by Don Wilcox
Malonski, the bald-headed, big-toothed steward, limped past with a tray of food for the stowaway, who had been imprisoned below soon after his presence had been discovered.
Late that afternoon Steve Pound came trotting by, just off duty. The picture arrested him instantly. He jerked out the thumbtack, pocketed the paper, and walked off.
I knew, then, that Steve had drawn it.
CHAPTER II
A Girl On A Tiger
Steve Pound was a hard worker and a square-shooter—as honest and as straightforward as any man on ship. He would take over an extra work shift for a sick sailor quicker than anyone. He was not one to waste his time dabbling with hobbies, and I couldn’t conceive of his having acquired a sudden interest in art.
Well, my curiosity got the best of me and I went to Steve.
“How did you happen to draw it?” I asked him.
“So you were the one who found it,” he said. “Come into my room so we can talk.”
He closed the door back of us. I noticed the mysterious look in his eyes—a strange glint that contrasted with the usual clear-eyed, square-jawed confidence of his countenance. Steve had spent most of his thirty years on the ocean. He was a solid conservative seaman.
He didn’t doubt that these newfangled ships called steamboats might be useful in due time. But he had never stepped aboard a steamboat and he doubted that he ever would. He’d heard all the arguments; but he had heard arguments, too, that some day boats would fly through the air—and that was more than he could believe. Like most of us, living in the middle eighteen-hundreds, he knew when he had something solid—and that something was ocean navigation in the traditional manner.
Would he ever leave the sea? Perhaps some day, long enough to build a little cottage on the Newfoundland coast, and find a wife to keep it for him, so that he would have a home between voyages and for his old age.
Steve unfolded the paper and gazed at the sketch.
“You won’t believe me, Jim,” he said, “but I can trust you. I am going to tell you exactly what I saw that night as we pulled away from the shore of Greenland.”
“If you saw it, I’ll believe it,” I said.
“Do you remember that wide glacier?
It ended in a cliff of ice along the shore line that paralleled our course for four and a half hours.”
“I saw the first hour of it,” I recollected, “before I turned in.”
“That’s where I saw it—this strange, unbelievable thing. Maybe you remember I was late coming off my watch that night. I held on because I kept seeing it.”
“What?” I was becoming exasperated.
“I thought at first it was someone riding a polar bear—the hugest bear I’d ever seen. But it wasn’t. It was a tiger.”
“Tiger?”
“A white tiger!” Steve Pound was looking at me steadily. He was in deadly earnest. “If it had happened only once I wouldn’t have believed it myself.”
“I should think not.”
“But I’m not a man to see apparitions, and when I saw it the second time, and caught a clear view of the rider, I knew my eyes weren’t fooling me.”
“With a rider?” I gasped. “What are you talking about?”
“I said you would not believe me but I’m telling you just what I saw. The rider was a girl. “I caught a full view of her, riding past the rising moon. She was dressed like something out of a show or a circus—”
I interrupted to doubt whether Steve Pound had ever seen a circus. But he was too intent on this imaginary image to be bothered.
“Something like a girl I saw in a pageant, one time, up in Norway. She had gold sandals and a skirt of red fox furs and gold breastplates and a helmet with gold wings—”
“You’ve been dreaming.”
“And there was a flashy red robe that fluttered back from her shoulders, and she was pretty—awful pretty. If I had all the words in all the books I couldn’t tell you how pretty. I mean it, Jim. I—”
“You saw all this through your telescope?”
“I did. She rode right along the dangerous edge of the glacier, and that white tiger of hers would leap the gaps like a bird.”
“Did it have teeth? What color were its eyes? Did you count the whiskers?”
Steve’s cheeks flushed with anger.
“Don’t get mad,” I said. “But you’ve just had a bad dream—”
“It wasn’t bad.”
“And you’ve let it work on your imagination. We were a safe half mile from that ledge of ice when I saw it.”
“We edged closer,” said Steve. “We were sailing steady and I took a chance, so I could get a better view. I steered within thirty yards. With the telescope I could see the snowflakes fly back from that tiger’s feet, all colored against the northern lights.”
“It’s a wonder you didn’t crash us. Was anyone with you?”
“Not a soul. The elder Frabbel had played off his watch. The whole blooming show was all mine.”
“I’m sure of it,” I said.
Steve Pound stopped, the reason being that he doubted whether there was any use going on. And he was right, because I was fully convinced he was having delusions.
I wanted to walk out and call the ship’s physician. But Steve Pound ordered me to sit down.
“We haven’t finished,” he said. “Not till you give me your opinion. Do you think the girl was following us? Often she seemed to be riding like the wind right toward our ship, especially whenever we drifted straight toward a point. What do you make of it, Jim?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“I’ve a hunch she wanted to come aboard,” said Steve. “Maybe she had a message for us.”
For a long time I sat in silence. Finally I said, “White tiger? Who ever heard of a white tiger?”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” said Steve earnestly. “Is there such a thing as a polar tiger?”
“No.”
“Or a lion—or a panther—or a leopard?”
“Of course not.”
“I wish I had called you,” said Steve. “No one knows much about this Far North. We’re going to see some strange things and it’ll take an artist like you, Jim McClurg, to capture them. I tried when I made that sketch, but I can’t draw. And besides, when I tried to put it down in a picture, the whole thing began to seem so impossible—”
“It is impossible, Steve.”
“All right, Jim, you’ll see for yourself,” Steve said hotly. “We aren’t making any more knots than that girl and her tiger. If she comes our way again, I’ll call you. If she doesn’t—you can forget it.”
Exactly one week later the apparition returned and I saw it for myself.
CHAPTER III
Suicide
Before I can record the instance of our meeting with that strange pair, the girl and the tiger who were shadowing our ship, I must go back to note a few items about Captain French’s wealth and Lady Lorruth’s ambitions, the secret terrors of Inez the maid, and the sullen silence of the stowaway we had picked up.
I still don’t know at what port the stowaway boarded our ship, but sometime during those two weeks of skirting the Greenland coast we were surprised to find him hiding among the barrels in the hold.
The cook, Malonski, and Steve Pound, the mate, dragged him out on deck and we all got a look at him. He was tall and gaunt, and young—twenty-five at the most—rather too young to be a habitual tramp and vagabond. His ragged overcoat might have been rescued from an incinerator. His hair was very black, and very grimy. But his face showed no lack of spirit. I don’t think I ever saw so much fire in the eyes of any man.
“Call the Captain,” said Steve Pound, “and Lady Lorruth, too.”
The whole crew gathered around staring at this rebellious looking human. From his sullen glare he must have thought we were going to kill him.
We backed away to make room for the captain who escorted Lady Lorruth into the stowa
way’s presence. The captain started blustering, but the real authority was Lady Lucille Lorruth. This was her ship, and her expedition. The pompous captain was more decorative than useful; his reputation as a wealthy bachelor merchant had lent a certain prestige to this rescue party. But Lady Lucille did most of the whip-cracking.
It wasn’t hard to guess her attitude toward the stowaway from the start. This unkempt stranger was an intruder. He had no business here. Our food stores were limited. He came aboard to thieve a passage, or food, or berth.
“Who are you?” Lady Lorruth asked.
In slow heavy words the ragged fellow replied, “My name in Gandl.”
“Gandl!” Lady Lorruth’s attractive face twisted with suspicion. In her angry moments the narrow stripe of white hair which crowned her blue-black carefully groomed tresses, seemed to emphasize the blaze of white in her narrow eyes. Her fury was an artist’s study: thin flaring nostrils, lips that tightened over her teeth with a hint of brutality. She relished this situation, I think, because it gave her an opportunity to play her ugly authority, causing the most innocent sailor in her audience to quail with feelings of guilt.
“Gandl!” she repeated. “I’ll have the captain set you adrift on an iceberg, Gandl, as soon as it suits my pleasure. Straighten up . . . I said, straighten up!”
The stowaway was already standing as straight as a ruler, though his miserable clothes gave him an aspect of sagging. Lady Lucille’s command failed to move him. The captain jumped to his chance, throwing a heavy fist to the stowaway’s jaw, knocking him off his feet.
“Get up!” Lady Lucille snarled. “On your feet! There, now stand straight!”
The stowaway rose slowly and adjusted his clothes. His expression remained the same—silent, fiery defiance. But Lady Lucille decided that his obedience had improved. She shot a few more questions at him.
“Where did you come from?”
“Back there.”
“Where? Greenland—Labrador—Newfoundland?”
“I don’t know. It was a long way back.” His voice was thick with an accent that was new to me.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’ll help you sail through the ice.”
Lady Lorruth glanced at the captain, then at the crew. She tossed her head arrogantly. “We don’t need your help. We’ll take care of you when the time comes . . . Captain French, make him fast with chains.”
It was several days, then, before Gandl came out of the hold.
We had a week of dodging an ice pack that was bearing down upon us from the north. Daily it grew thicker. We fought to take advantage of every open channel. If we had had a steamboat, even a small tug, it would have been easy. But our brig was equipped only with sails and so we were being tossed about at the caprice of nature.
That was the week that we followed close along the shores of Greenland—the week that Steve Pound saw the strange pair who were following us, and told me about the picture he had drawn.
And on one of those days came the first tragedy of our expedition—the loss of Inez Dorster.
It happened during Lady Lucille’s dinner hour.
For some unaccountable reason only the captain had accompanied Lady Lucilleto dinner that afternoon. Her maid had been acting strangely, carrying on with much muffled crying and always looking sick from worry. Everyone supposed she was scared over the approaching dangers from the ice. It was bumping the sides of the ship almost constantly. The prospect of being ice-bound through a long arctic winter was a gloomy one for all of us.
Inez Dorster went overboard at two-ten in the afternoon.
Malonski, the cook; saw her fall past his window. He began to shout in Polish, and he fell over a table and chair on his way to the alarm bell.
For two or three minutes no one could make out what had happened.
Malonski finally made two of the Frabbels understand, and in his eagerness to drive them to the rescue—since he himself couldn’t swim—he pushed one of them overboard.
By that time a dozen or more of us had rushed up to see what all the noise was about. The captain missed the whole event, being preoccupied with food and, especially, drink. But Steve Pound, who was supposed to be sleeping, arrived on the scene in time to help rescue Rake Frabbel from his icy plunge.
As to Inez Dorster, she—was back there somewhere but we couldn’t see her. We were all too late. We circled back, and Steve and Shorty let down a dory, and young Frabbel and I went with them.
We searched for the body for two hours, but in the end we had to give up. The ice floes were sweeping down thick and fast with the current. It was a constant fight to keep our dory from being smashed to kindling wood. We were half full of water when we caught the hooks and made our way back to the deck of the Aurora.
The captain asked Professor Peterson to read a passage from the Bible and make a prayer, as a sort of funeral service. We were all pretty solemn with the shock of the thing; and especially sorry for Lady Lucille, who looked as if she wanted to cry but couldn’t.
More than anything else we were mystified. A woman who has been a faithful maid far ten or fifteen years doesn’t suddenly commit suicide unless the world has turned awful black—and I couldn’t see that it had.
But there was no time to wonder about it. “All hands on deck!” was cry from the bridge. The ice was closing in on us. For hours to came, every man of us was kept busy hooks and anchors, fighting off the trap.
“We could use a dozen more hands!” Steve Pound yelled, as he flung his weight against a pale, barely thrusting a floater aside. “We could sure use that stowaway.”
The captain made no comment. But a few minutes later he returned to the bow leading the gaunt, dark, half-starved figure of Gandl.
“You said you wanted to help,” the captain growled. “All right, we’ll see if you’re any good.”
Within ten minutes an undercurrent of whispering went over the noisy deck. “That damned stowaway is better than any three men.”
It was true. Whenever Shorty and I had a chance to go forward for a new catch with our anchor we’d get a glimpse of Gandl at work.
He was out in front of the ship’s prow, leaping from one floater to another, prying and splitting them with an iron bar, breaking the path. He was surer an his feet than any mountain goat, and quicker than a bobcat,
I wished that Lady Lucille could have seen him now. But she had gone to her room to be alone with her sorrows.
Gandl and Steve Pound were the last two men to quit. But at last there was a grinding reverberation that rumbled through the ship. A massive wedge of ice had slid right under our hull. We were lifted bodily. Then—clunk—we came to a dead stop.
The ice pack was tight around us. We were three miles from land, but the space was rapidly filling with solid ice, so that the continent seemed to spread right out and claim us.
That night everyone was so dog-tired that extra drinks were served all the around. The Frabbel brothers bought some of the extras off their fellow with sailors, and got drunk and wanted to fight everyone. They stormed around, yelling and cursing and boasting. Then one of them spied the stowaway and started dragging him out an the deck to give him a beating.
But Steve Pound picked up a crow-bar and tamed all three of the quarrelsome Frabbels and put them to sleep for the night and a good share of the next day.
CHAPTER IV
News from the Dead
By the end of the week we decided that it was useless to try to break our way out. We must wait until the ice broke of its own accord before we could pursue our journey. It was a demoralizing situation.
It took Steve Pound to rally our spirits. He insisted that Captain French put us on a rigorous daily schedule of exercise and amusements.
A part of my, daily routine was devoted to doing a portrait of Lady Lucille Lorruth. She decided that she wanted a picture of herself, dressed in sumptuous furs, sitting on deck.
The background of the picture was to be the field of ice that en
closed us. Since the temperature was seldom above freezing and often below zero we could only work about an hour at a stretch.
But these hours were full of conversations—some of them highly confidential. Lady Lucille needed someone to talk with, now, more than ever. She was deep in troubles—I had not guessed how deep.
Those troubles went right into the portrait. Try though I would to soften the picture by retouching it with warm colors, something evil crept into it—hardness of greed and the anxiety of secret ambitions.
I purposely ruined the picture one day so I could start over.
On my second trial I made an effort to keep Lady Lucille in a certain mood which I thought would be appropriate to this work. After all, I reasoned, there must be much in her character that is truly noble. She is risking her life to make this expedition.
Why?
Purely for her love and devotion to her dead husband.
What could be more beautiful than an affection so enduring? Ah—that was the theme that my portrait must capture. My painting would fill this face with longing and hope and infinite loyalty.
“Keep your eyes on the distant mountains,” I advised. “Can you imagine what hardships an explorer must endure, crossing that rugged terrain?”
“You mean my husband?”
“I often think of him,” I said, painting rapidly as I talked. “What a relief it would be to him and his party if we could find them in time . . . There is always a chance, you know, that they’ve survived somehow.”
“Did I doubt it?” she replied, rather too curtly.
“It would be miraculous, after five years. But if we should succeed, Lady Lucille, I would always believe it a miracle wrought by your faith—your love—your prayers.”
“I never pray,” she retorted coldly. Again her eyes were narrow and hard.
I continued to talk with her in terms of hope. It was difficult; like all the others aboard, I felt certain that we would never find Lord Lorruth alive. But like the rest of the crew, I had supposed that Lady Lucille was firm in her faith; that she had come believing and hoping we would find him alive.