The Complete Novels

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The Complete Novels Page 21

by Don Wilcox


  All at once I saw that I was mistaken. She didn’t believe any such thing.

  “Your husband is a very courageous man,” I would say. I would purposely stress the word is, to imply that her husband was still living.

  “Yes,” Lady Lorruth would reply.

  “He was one of the bravest gentlemen in England.”

  Note that I quote her as answering in terms of the past rather than the present. I am sure she was not aware she was doing this. But it happened over and over again.

  “My husband was a favorite of all the noblemen,” she would say. “He was a personal friend of the King.”

  See what I was driving at? I was proving to myself that Lady Lorruth knew at heart that her husband must be dead.

  I kept her gazing at the mountains, but her conversation would bound away from the subject of her lost husband.

  “Those mountains are wealth,” she would say, and the avarice of her heart would creep right into her portrait. “There must be hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furs out there waiting to be claimed. Lord Lorruth must have gathered a fortune for me this time.”

  If I succeeded in diverting her from a contemplation of furs she might lapse into a theme which seemed to give her much mental torture.

  “What will the people back in England say when they learn that my maid committed suicide? How can I explain? What will the gossips whisper—about me?”

  There seemed to be a very guilty conscience at work here.

  But if I failed to enrich my portrait with a mood of tragic devotion, I succeeded in capturing some of this inner turmoil. In my own mind I came to the conclusion that Lady Lorruth was sailing under false pretenses. Why had she come? Not because she believed her husband to be alive. It must be from some other motive.

  Since we were locked against the upper shore of Greenland, we began making daily expeditions on foot. And luckily so, for we discovered, on the point of a cliff, a landmark.

  It was a point that most ships would be forced to pass.

  The landmark was a cairn of stones standing twelve feet tall. Our sailors dug into the cairn and there they found a steel box, tied closed with a wire.

  Inside the box was a letter addressed, “Lady Lucille Lorruth.”

  You can imagine the excitement on board our ship while we waited on the deck for Lady Lucille to emerge from her cabin to tell us the news.

  I was prepared for her apathetic reaction. When she made an effort to respond to the sailors’ curiosity and enthusiasm, her manner was a sham. Her show of hope rang false.

  “He passed this way,” she said. “I think we shall find him if we keep going. He speaks of—ah—furs. An abundance of them. I will tell you more—later.”

  The sailors were reverently silent.

  They seemed to be saying, “Poor Lady Lucille. She still thinks we’ll find him alive.”

  The captain rubbed his whiskers dubiously. “Is the letter dated?”

  “It bears a date,” said Lady Lucille, “of five years ago. But I have faith that everything will be all right. Yes, we’ll push right on, as soon as the ice breaks for us. Meanwhile, you must all keep hoping for the best, and—ah—praying.”

  Her shallow voice carried thin conviction. But the sailors were touched, and she had made the most of their sympathies.

  However, her eye caught mine just as she said “praying” and I saw her cheeks flush with anger. She must have read my distrust.

  She turned swiftly, clutched the letter to her breast, and hurried off to her room.

  CHAPTER V

  White Tiger to the Rescue

  The next day the further news from the letter was revealed to us. A gift was waiting for Lady Lorruth—a gift of furs. It had been hidden, according to the letter, in a cache on the next cliff to the north.

  This news gave us a tremendous lift of spirit: it gave us something to work for, something in reach while we were still locked in the ice. Immediately Captain French planned a small expedition which was to proceed on foot to the appointed spot.

  When I heard that Shorty Barnes was one of the chosen party I couldn’t resist tagging along. Shorty Barnes had won the record of falling down more times than any other man on board. I saw in him possibilities of a series of comic cartoons. He was built on the lines of an apple dumpling, his eyes resembled those of a curious pike, and he was invariably getting himself into trouble. He didn’t know it, but I had fifteen or twenty sketches of him in characteristic poses—tumbling over the table, being frightened on a night watch, jerked off his feet by the anchor he tossed at an ice drift, and so on.

  I had a hunch that the boys would let Shorty take the risks if any were to be taken, and I was right. When we reached the second cliff our way was blocked by a twenty-foot wall of ice. It was a short cut and if we could scale it, it would save us an hour of trudging around a small bay. However, before it was a five-foot neck of water, like a moat in front of an icy castle.

  We threw an ice hook to the top of the twenty-foot ledge and it caught fast.

  “All right, Shorty, up the rope you go,” said Captain French.

  Shorty was game. He went up the rope hand over hand, but just as he reached the top of the twenty-foot ascent a strange thing happened.

  The pack of ice cracked and split wide open. It spread about four feet in one sudden vertical break. It was like an explosion. The anchor was left without support. Shorty, rope, and anchor and all went down, smack into the water.

  Comedy turned to near tragedy on the spot. Everyone of us was dressed in heavy furs. A leap into that icy pool would mean coming to grips with death itself.

  Shorty wailed in a blood-chilling tone. But there was hope in that outcry, and in his clumsy struggle—as though he had decided this was a good time to learn to swim.

  I supposed Steve Pound would be the first man to the rescue.

  But it was our stowaway who plunged. He went in like a seal. You would think he’d lived in icy waters all his life. In a moment he was out again with ice collecting on his bristling black stubble and a deathly white Shorty in his arms.

  Now the only thing to do was to send part of our party back with Shorty as swiftly as possible.

  No furs were found. Nothing was accomplished that would give Lady Lucille any satisfaction.

  But what made the greatest impression on all of us was that our stowaway had proved himself, for the second time, a hero.

  Lady Lorruth was not impressed.

  She did not even pretend to be. She had taken an icy dislike to Gandl from the first.

  After he had helped so valiantly in our fight with the floe ice, I supposed he would gain her favor. But instead, the relationship had taken a turn for the worse, owing to a very frank and blunt statement of Gandl’s—a speech that was frightfully shocking to Lady Lucille’s nerves.

  It had happened that very morning before we started off to look for the furs. Gandl was no longer in chains. He was sharing Shorty’s cabin—an accommodation that he had certainly earned, and that Steve Pound had arranged he should have.

  When Lady Lucille announced that there would be a search for the furs, Gandl was on hand to volunteer.

  “But we won’t find furs,” Gandl had asserted in his thick drawling voice. “Five years is too long. They will be gone.”

  “I have faith in my husband,” Lady Lucille snapped in a haughty manner.

  “He may be gone too,” Gandl said very solemnly. His innocent manner was genuine. He believed that Lady Lucille had not faced this possibility.

  Her anger was rising, but she tried to silence him with a sarcastic retort. “You know entirely too much.”

  “Yes, I do. I know why the other lady chose to die. And you know, too. Because I heard—”

  “Hsssh!” Steve Pound warned, and Gandl fell silent.

  But Lady Lucille turned a dozen different colors and her arms stiffened like vibrating metal.

  “It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” she cried, and she shook her head so violent
ly that the flesh of her cheeks and throat became a shapeless shuddering. As the captain hastily led her away we could all hear her vicious snarl, “I can’t stand that man. I can’t stand him.”

  But in spite of Lady Lucille, Gandl was a valuable addition to our crew. Twice in the presence of danger he had proved himself a man of phenomenal ability.

  The very next day there were signs that the ice was about to break up and set us free. At noon, Lady Lorruth called the stowaway for a conference. And the whisper went around the ship that she had changed her attitude toward him.

  Steve and I were present, and I must admit that she was doing her best to seem friendly to the slow, bewildered, ragged young man.

  “Gandl, they tell me you helped bring Shorty Barnes back?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you didn’t help the men search for the furs?”

  “No.”

  “They tell me that you were very confident at climbing over the ice,” she said.

  “Thank you, your ladyship.”

  “I’ll send you back,” said Lady Lorruth. “You will go by yourself. Where the others failed, you may succeed. I want you to go and look for the hidden furs.”

  “After five years, I do not think—”

  “Never mind what you think. You are to start at once, and look thoroughly.”

  “I shall start at once,” said Gandl with a respectful bow.

  And he did. Within an hour he disappeared from sight over the hummock ice. And that was when Lady Lorruth again took personal command of the ship.

  “Captain French, I want you to get us out of here at once: Get the whole crew to work. Use the dynamite if necessary. Get us into that channel. Anything, just so we break free.”

  The captain looked puzzled.

  “We are getting free,” he said dubiously. “Within an hour—”

  “We have not an hour to waste. Not even a minute. We must go now.”

  “But what about Gandl? You sent him on an errand. If you think he’ll find a cache of furs—”

  “Didn’t you tell me you found the cache empty?” said Lady Lucille.

  “Yes, but what if Gandl—”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions. Hurry.”

  We worked like beavers, everyone of us, chopping and dynamiting, risking our lives to force a path through the ice.

  After three hours we were free. We’ broke into a long crooked channel with ice floes grinding and scraping on all sides.

  The channels widened. The gales pushed us along northward. We were almost out in the open.

  “What about Gandl?” Shorty shouted. “He’s still over there somewhere. Aren’t we going to wait for Gandl?”

  None of us knew what to say. This looked like deliberate murder. Out of the corners of our eyes we watched Lady Lorruth. Her lips tightened brutally.

  Shorty began to pounce around the deck trying to attract someone’s attention. “Gandl! Gandl! What about him? He’ll get left. What’s the idea—”

  Shorty’s wail was cut short suddenly. The captain biffed him across the head, and Shorty went toppling down against the rail.

  That was a moment of sullen silence for all of us. It was a true test of the captain and Lady Lorruth. All of us saw their true colors now.

  No one said very much. No one dared. Shorty Barnes got up and started limping around the deck. His eyes were deep with hurt and resentment. We were watching him. He walked into the bow, stood there for a long time staring out into the deep.

  Many of the crew were still murmuring over what had happened when they noticed that Shorty was pointing. There was a narrow passage ahead. A peninsula from the island where the furs were supposed to be hidden jutted out about half a mile and threatened to block our path. A channel left between it and a field of pack ice looked to be no more than thirty yards wide. The danger in that narrow pass was crowding down on us.

  The gale had stiffened. We were making five or six knots. If we could clear the pass, all was well. But for all we knew there might be a floor of ice beneath the surface.

  Steve Pound studied the current through his pocket telescope. The captain shouted orders to everyone.

  But what Shorty Barnes was pointing at was neither the narrow pass nor the current but something far more breathtaking.

  He began to mumble, “What is that thing? Come here. Come here, George. Do you see what I see?”

  George and Bill and a whole cluster of crewmen saw. It might have been a statue in ice. It might have been the largest polar bear that we ever encountered. At the distance of one hundred and fifty yards we could not yet be sure that it was anything alive—only that it was something shaped like a massive white animal.

  Shorty edged close to me.

  “All right, Jim, get your sketch pad. That’s what I told you about the other day.”

  I obeyed—reluctantly. But by the time I began drawing I knew what I was sketching—not some ice imitation, but a real live polar tiger.

  The big beast crept slowly toward the water’s edge.

  Some of the sailors had gone for firearms. For once neither the captain nor Lady Lorruth had the presence of mind to give any orders.

  Suddenly the animal turned and bounded up over the icy bank and disappeared.

  A moment later it reappeared at the top of the ledge. Now it bore a rider.

  How in the name of high heaven it was possible for these two creatures to be inhabiting the waste of ice was more than anyone could guess. But we all saw. We couldn’t deny our eyes. And it was the most breathtaking sight I’ve ever looked upon—that beautiful white tiger was being ridden by a breathtakingly beautiful girl!

  I dropped my sketch pad. The men forgot about their guns. We were the statues of ice, then, gazing as we would have gazed if a fairyland of stars had been floating past us.

  The girl rode southward, along the mountainous peninsula, and we crowded astern to watch her.

  Now she bounded out of sight, now she reappeared around a bulwark of hummock ice.

  At last she stopped, some five hundred yards to our rear. She reached down to help someone else onto the tiger. It was our stowaway, Gandl. She came racing back with him.

  But this time our ship was nosing straight into the narrow channel and a swift current was bearing us forward. In our confusion we entrusted ourselves to Steve Pound. It was up to him to steer us through this perilous pass. But we were too much hypnotized to watch him. All eyes were on the tiger’s race to meet us.

  It was a race. The girl was speeding back to us, bringing Gandl. Just as we passed through the narrows, that strange white tiger bounded over the last hill of ice and tore down the bank in a flurry of flying snow.

  The beast stopped short of the water’s edge. The girl clung to its furry neck. Her other arm released Gandl. He bounded down, raced across the last few steps of the icy shore slipped into the water, clothes and all. A moment later he climbed up the ladder and was safely aboard.

  But we were no longer paying any attention to Gandl. Rather we were drinking in the picture before us—our nearest view of the tiger and its rider retreating along the promontory of ice.

  I tried to catch the details of color and costume. Already the girl and her mount had turned to race away.

  As Steve Pound had said, she was like something out of a Viking story book. Her gold helmet was adorned with wings. She was wearing jeweled breast plates. She was bearing a gold sword. Her wrists were ornamented with bracelets and I was aware that there was a tinkling of bells in rhythm with the movement of her arms. There seemed to be something familiar in this ring, but at the moment I couldn’t catch what is was.

  The girl was certainly not dressed for arctic weather. The flowing red robe fluttered back from her shoulders loosely. The beautiful skirt of red fox fur was much too short to protect her bare knees.

  But all in all it was as bright and gay a costume as one could hope to see in a circus.

  It gave me the feeling that the whole spectacle—girl, ti
ger, costume and all—must have somehow escaped from the world’s finest-trained animal show—or was this snow-covered country a land of ghosts?

  Lady Lucille’s outcry broke our gasping silence. Pointing at the girl’s costume, she shrieked, “My furs! They’re mine—I know it! My furs! My furs!”

  CHAPTER VI

  The Captain Confides

  We were a deckful of question marks.

  Nobody could make sense out of what had just happened. The girl had ridden completely out of sight. Only the foot tracks convinced us that what we had seen was real.

  But here was Gandl. We couldn’t doubt him.

  At the moment Gandl was glaring daggers at Lady Lucille. Everyone of us guessed how he felt. For all we knew, he may have believed that all of us had tried to give him the slip. But no one offered him any explanation.

  Lady Lorruth continued to stare at the bank of ice where the rider had disappeared.

  Suddenly she turned on Gandl. Instead of making excuses for her treachery, she faced him accusingly.

  “Who was that human?” she demanded. “Where did she come from? Why did she bring you back here?”

  Gandl’s silence was defiant.

  Lady Lucille’s eyes blazed. “Those furs she had—they were mine. I know they were. Lord Lorruth described them in his letter. Who is she? Why did she dare—”

  “To bring me back?” Gandl said quietly. “Perhaps so you could send me on another errand.”

  His voice was deep and intense with suppressed emotion. The situation was charged with the electricity of hatred. It was something that we all felt. If I had been drawing it in a caricature, Lady Lorruth would have had a knife upraised and Gandl would have had his fist clenched and his teeth bared.

  So perfect was his control that he simply stood motionless. His drenched clothes were turning to ice.

  “Don’t talk to him now,” said Captain French. “Give him a chance to change before he freezes to death.”

 

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