.
Then he shouted to Ferriss: “Three steam whalers off the foot of the floe, sir; boat putting off! What orders, sir?”
Ferriss looked at him stupidly, as yet without definite thought, then:
“What did you say?”
Two of the men in the sleeping-bags, wakened by Hansen’s shout, sat up and listened stolidly.
“Steam whalers?” said Bennett, slowly. “Where? I guess not,” he added, shaking his head.
Hansen was swaying in his place with excitement. “Three whalers,” he repeated, “close in. They’ve put off — Oh, my God! Listen to that!”
The unmistakable sound of a steamer’s whistle, raucous and prolonged, came to their ears from the direction of the coast. One of the men broke into a feeble cheer. The whole tent was rousing up. Again and again came the hoarse, insistent cry of the whistle. “What orders, sir?” repeated Hansen.
A clamor of voices filled the tent.
Bennett came quickly up to Ferriss, trying to make himself heard.
“Old man, listen!” he cried, with eager intentness. “What I told you — just now — about Helen Parry — I thought — it is all a mistake. You don’t understand—” Ferriss was not listening.
“What orders, sir?” exclaimed Hansen, for the third time.
Ferriss drew himself up.
“Lieutenant Ferriss’ compliments to the officer in charge. Tell him there are nine of us left — tell him — oh, tell him anything you damn please.”
“Boys!” he cried, turning a radiant face to the men in the tent, “make ready to get out of this. We’re going home going home to our sweethearts, boys!”
JUDY’S SERVICE OF GOLD PLATE
A SHORT STORY FROM THE WAVE OF OCTOBER 16, 1897.
She was a native of Guatemala, and so, of course, was said to be Mexican, and she lived in the alley by the county jail, three or four doors above the tamale factory. Her trade was something odd. The Chinamen, who go down to the sea in ships from San Francisco to Cape St. Lucas, off the coast of Lower California, and fish for sharks there, used to bring the livers of these sharks back to her. She would boil the oil out of these livers and turn over the product to a red-headed Polish Jew named Knubel, who bottled it and sold it to San Francisco as cod liver oil. Knubel made money in the business. She was only his employee. Her name, incidentally, was Lambala Largomarsini, which was no doubt the reason why she was called “Judy.”
Knubel lived on Telegraph Hill, on the ledge of the big cliff there, and used to lie awake o’ windy nights waiting for his house to be blown off that ledge.
Knubel had always lived on Telegraph Hill. When he was forty he had had a stroke of paralysis, and had lost the use of his l
eft leg. The result of this stroke was that Knubel was held a prisoner on the Hill. He dared not go down into the city below him, because he knew he could never get back. How could he, stop and think? No horse ever gets to the top of the Hill. The cable-cars and electric-cars turn their headlights upon the Hill and shake their heads and go around in the valley by Stockton street. The climb is bad enough for a man with two healthy legs, but for a paralytic — Knubel was trapped upon the Hill, trapped and held prisoner. He never saw Kearny or Montgomery or Market streets after his stroke. He never saw the new Call building, or the dome upon the City Hall but from afar, and the “Emporium” was to him but a distant granite cliff. In the newspaper, he who lived in San Francisco read about what was happening there as you and I and all the rest of us read about what is happening in London or in Paris or in Vienna, and this with the roar of that San Francisco actually in his ears, like the bourdon of a tremendous organ.
Judy of course was wretchedly poor, for the salary that Knubel allowed her for boiling down the shark’s livers would not have fattened a self-respecting chessy-cat. Knubel himself was a horrible old miser, he had made a little fortune in cod liver oil, but he kept it tied up in three old socks in a starch box underneath the floor of his cellar. He had a passion for gold, and turned all his silver and greenbacks into gold as fast as he could. He lived in a room about as big as a trunk back of an Italian wine shop where there was a “Bocce” court, and Judy used to come and see him here once a month and get her salary and make her report.
One day when Judy had come to get her orders and her money from Knubel she found him bending his red head over his table testing an old brass collar button with nitric acid.
“I found him bei der stairs on der bottom,” he explained to Judy. “Berhaps he is of gold. Hey, yes?” Judy looked at the collar button.
“That ain’t gold,” she declared. “Huh! you can’t fool me on gold. I seen more gold in my day than you’ve seen tin, Mister Knubel.”
Knubel’s eyes were gimlets on the instant.