BIMINI, by Bassett Morgan
Commander Crayne interrupted the tale by a gesture of his hand.
“Do you mind, Captain Ek, if I call Lieutenant Murphy in and have him take down what you are telling me? I’d like to check up on a few historical dates.”
The old man nodded.
“It’s what I want. Shows you’re takin’ int’rest. I’ve told some of this to several people. They think I’m crazy like you do, only they never got as far as takin’ notes.”
“Captain Ek, this is my aide, Lieutenant Murphy. He was with me on the polar flight. He is taking the brunt of this trip, and I don’t mind telling you that I’d rather take a dozen trips like our northern one than meet the crowds and dodge this publicity. Murphy, Captain Ek is telling of a trip he made north. Please make a note of places he mentions and data.”
Lieutenant Murphy, was one of those Americans who “don’t have to come from Ireland to be Irish.” Stormy black lashes “set in with a smutty finger” hid twinkling blue eyes as he looked at Captain Ek, whose white hair and silvery beard were close-trimmed, whose leathery brown skin showed fine wrinkles, and whose general appearance gave the impression of a man prematurely white.
Commander Crayne, whose name still occupied newspaper headlines recounting columns of his achievement in circling the North Pole and remaining in its vicinity long enough to make valuable discoveries which no other polar explorer had done, sat near the window. His face was in shadow and did not reveal the incredulity of his mind at the tale Captain Ek had been telling. He had first been impatient. So many visitors had called during his trip south, and since he arrived in San Francisco, that Murphy had installed himself as door dragon to keep them away. But even Murphy relented toward Captain Ek. The old seaman’s bearing was kindly and commanding. Then, too, he had given Murphy a brief outline of a proposition for Commander Crayne to consider.
“I was sayin’,” continued Captain Ek, “that we left Fort Chipewyan in the early spring, 1789, and to make a long story short, got to the Arctic Sea. I’ve gone over that trail again but I can’t get the waterlane we found. I left MacKenzie. We’d had some words, and anyway he was crazier to reach the Pacific then to go north.”
“Murphy, you’ve got that date, 1789,” Commander Crayne interpolated. “Remember Chicago wasn’t born then; I’m not sure, but I don’t believe even Fort Dearborn was in existence on the site of Chicago. Seventeen-eighty-nine,” he mused. “George the Third was reigning in England. Arkwright was making his spinning-jenny and Watts working on his steam engine. Burns was busy with his poems. Lord Byron was a baby. The French Revolution was at its height. America as a nation was about twelve years old. And Captain Ek says he was on his way north.”
“It’s jake with me,” commented Murphy; “he made a bigger noise than that when I was listening first.”
For an hour or more, Commander Crayne listened to the account of Captain Ek, fascinated by a story that was interlocked with data and detail, yet fantastic beyond belief. Then the old man took a checkbook from his pocket and unscrewed the cap of a fountain pen.
“You don’t believe this, young man,” he said, “and I don’t blame you none. But they’s a sayin’ in this country that money talks! What I told you for was to get you to take a trip north on my account. I want to git back to that big bowl in the earth. I can pay for the job and maybe make it worth your while. What will it take for flying-machines that’ll be able to stay there a couple or three months if necessary?”
“Offhand, I couldn’t tell you, Captain Ek. But I’ve great faith in a machine the English are making, and with a few improvements of my own, I think she’d do. It would cost a good deal.”
“You’ll go, then?” asked the old man.
“Certainly, if it can be managed.”
Captain Ek filled out a check, tore it loose and handed it to Crayne, who looked at it, then slowly smiled, and returned it. “I’ll put this in the bank,” said the old man. “They’ll let you know it’s there for you to draw on. Now get busy, sir.”
He rose and held out his hand, which Crayne grasped. He felt a spontaneous liking for Captain Ek, and a vast pity. There was no doubt the old fellow was mad, but his tale had held the young men deeply interested, and he had surprised them by his exact knowledge of polar conditions, his figures and dates, his nautical bearings and astronomical observations. Crayne, a stickler for detail and with a prodigious memory, found no flaw. The romantic stuff he discounted. That Caplain Ek claimed to have been a young man of twenty-one in 1789, and on his way north with MacKenzie via the Canadian northwest, he viewed as the wanderings of an aged man’s mind.
He bade Captain Ek good-bye, and returned to sit on a corner of the table looking at Murphy.
“That check was drawn to my name, and for one and a half million dollars, on the First National Bank of San Francisco,” Crayne said, then threw back his head and laughed. “For a bone-dry day, I have a dissipated feeling.”
An hour later Commander Crayne was summoned to the telephone and heard a voice announce that the manager of the First National Bank was speaking. He informed Commander Crayne that Captain Christian Ek had placed one and a half million dollars to his credit, and the bank would honor drafts on sight, but requested three days’ notice if the drafts were over thirty thousand cash.
Crayne’s voice was husky as he thanked the manager and clicked the receiver on its hook.
“Bud,” he said to Murphy. “it’s true. Kick me, punch me, it’ll be your last chance. Nobody is going to lay hands on me if I’m worth that much, after this minute.”
“You gotta buy a plane, and get back here to enjoy it,” said the unromantic Murphy. “How about sidesteppin’ a lotta dinners and celebrations in our honor, and gettin’ across after the plane? The sooner we find that bowl up north and the old man dips hisself in glory water, the sooner we come home and settle up. I owe a Post Street tailor for a pearl-gray suit.”
Which was one reason the triumphal trip of Commander Crayne was suddenly canceled, and he and Lieutenant Murphy left for England, while Captain Ek’s ship, a big auxiliary schooner, started her cruise through the Panama and via New York, where she received word from Crayne that he would be ready to proceed north in a fortnight.
Seven days later Crayne and Murphy watched Captain Ek’s ship, the Aurora, dock, and went aboard her for ihe first time. It was not the build of the schooner, two hundred feet long by forty beam, her oak hull and double oak and pine planking, her thousand-horse-power engine, and canvas for her three masts, which interested Crayne so much as the charts and crude drawings spread on the cabin table. Over these he pored for a long time. Captain Ek had made many attempts to find the vast depression at the Earth’s northern tip where he said he had found the source of that beautiful and strange illumination known as the Aurora Borealis.
The two weeks stretched into three before the thousand-horse-power Birmingham airplane was stowed safely on the Aurora, and during that interval Murphy had gathered considerable gossip at clubs and gatherings, which he detailed to Crayne over a good-night cigar.
“Course, they smile at him some, but he’s certainly got the dough and the oldest sea-captains along the docks admit that their gandfathers knew about him and his story. It’s funny. He can’t be real. They ain’t nobody that old, and if they was, he couldn’t be that spry. What’s the name o’ this here guy that went to Florida after a fountain of youth?”
“Ponce de León,” supplied Crayne. “The island he searched for was said to lie in the Bahama group, and was called Bimini.”
“Well, this Captain Methusaleh that we’ve hooked up with must have been readin’ about this here Bimini and never woke up.”
Dodging bergs and floes along the Labrador coast and into the ice of Baffin Bay, Commander Crayne had leisure to read the notes made by Captain Ek—one page in his native Norwegian, the translation in quaint English on the opposite page—and again he marveled as observations taken on their trip corresponded. T
he Aurora was equipped with the latest inventions of science for “finding” ice.
A sonic depth-finder interested Murphy and a Swedish scientist, Bjornsen, deeply, but Crayne learned that Captain Ek had a weird instinct which acted more quickly than the instruments. He was standing with the captain in the bridge one moonlight night when suddenly Captain Ek jerked the engine-room telegraph and jammed the wheel hard over. A few moments later Murphy rushed up and stood at the rail staring over the sea. It was several minutes before the gigantic ghostly mass of ice appeared faintly luminous against the stars.
“Lucky you felt her chill,” yelped Murphy. “We heard the engine telegraph before that berg made a sign on the jigger.”
“I need no such contraptions,” said the old man to Crayne.
“I’ve noticed that, sir,” Crayne answered, “but how do you get warning?”
“They tell me—the children of light.”
Crayne was silent. Captain Ek had used that term in his story of the Sea of Light, beyond the magnetic pole. The cold air off the vast ice-cap of Greenland was crisp and electric. Crayne wondered if it affected the old man as the moon is said to affect animal life of the lower orders, and those whose wits are wandering. Even he began to feel the “wingedness” of his flesh in that electric-charged air of high latitudes.
It was under the great hills of Meteorite Island that Crayne realized that Captain Ek’s story had a considerable foundation of truth, for the ship was hailed by Eskimos on shore with undoubted welcome.
At Cape York, kayaks darted about the Aurora and shouts of “Nalegak” greeted them. They hailed Captain Ek as a great chieftain. Landing, the party was escorted enthusiastically to the village and a feast provided in a large communal igloo. The laughing, chattering Eskimos were instantly interested in Murphy, who had brought a banjo and regaled them with jazz, but, missing the Captain, Crayne went in search of him and found him on a gray point of rock in the starlight, his arms outstretched while he repeated in a sonorous voice Norwegian words, as of pleading and passion.
He turned casually to Crayne. “They know I am coming, my friend; the Children of Light are here. And She, who is keeper of my soul, awaits me yonder.”
Again Crayne kept silence. He felt the electric tingling of his skin and hair under fox furs, as if soft fingers caressed him. There was no wind stirring; it was a night of calm silence, and the black sea and the ghostly bergs were all that eye could see. Yet Crayne saw the pulsing of the aurora take strange forms, like radiant creatures of dream fantasy, with streaming gossamers of green and roseate light. They swung over the heavens and dimmed the stars, and swept closer to earth. They floated in a ring of splendor, as if dancing about a circle in the center of which he and the captain stood.
“A marvelous night,” he murmured, his voice constricted and strange in his own ears. Captain Ek dropped a hand on Crayne’s arm for silence, and immediately sounded music fragile as tinkling glass, or violin bows drawn over crystal goblets.
Again Captain Ek spoke in his sonorous voice, and it seemed to draw the sweeping, swirling creatures of light nearer, until the radiance was so dazzling that Crayne closed his eyes. He heard a sigh that was almost a moan, and opening his eyes again, he found that he stood alone outside the radiance, which enveloped Captain Ek like a flame. Then it was gone, and the night was bafflingly dark after the splendor which had flown like a wind-driven cloud due north.
Captain Ek walked without a word to the igloo, followed by Crayne, who was shaken by that baptism of light and the fantastic optical delusion it produced.
For two weeks there was constant work, hunting and providing caches of food, stocking the Aurora with fresh meat, and selecting native crews and dogs in case of emergency. Then, with decks almost awash and fuzzy with dogs and fur-clad natives, the Aurora headed between the bergs of Smith Sound and made for Grant Land. Bitter cold fought them with fangs and claws. There were cutting winds, blinding drifts, and ice, but miraculously the Aurora plowed through until she lay at last on the north shore of Grant Land, and it was time to unload the Birmingham plane which Crayne and Murphy had been getting in order for quick lightering.
She was to carry Captain Ek, Crayne, Murphy, Bjornsen, two mechanics and a Negro cook; and none except the commander and his aide knew the story told by Captain Ek. It was a new route to Crayne, and he had only the stars, the compass, and the captain’s sketchy drawings to guide him. Yet, equipped with the last and best aids of science for protection and physical necessity, Crayne had no misgivings about the journey when they hopped off an ice-field with a comparatively smooth sweep and left the little Aurora and her crew, and the natives like motes on the vast frozen wilderness.
The Birmingham had a speed of four hundred miles an hour, with a hundred and ninety to make before she reached the magnetic pole. Head winds cut her speed amazingly, yet in the gray twilight that breathes between morning and evening stars, they crossed that dot of no man’s land which is the magnetic north.
In the protected cabin cockpit of the Birmingham, with ear-tubes connecting them, Crayne called to Captain Ek and pointed below. But the old man’s eyes gazed beyond.
“See!” he cried. “The Bowl! The Bowl!”
Far off against the stars, light shone. It was like the reflection of a fire, the glow from a volcano crater. And as if disturbed by some upheaval from earth’s center, streamers of light puffed out and were blown in that gorgeous display that men call the northern lights. They pulsed over the bowl of night sky, and blew toward the Birmingham. Crayne felt his hair lifting his fur hood and his skin tingling as gossamers streamed toward the plane and circled it. Glancing at Murphy, he saw the boy’s face weirdly illumined, and his eyes staring.
“If you see what I see, you’re crazy,” shouted Murphy, but although his lips were drawn from his strong white teeth, Murphy was not smiling. Commander Crayne was uneasy. It was enough that he saw those woman forms shaping from the mist, but when Murphy, matter-of-fact, hard-boiled youngster, saw them, Crayne could only marvel and control as best he might the flighty feeling of fear clutching him.
It was then that one of the mechanics reported water leaking from a cracked cylinder, and with a feeling of relief that he had an excuse other than his own apprehension, Crayne signaled to Murphy that they would land if possible to find fairly smooth grounding.
Murphy managed a smile instead of his grimace of tightly drawn lips, and the plane began to circle lower as Crayne made out a comparatively level stretch of frozen sea, but they were still traveling at top speed, and the wind that had harassed them was gone.
The Bowl of Light came nearer, uncomfortably nearer, a vast sea of pale flame which bubbled to the black rims of the depression and spurted what appeared to be like colored steam of many hues.
Crayne felt that he dared not attempt to fly over it with a leaking cylinder. Yet as Captain Ek realized they were lowering, he leaned near Crayne and bellowed in voice of rage, the first sign of temper he had shown on a voyage trying to the best-natured:
“Go on! Why do you halt now? See, they wait to welcome us, the Children of Light!”
Crayne howled the information about the cylinder, adding that he would later circle the Bowl, and finishing sternly: “I am commander, Captain Ek. Please remember.”
The Birmingham circled lower until within five hundred yards, and Crayne saw that what appeared to be smooth ice was a crumpled, humped expanse, yet there was nothing to do but land cautiously. He nursed the big machine as best he could, felt her wheels bump, then heard an ominous crack, and she tilted and slid with one wing-tip touching. The propeller whirred more slowly, and stopped.
Murphy was out of the enclosed cockpit cabin immediately.
“Cracked axle as well,” he shouted. “But that ain’t what’s got my goat. Look at them lights! Do I see ’em, or am I just plain nuts?”
Captain Ek showed the muscular grace and strength of a boy as he dropped from the open cabin door, then ran over the snow.
&nb
sp; “Children of the Light,” he howled back at them, his arm pointing to the heavens. “Now do you believe the story I told you back there in San Francisco?”
“Not much children,” growled Murphy. “Flappers maybe but nifty. Bathing-girl choruses ain’t got a thing on them babies. And if you see ’em, then I ain’t loco, Capt’n.”
Crayne stared from beside the plane. Bjornson joined him, and the Negro came toward them lifting his fur-clad feet high and treading carefully as if he feared to startle the lowering radiance that swung about the sky and trailed light in wheels and whorls over the ice, and were indubitably shaping to the figures of women, nude except for their gossamers of pulsing hues.
Nearer, closer they came. Crayne saw rosy arms stretch out to join hands, and their fairy feet tripped over the frozen hummocks which glittered under the luminance like jewels. There was sound like ice tinkling in glass, rising to bell chime, and wind of unearthly sweet voices. It took sequence and rhythm and became song. And such song! It chilled and warmed. It was ice and fire contending, whipping blood to flame, pulsing over flesh through their furs, bathing them in exquisite rapturousness. It was as if stars danced and clashed together, the music of the spheres. Under that poignant and sensuous flood of light and sound, they stood dumb. Even the voluble Murphy was silent, and Crayne saw in his eyes the reflection of that light and on his face a weird unearthly expression.
He reached out to touch Murphy’s arm, then clutched it. The boy did not move, seemed unaware of his touch.
Spellbound, they gazed, until rapture became painful, the heart-searing ache that is bred of unutterable beauty in those rare moments when flesh stems to drop away and the spirit free itself.
It was Captain Ek who broke the spell, to Crayne’s infinite relief. With outstretched arms he ran toward the dancing circle, which parted and drew aside, and down silver luminance like a moon pathway from the flames of the Bowl walked a Titania of the North!
She seemed fashioned of ice tinted like human flesh, yet transparent. Her long fair hair swayed as on a gentle wind and swirled to her bare pink feet. Glittering light draped her from shoulder to ankle, blazing one moment like fabric sewn with diamonds, gleaming like fire the next. A smile of soaring sweetness moved her lips, and a glitter like fallen stars scattered where she moved.
The Weird Fiction Megapack Page 37