by Don Wilcox
But Gandl had had a most rude awakening from that bad dream. His bewilderment had prevented his saying much at first. Now, days later, the rumor was growing that Gandl privately denied his part in the affair.
“The King killed a Firemaker in defense of Gandl,” the people would say. “But Gandl won’t admit it . . . He belittles himself . . . He says he is not sure that the King ever gave him any messages. He always listened, as a King’s Advisor should, but he is not sure he ever heard.”
The rumors troubled many people, especially those who believed that Gandl had a chance to be King.
“The old King virtually placed the mantle upon him,” they would argue. But for some reason Gandl still would not interest himself in promoting the traditions. The Firemakers were helpless. They wanted to condemn him for blasphemies, but they were afraid.
As for Gandl, his chief interest in life was to gather a little cluster of interested listeners around him and tell them about the outside world.
“There are many lands full of friendly people. There is sunshine half the time. There are no enemies waiting above our stairs. That is a myth that has been handed down by our forefathers from thousands of years back.
“The age of ice was upon our part of the world in those days. And our forefathers took refuge in the ice caverns to escape a hostile people.
“But that was long, long ago. The ice has moved away from those continents. It moved slowly, and we—our frightened forefathers—moved with it. And so here we are today, hundreds of generations later, still living underneath the ice and still afraid of enemies who forgot about us two hundred centuries ago.”
It was an impassioned appeal to face facts. It stirred the sluggish imaginations of many people.
One group after another would follow Gandl to the hallway where the row of dots had been cut in the wall like an endless border. Yes, they understood. Those dots represented years. The trail of time written there could be followed backward into past centuries.
And many would accompany Gandl on his tours into the remotest ends of the cave. There they would see ruins of the fine masonry and the engineering feats which had once protected their race against falling ice. It was plain that their entrance into this land was a well marked trail from the southward.
“Gandl is right, I am convinced,” Professor Peterson would say. “The main stem of this race has come up from a temperate zone under the cover of ice. The occasional newcomers from the outside world—like ourselves—have given impetus to their arts of speech and use of tools.”
But all of this was too baffling for most of the people. It called for too much thought and imagination and was hard to digest. And it made Gandl more than ever a subject of controversy.
However, Gandl was not seeking popularity. He was after the truth. He was much more eager to establish facts than to establish himself as King.
A new king was soon to be chosen. The air was full of rumors. But the days went by and no choice was announced.
I lost all track of time. But I knew it could not be long, now, until the ocean ice would start breaking and the Aurora would start back.
Lord Lorruth and Steve were continuing to make trips up to the surface, to convey sled-loads of the Lord’s stored furs to Lady Lorruth. I wondered if her heart would thaw toward her husband—
“She has never found out he’s still alive,” Steve told me. “We take the precaution to get away before she or the captain spot us. But one day we bumped into Reuben Frabbel, and he told us she still has hopes of landing the captain’s fortune—though he is usually too drunk to realize.”
Steve and I were interrupted by a pair of messenger boys. . .
“Queen sends word to Pound. She let you take tiger sometimes to help carry furs. She wants see you.”
“Me?” I asked hopefully. But no such luck.
“She wants see Pound.”
I returned to my painting, and Steve went for a private interview with Veeva.
I was getting used to this. Various persons, including Shorty, Peterson, Lord Lorruth, Gandl, and the friendlier Firemakers, had been called aside by the Queen for interviews. I had been ignored.
Well, perhaps I shouldn’t put it that strong. Veeva had dropped by to see me a few times, but she had never paged me to come to her throne.
I whiled away my time painting many scenes and portraits. She had provided me with equipment, including certain bright luminous paints quite new to me. She had requested that I do portraits of several of her friends—a Firemaker, a workman, a young mother, a digger from the mines, a few boys. And she would frequently stop at my private studio cavern to see how I was progressing.
“You’re keeping me busy,” I said, “to keep me out of mischief.”
“You enjoy painting, don’t you?”
“More than anything except making love to a beautiful Queen.”
“How long will it take you to get your fill of painting down here?”
“I’ll run out of paint first,” I replied. A short time after that, I was paged to come to a ceremony in the Red Room.
I was ushered to the stairway in the presence of the thousands of spectators, and then and there I was made King.
CHAPTER XXVI
Lady Lucille Invades
It was a coronation and a wedding ceremony, all in one, and I must say that I was more than a little amazed. My conduct throughout the occasion must have revealed my consternation. Afterward, Shorty told me he fully expected me to say, “This is so sudden!”
Well, it was sudden. For a Queen who was supposed to be twenty-two thousand years old it seemed like hurrying things up a bit not even to give her new King a five minute warning before the wedding.
As a matter of fact I would have delighted in a little wooing—a few moonlight tiger rides and such—if I had known I stood a chance with her.
After the ceremony, I learned that our match had been virtually sealed from the moment that I saved her from the balcony fall and kissed her.
But to make sure that her emotions weren’t running away with her twenty-two thousand year old judgment, she had called in her various friends—and mine—to ask their opinions of me. Steve, Shorty, and the others must have done well by me.
At first the natives had advised her that I was probably a fly-by-night outsider who would soon get homesick for my old world, and would desert.
“Consider the virtues of your former spouse,” they had counselled. “How constant a partner he has been. In all these twenty-two thousand years he has never once tried to leave you.”
“Nor to love me,” she had replied. But as these natives had watched me paint and had observed the interest I found in their faces and their manners of living, they had revised their opinions.
And so I became the King. Not the new King or the second King—simply the King.
In the ceremony they assured me that I was twenty-two thousand and thirty years old, and that I would live forever. And, when I seemed a trifle confused over what I had done with my twenty-two thousand years of forgotten youth, they assured me that I had slept it away on an ornamental stone resting place.
Fortunately I remained scared enough through the ceremony to hold back my smiles. But it struck me funny to realize that that dusty old skeleton was me. That being the case, I had crowned that old Firemaker with my own thigh bone. The very thought gave me a catch in the side—or was it stitches?
“If you’re gonna stay here and be King,” Shorty said to me after the ceremony, “all I want is a job being janitor. I’ll stick fer life just to be around you and your good lookin’ wife—if she’ll promise not to make me walk that white lap-dog of hers.”
Steve and Professor Peterson were also quick to congratulate me on my success; Gandl was a good sport too.
But I was not at all confident that I possessed the qualities of leadership I would need to serve as King. Most of the knotty problems would fall to Veeva and the Firemakers, as per tradition. But I must be ready when troubles were dumped
into my lap.
Trouble came one day in the spring and its name was Lady Lucille Lorruth.
With the Frabbel brothers and Captain French as her escorts, Lady Lucille made the perilous hike over the glacier to our caverns.
When I came upon her she was firing a revolver at Veeva in the Red Room. Her escorts had waited on the long stairway. Lady Lucille, white-faced and wild-eyed with madness, had come to wreak revenge.
Each shot from her unsteady hand caused Veeva to dodge or leap for cover. The Queen—my wife—was at the mercy of a mad murderess!
That was what I found as I rushed into the Red Room.
“Lady Lucille!” I cried. “Don’t do it. Shoot at me, if you must. But not her.”
Lady Lucille turned and gasped. “Jim McClurg! Come help me get my revenge!”
“I’ll help. Give me the gun!” I shouted, running toward her.
In answer she aimed at me and fired twice. I was half a room away, luckily, and she was a bad shot.
The tiger bounded to Veeva’s rescue in that moment, and the girl went riding straight toward this insane assailant.
“Don’t!” I cried. “Don’t go near—”
Veeva crossed like a streak of lightning, flashing her sword. Lady Lucille, tossing back her wild locks of streaked hair, aimed the pistol straight at her sworn enemy.
Snap. The gun was empty. Snap . . . Snap . . . Snap . . . Lady Lucille couldn’t believe it. She was unprotected. The sword was coming. She screamed like nothing human.
Veeva flew past and gave a lightning-swift double stroke with her sharp weapon. Two wisps of hair jumped from the top of Lady Lucille’s head.
Veeva spun around and raced back, twice, three times, four—and each time she took a deadly whack at her adversary’s head, cropping the streaked hair closer, closer—
Lady Lucille emitted a blood-curdling moan and fell to the floor in a pitiful heap.
Veeva, panting but nevertheless laughing, looked down upon the vanquished foe. “Now do we understand each other? What could I do for you?”
Lady Lucille tried to defend herself by appealing to me. She tried to call Veeva a husband stealer and a vampire and a curse, who had demoralized the Aurora’s crew and moreover had brought defeat upon Lord Lorruth and his party.
“You know I’m right, Jim McClurg.” Lady Lucille, still crouched on the floor, beseeched me to back up her charges. “This awful woman tried to steal my furs. And she has stolen my husband. He’s hiding here. I know it. Reuben Frabbel told me. You’ll admit it, won’t you, Jim McClurg?”
“Lord Lorruth is here,” I said, “but you can’t see him. He doesn’t owe you anything. He’s given you the furs, out of the bigness of heart—”
“That awful girl—”
“Silence,” I snapped. “That girl could teach you more loyalty than you’ve ever dreamed. She’s been faithful for years to a husband who has given her nothing. Your husband has given you everything—everything but his life, and you’ve wanted that too, so you’ll be free to marry another fortune!”
Lady Lucille’s eyes were wild with rage, her lips twisted, but her words wouldn’t come. She was stunned to silence by my angry broadside.
I sent some boys up the stairs to get Captain French and the Frabbels to take care of her.
The captain was at a loss, he said, over her terrible outbursts. In this instance her fury had been aroused over one of the furs—a fur skirt which Veeva herself had once received as a gift from Lord Lorruth and had decided to discard—ornamental bells and all—in her effort to keep back nothing that Lady Lucille might claim.
The ornamental bells were a part of a set which Lord Lorruth had once purchased in Mexico, and their musical notes were identical in pitch. Some of them had been used on board the Aurora, and I remember that during my first sight of Veeva I had been struck by something familiar in the tinkling sounds of her ornaments.
For the present poor Lady Lorruth’s fury was spent, and a sorry sight she was as the captain and the Frabbels led her away.
Within the hour Veeva sent Steve Pound forth with Whitey the tiger to help the party get back safely to the ship—for the spring twilight had not prevented heavy snows and bitter weather.
The wisps of hair—blue-black, with a streak of white—became trophies in Veeva’s collections.
“If I ever start being jealous, Jim, just show them to me and I will be good,” Veeva laughed.
“You will never have any reason to be jealous,” I promised.
CHAPTER XXVII
Kindling Wood
I must record an event of tragedy before I bring this story to a close.
I am glad that I did not witness it.
And I am especially glad that Veeva was not on the scene when it occurred.
Steve came back to us a few days after he had departed to escort Lady Lorruth and the rest of the party back to the brig.
I had doubted whether he would return to us. I knew he wanted to. Shorty had decided to stay. Professor Peterson was sure there was plenty of research waiting to keep him busy for a few years—perhaps for most of his life.
And Steve, loyal pal that he was, had wanted to see our new regime get off to a good start, and Veeva had promised to make him a Firemaker for as many years as he cared to stay. Gandl had assured him that there would be other arctic explorers before many years, now that steamboats were coming in.
But Steve was second in command on the Aurora, and his duty was plain.
And so he had taken his final leave when he and Whitey went forth to accompany the party to the ship.
Whitey the tiger would, of course, return to us by himself.
As events turned out it was Steve who returned by himself.
“All the way back Lady Lorruth was like a frozen calm between storms,” Steve related. “She rode the tiger with me because I made her. But I knew she was full of that devilish resentment. Now and then I’d drop her off and go back and help the others along. When we’d ride up to where she was waitin’ she wouldn’t seem to see us, and she wouldn’t speak. She’d just watch the tiger.
“I got to wonderin’ if there was a spot between its eyes or something, the way she’d always be gazin’ there.
“Well, finally we plowed through the last mile of fog, so thick you could spread it like butter. The ice was breakin’ and slidin’ along with the current, and there were some big dangerous bergs amongst the floes. I saw we were all fixed to weigh anchor and heave away, and it was high time.
“But Whitey was still standin’ there on the bank of ice, not knowing what to do. I was halfway up the ladder at the tail end of the party when I noticed. I went back and tried to make the tiger understand he was supposed to go home, and I pointed to the mountain ridge that you just could barely see through the thick mist.
“All at once she began shootin’ at us—Lady Lucille—standin’ up on the deck by herself. Had a rifle.
“By the time she’d shot four, I could make out the captain runnin’ down from the bridge yellin’ at her to stop. But she fired another one and that did it.”
Steve Pound paused and drew a deep breath, and Shorty urged him to go on, tell us what. But Professor Peterson and Veeva both looked as if they’d already guessed it.
“I didn’t hear that last shot,” said Steve, “because the sound froze into the biggest ball of ice you can imagine. One second there was the brig with sails ready to hoist on both masts, and the next second there was that great big ball of ice ten times the size of the ship. And all at once it was spinnin’ over, because the side that had formed flat against the ice and water was lighter.
“There was an awful roar and clatter of ice crashin’ against ice, and I knew the brig and everybody on it were inside.
“Now it went floatin’ down with the current—and then I turned to notice the awful thing that had happened to Whitey. One of the bullets had got him through the shoulders, and he was lyin’ there in the snow, bleedin’ and dyin’.”
Steve pa
used.
“Go on, please,” said Veeva in a low voice that was almost a whisper.
“It musta been that last bullet, I figure. It woulda jumped out ahead of the sound, all right. Otherwise it wouldn’t have got through. Because that ice ball was an awful parcel of weight. You shoulda seen it when it crashed into that iceberg. That was one awful smash-up.”
“What happened to the brig?” I asked. “It was built to stand a lot of pressure.”
“It got pattered into kindling wood,” said Steve. “And it musta brought a sudden end to most everybody on board. I got a glimpse of Malonski floatin’ along like a slab of ice. And I saw a few others. But no one but the captain pulled to shore alive. He was almost gone from a couple of terrible gashes, but he lasted for about five minutes.
“Kind of glad I had those five minutes with him,” Steve went on. “You see he’d managed to get to shore with someone in his arms. Yep, she was dead, and she was a pitiful lookin’ thing, but it gave him kind of a last glow of pride, havin’ me know he’d tried. But he figures that she didn’t know. She was too near gone from the minute the ship went over.
“Well, that’s it,” said Steve, “and as soon as I get warmed up a bit I’ll take a shovel and go back—”
“I’ll take care of that,” said Lord Lorruth quietly. And Gandl volunteered that he would get some boys and sleds and go along.
Poor Lady Lorruth. I often think of her and what a life of torture she made for herself. And when I get to thinking I always try to patch things up in a daydreamy sort of way. If I had just made more effort to show her that she was on the wrong track—
If some of us had understood her and helped her to talk out her troubles—
If—if—if—
If only we had somehow managed to bring her and Lord Lorruth together to help them patch up their difficulties—
But Steve Pound said he had tried that with all his might. Lord Lorruth was stubbornly determined not to visit with her. He had no intention of ever going back to her. And for five years past he had told himself that if she should ever sail north to find him he would hide.