ONE, and possibly the chief, of Mr. Fowler Wright's attributes which have gone to make him one of the most successful of present-day novelists, is his brilliant versatility. But in the present novel he has done something for which his wide public will be exceedingly glad - he has gone back to the romanticism of THE ISLAND OF CAPTAIN SPARROW, perhaps the greatest of all his successes. BEYOND THE RIM is a romance of adventure in the Antarctic, dealing with the impact of some modern English people upon the descendants of a party of religious refugees who had left England for the New World three centuries earlier, and had been driven by stress of weather into the Antarctic, where they had lived isolated lives from that time.
BEYOND THE RIM
CHAPTER ONE
IT was three years ago - three years last February - that Franklin Arden missed his train at Victoria, and wandered into the Ricardo Restaurant. He was not concerned by the delay, having no wife to consider, and his housekeeper being used to his irregularities. He had an hour to wait, and a meal was indicated.
So he ordered dinner, and sat down alone in a quiet corner; but the room began to fill, and the three other places at his table were soon occupied one after the other.
The man who came in first, and sat opposite to him, really originated the whole matter, and changed the lives of the other three whom chance had gathered, yet he was of the least importance, and though Franklin retained a vague memory of his appearance, and a keen one of his manner, he did not learn his name, and might not have recognized him had they met a week later with a different background.
The man who took the seat on his left, whom he was afterwards to know as Captain Sparshott, was short and spare, with a very brown and furrowed skin, and puckered wrinkles sound eyes that were small and bright
The fourth place was taken by a lady whom a waiter directed to the only seat left vacant, with some apology, to which she replied that it would do quite well "unless these gentlemen wish to be private". She could not know that they were all equally strangers.
It might have been difficult to recall how the conversation started. Doubtless a request for mustard or the menu, a barren courtesy of convention, and then - somehow - an allusion to broadcasting by the man opposite Franklin Arden, the one who had come in second, and whose name he did not learn.
There had been an article in the Evening Telegraph advocating the inclusion of more controversial subjects in the broadcasting programmes, to which he alluded, and Franklin gave it a word of casual approval, at which the man broke out into a somewhat unmannerly disagreement.
"If you once begin that sort of thing, you'd never draw the line," he said dogmatically. "You'd soon have the Anti Vivisectionists, and the Anti-Vaccinators, and all the other cranks wanting a go, and end up with someone telling us that the earth is flat."
Franklin didn't think that the earth was flat, any more than most people do, but the man irritated him. He hated cant phrases like "draw the line". He knew them for a sign of a mind that accepts everything orthodox, and sneers at originality in thought or conduct. So he said quietly: "I suppose that could be argued."
"It might among lunatics."
"I hope I'm not that bad."
The man stared at him incredulously.
"You don't really - " he began, and the contempt in his tone annoyed Franklin further.
"No," he interrupted, "I don't. But I say it could be argued quite sanely. The arguments commonly put forward would satisfy no one who was not convinced already - or perhaps I should say prejudiced - by previous assertion."
"What arguments do you mean?"
"Well, I once read - actually in a school textbook, adopted by a leading educational body - that the earth is round because it casts a round shadow on the moon. A soup plate would do the same. It was almost as silly as the answer I got myself when a small child, from a maiden aunt. 'It's round,' she said vaguely, looking for something to illustrate her assertion, and seeing a water-bottle on the table, 'round like a water jug.'
"Another frequent argument is that a ship's hull may pass out sight while its masts are still visible. This is true enough, but how do we know that the textbooks for the next generation will not offer a different explanation of this optical peculiarity?"
The man answered as one who restrains impatience with difficulty at a child's persistence. "There are some things too evident for dispute, when once we know them. The science of astronomy - - "
"Got on very well when it was convinced that the earth was a fixed globe in the centre of the universe. I've no doubt, if it were convinced tomorrow that the earth is flat, it would adjust its theories without much difficulty. The theologians have shown us a score of times what can be done by such mental gymnastics."
"If you really mean to argue such a thing seriously," the man answered with an increased irritability, "there is one proof which even you must admit to be final. The earth being a sphere, the distance between its extremes of longitude must be greatest at its equator, and diminish equally with each degree of northward or southward latitude, declining at last to nothing at the poles. If it were otherwise - if, as you appear to suggest, it were a flat disc, with the North Pole at its centre - could those who live in the Southern Hemisphere, or those who sail its seas, be unaware of the immense distances that would divide them, or which they would have to traverse? Would not our maps reveal it? Should we not have a centre of all parts of the world at the North Pole, from which they would be spread out, so that their southern portions would be of vast extent, or separated by enormous distances?"
It is discourteous to laugh at a chance-met acquaintance, but Mr. Arden could not avoid a smile as he answered. "Then look at any map, and your case is ended. That is exactly what you'll find. I remember discovering this as a child, while my mind was still confused by the water-jug. I that if men who lived on a flat earth persisted in saying that it was round, the map we have is just what they would be obliged to make it - crowding continents round the North Pole, and showing immensities of ocean in its Southern Hemisphere.
"I looked at that map twenty years ago, and though I don't say that the earth is flat, I think I've kept an open mind ever since."
The stranger was less concerned than was Franklin Arden to observe the amenities of such a discussion; or, perhaps, he felt that the intellectual provocation that he was receiving was unusually great. His upper lip rose in an open sneer as he asked: "Would you tell me what shape you really suppose the earth to be, and whereabouts you would put the poles in your own map?"
"I've told you I don't assert that it's one shape more than another. I keep an open mind. But the shape I've indicated is quite easy to understand. It's like a plate, with a patch of ice in the middle which we call the North Pole, and a rim of ice all round the edge, which isn't a pole at all. It's just the vague immensity of ice and water which we call the Antarctic region."
"What nonsense."
"Probably it is. But you've got to recognize this. You could draw a map of the earth on those lines, and it would be much like what we know it to be. But suppose you tried to put the South Pole in the centre, you'd find it wouldn't work in the same way. Instead of a real centre, from which the continents spread, you'd have a vague immensity in the midst, with the continents - well you just couldn't place them at all."
"I think it's too silly for words." The stranger called for his bill. He hadn't finished what was before him, but he seemed to have lost his appetite in irritation at the conversation which he had himself initiated.
Franklin watched him with some amusement. It would have been impossible for him to lose his temper in discussing theoretic possibilities. He thought the man was a fool, and the man had thought he was mad.
It might have ended there if he had not caught the glance of the lady upon his right, and seen that it was alight with amusement akin to his own. Laughter rippled to the surface as their eyes met.
"You didn't ask him," she said, "about the stars."
The voice was friendly and confident, neither bold nor shy. The speaker was young - probably not more than twenty-five - with clear frank eyes in a sun-tanned face. She seemed assured, and therefore unconscious of herself, and to accept Franklin Arden without thought as one of a kindred kind. She was well-dressed, but rather as though it were routine than preoccupation. Feminine enough, but not aggressive in femininity. She would have been unattractive to those men who require womanhood to override personality, as such men would have been to her. Franklin answered without realizing that it was a stranger who had spoken. They might have been friends for years.
"Oh, you mustn't take that rot seriously. I've no doubt the stars would have blown the whole nonsense sky-high, if he'd understood what he was talking about well enough to know how to bring them in."
"I didn't quite mean that," she replied. "I remember I had the same sort of argument with a governess when I was young, and I put a question to her which may have a simple answer, but she didn't know it, or was too impatient with a child's difficulty to try to understand.
"I'd been shown the North Star, and told that it was always in the same place, and all the other stars - except, of course, the planets - move round it: and I said: 'If the earth's really round, mustn't there be a south pole star on the other side, and all the stars on that side move round that in the same way? And if not, why not?' And when I heard you bringing out so many arguments for the earth being flat, I half-expected to hear that too."
"Yes," he said, "I hadn't thought of that. It is curious that if you once imagine the earth as a flat plate, and the Arctic Circle making a central pattern of ice, with the North Star overhead, and the sun and all the stars moving round that point, and then an outer ring of ice that makes the rim of the plate - it's curious how everything seems to fit in, just as you'd expect it to if that were the real truth."
"It's queer to think of us," she said lightly, "as cheese-mites running about on a plate that we can't get off; and yet when you come to think of it, it fits in again. I mean, if we wanted to keep some cheese mites on a plate, we should make the rim so that they couldn't get over it, and that's what the Antarctic is. And we should put the cheese in the middle, and that's just how it is, with the continents crowded round the North Pole, and great oceans everywhere dividing us from the rim of the plate. . . . It seems so much like it would be when you think it over that I almost begin to convince myself," she concluded, as one who smiles at her own foolishness.
"Oh, you mustn't do that. I was only pulling his leg, as he might have guessed. . . . If I really thought there were any doubt, I should be starting to find out before the end of the week."
"So should I," she said unexpectedly. "Like a shot."
The third man, who had sat silent, but listening with a curious intensity of interest to this conversation, suddenly ejaculated: "Ma'am, if you meant - " and then stopped as their eyes turned to him in a common surprise.
His accent, slightly nasal and slightly marine, did not belie the evidence of the form of address he had used, or the appearance that met their glances. It might be Boston or Baltimore, but they did not doubt that they were companioned by a seaman of the Western world.
The lady hesitated for a second, as though she might ignore or repulse this unexpected address, and then said, coolly enough, as one who will not venture too far to withdraw easily, though with a smile that softened the words: "And what of that, if I would?"
"Because," he said, with an impressive earnestness, and yet with the tone of one who anticipates incredulity: "I'm the one man living that knows the way."
The girl did not answer, looking at him with sceptical and appraising eyes.
Franklin said, as one who humours a joke: "Meaning you've looked over the edge?"
"Meaning I know the way through. And a bad day it was for me."
Franklin looked at his watch. He had already missed his next train. He thought there was a tale to be had here, for amusement if not belief. He said: "But you came back alive."
"Yes, sir. I'm a live man. But I left the Maryland, and man of her crew. . . . That was six years back, and I've not had a ship since."
He spoke the last words as one embittered by a monstrous wrong, and fell silent, so that Franklin asked, to rouse him to speech again: "Do you mean they blamed you for losing the ship? In those regions - - "
He was about to speak of the violence of the Antarctic storms but the man interrupted him to say: "No, it wasn't that. I'd been whaling there, mate and master, for fifteen years, and a clean bill. It was nigh two years from when the ice shut us in to when the Falkland Lass picked me up in an open boat, and we'd been given up for lost long enough.
. . .No, I'd found land, and I'd found coal. Coal in thousands of tons lying close to the water-side, to be taken out with a pick, and a water swarming with whales, that had never heard siren blown, and when I'd said that, they'd have given me the best ship in the fleet. . . . Only, I said too much."
Too much?" The mariner had fallen silent again, and Franklin must stir him to resume his tale.
"Yes, I said where I'd been, and how long it took, and what I'd seen at the end, and they stopped talking about that ship. They looked at each other and me, and said:
"'Captain, you had a hard time. You sure did. You're needing a rest now. Here's five hundred dollars. Just you go away and forget.'
"So I had the rest, though I was fitter than them. Fitter than the best on the day I went. And I came back, 'What about that ship now?' But they said that times were worse than they were, and they'd got two boats lying up, and better let it be for a time."
"And that was six years ago?"
"Six years come March, and I'm for Norway now for a last chance, with the last two hundred dollars of the bit of money I had, and then it's the forecastle for me, or a job on shore."
"You mean you told them something they didn't believe?"
"Yes. I did that. But I'm not blaming them overmuch. No one would."
The girl asked: "What was it you saw?"
"I can't say that. I've learned that I can't say that and be counted as a sane man. 'Oh, yes,' they say, 'and you came back alive?' and then they shift their chairs a bit further away."
She did not press for an answer which she felt she would not get. She asked:
"Would you go again?"
Sparshott looked at her with a sudden hope in the small bright eyes, which died as it rose. What could it be more than the idle question of a curious girl? But he answered eagerly enough. "'Would I go again? Ma'am, when you've been called a liar for six years, and seen men winking behind your back - men that used to run when you spoke - and been hanging round for that time for a job that you couldn't get. . . ."
"He left the sentence for her to end as she would, and she reached down a hand to where her bag lay beside her on the floor. She took out a card, and passed it across the table. "Could you come to see me at eleven tomorrow morning?"
Franklin read the name as he passed the card. Eleanor Blanche D'Acre. It was a known name. Why had he not guessed it was she? But the press photographs gave her a harder, a more masculine face.
"Yes, ma'am, I'll be there." The seaman rose at the word, rather as one who had been dismissed, or it may have been that he was unwilling for further questioning.
The two others remained seated. The curious incident seemed to have drawn them together in a natural intimacy. Franklin said: "You'll take coffee?" as one who speaks to his own guest, and then: "I wouldn't trust that man further than I can see."
"No?" she said, smiling. "I wonder. . . . But it ought to be a good tale."
"Oh, yes. If you're wanting that." He knew her as one who had won fame by an expedition into Arabia, and a daring penetration into the monastic privacies of Tibet. One also who wrote of her adventures, and sometimes would contribute tales to the magazines. She was reputed to be almost fabulously wealthy, since Lord Dagsworth's death. Of course, if she thought she could use the man for some good copy, and doubtless pay him well for her whim. . . . Well, there was no reason to interfere.
They rose to go without further words on that subject. But when he used her name at parting she said: "You ought to let me know your name, as you know mine. It's only fair that you should." And then added, as she took his card: "I'll let you know if it's anything really good."
CHAPTER TWO
FRANKLIN ARDEN waked early next morning, and his mind reverted to the dinner of the night before. But it was not concerned with the geographical area of the Antarctic regions. Whatever that might be, it had been so for a long while, without any alarming consequences to the world which it encircled or rounded off, as the ease might be. It could look after itself without any help from him.
His mind was on a more intimate and more urgent problem. How could he renew acquaintance with the companion who had sat so casually at his right hand? He could be nothing to her. He remembered the frank impersonal friendly gaze. He could not delude himself that it had implied any interest except in the subject to which the talk had turned. Should he thrust himself upon her, taking advantage of that fortuitous intimacy? To what end could it lead? She was, so he had heard, one of the richest women in England. He was a consulting engineer who had not been consulted during the last three weeks. He had qualified six months ago, and had not earned enough since then to pay his office rent and the wages of his single clerk. Beyond that, he had an income of five hundred pounds. Enough to make him comfortably independent, but not enough to make him anything better than the financial satellite of a wealthy wife. For his thought went so far. The girl's face with its unconscious beauty, its indifferent frankness, would not leave his mind. And common sense told him to forget. To treat the incident as one of those pleasant disconnected interludes with which every life is occasionally punctuated. . . . And then he thought of Stimson, who was on the Baltic Exchange, and knew all the nautical gossip of the two hemispheres.
He got Stimson at the third attempt, at 9:48 a.m., and talked to him till 10:03, and then had to cut off rather abruptly, for Stimson was one of those men who start talking more than they stop, and at 10:07 he was in a taxi for Cadogan Square. It might be foolish for his own peace, but he told himself that he was doing no more than duty required. How could he consider his own feelings, immediate or remote, as being of any consequence, beside the duty of the warning he had to give?
At 10:38 he was shown into a room where Miss D'Acre was already seated. The Yankee skipper had not arrived.
She received him with a politeness that approached cordiality, and yet left him with a faint discomfort. She did not ask him why he had called at that early hour, but she made no effort to develop conversation, leaving him to feel that such an explanation was necessary.
"I had a friend on the telephone this morning," he began. "Stimson. He's on the Exchange - the Baltic, of course, not Stock Exchange - where they know everything about ships - - "
"Yes," she interrupted, to assure him, "I've heard of the Baltic Exchange."
"Yes, of course. Well, I asked him if he knew anything of a Captain Sparshott of Baltimore, and I thought you might like to know what he told me before he called."
"It's very good of you, but I'm not quite sure that I should."
Franklin might have felt less resentment at this rebuff had he been more indifferent to the lips from which it came. Actually, it was not offensively spoken. The girl seemed to utter a genuine doubt, with no implication of blame, but equally with no thanks for the offered help. The trouble was that he had anticipated a different reception. He rose from the chair which he had taken a moment before as her hand indicated. "Of course," he said coldly, "if you feel like that. . . . I'm sorry I interfered."
He was half-way to the door before she looked at him, or appeared to be aware of his intended withdrawal. Then her eyes met his with a sudden smile. "No, please don't go," she said, in a tone that assumed compliance. "Have I been rude? I'm afraid I wasn't thinking of what you said. And that's being ruder still! . . . The fact is, Mr. . . . Arden, I'm a little intrigued about that man. I don't want to hear he's a fraud, as, of course, he is. I was just wondering when you were announced whether he'd turn up this morning. I suppose it's ten to one that we shall never see him again."
"No. I think you'll see him. But. . . ."
"Then do you mind if I ask you not to tell me any more till I've talked to him myself? I've always had a fancy for forming my own opinions. . . . If you wouldn't mind staying, if you can spare the time. . . . Thanks, I'm glad of that, if you're sure it's not asking too much. . . . You can hear what passes, and if I arrange anything with him, you'll be able to judge what a fool I am, knowing whatever you do."
"Arrange? . . . You don't really. . . ."
"Probably not. I expect it's no more than a wild tale. But if I thought there were half a chance that it's something more. . . . that there's something worth finding out. . . . Yes, I'd start tonight, if I could."
Franklin heard this surprising declaration with mingled feelings. It is true that it was no more than had been implied the night before. But there is a difference in the morning hours. Also, he realized sharply the freedom that wealth confers. And it was a wild idea - wild and reckless in the cold light of day. What did she know of the uncharted terrors of the Antarctic ice? And at the calling of such a tale!
He said: "It wouldn't be much like Arabia."
"No. Quite different. You mean that I've no idea what the Antarctic's like? I've never been there, if you mean that. I don't suppose you have either."
"No. . . . I've done a little Alpine climbing. Just enough to know what cold means, and to help to imagine the rest. But, of course, that's nothing to what has to be faced there."
"Probably not. I don't suppose it's quite as bad as people make out. Few things are. I've felt cold in Tibet. . . .
Well, I believe that's he, by the voice."
Captain Sparshott entered the room.
CHAPTER THREE
THE quick eyes of Captain Sparshott glanced from one occupant of the room to the other, and brightened at what they saw. He might be dreamer or cheat, but he was of an alert intelligence. He had seen that these two had been strangers yesterday. He had left them together. That they were together now seemed to imply that he was being taken seriously, in which he was as nearly right as such deductions are likely to be.
Miss D'Acre showed a more positive cordiality to Captain Sparshott than she had done to her earlier visitor. She encouraged him to the comfort of a fireside seat (for the morning was not warm), and the earliness of the hour did not deter her from an offer of liquid refreshment. But Sparshott did not drink. Neither would he draw on the contents of the cigarette box which she held out toward him. If he preferred a pipe, she suggested, he must not hesitate. But he said no to that also. He assured her that he did not smoke. Fact or pose, he presented himself as an abstemious man, and there was nothing in his appearance to deny it. It was no more than fair to recognize that if he had been unemployed for six years, he appeared to have faced adversity without moral disaster.
"I wish," she said, as they were comfortably seated around the fire, with the Captain in the middle, "I wish you'd tell us the tale in your own way. How you lost the ship - I mean how it got lost - and how you got back alone."
It was neatly put, giving him the opportunity, in the intellectual sobriety of the morning hours, of telling a tale that need be of no more than credible disaster in South Polar seas, or of going further at his own will if he were disposed to do so. But it appeared that the alternatives were alike unwelcome.
He shook his head as he answered, "No, ma'am. I couldn't do that. I couldn't tell you how I lost that ship. I've learned better than that. You'd show me out for a crazy man."
"But if you won't tell anyone. . . ."
"I've told a-many before now. I talked of it and couldn't stop when they picked me up. And they listened and smiled, and the doctor said: 'Let him sleep all he can, and he'll come round. It's just a question of time.'"
"Yes," she answered with sympathy, "I know the feeling myself. I saw three things in Tibet that I mentioned once, and learnt that lesson for life. . . . But you needn't be afraid here. We know what a queer place the world is."
He looked at her gratefully, even with a moment's doubt, and then shook his head more resolutely than before.
"Ma'am," he said, "I want to make people believe I'm a sane man. I want a ship once again. I'll tell you all you'll believe, and perhaps a bit more. But what good's it going to do me then? I don't want money. I've still got enough to last me a few weeks. I want a ship. If I don't get it in that time, it's the lower ratings for me."
"No," she said, "I don't say I could get you a ship. I'm not going to promise that. I'm not going to promise anything. . . . But when someone comes back from a strange place, and tells me of what he's seen, I always think he's more likely to know than anyone else, and I believe what he tells me, unless I've got a good reason not to."
She saw that he must be drawn in, if at all, with a gentle line. She added: "Tell us just as much as you like, and stop as soon as you think we've had as much as we're fit to hear. . . . I suppose you got caught in the ice at the start, and drifted the wrong way?"
"No, ma'am, it wasn't that. Not, so to speak, at the start-off. There'd been two bad whaling seasons, and no prospect of better, and more ships on the ground every year, and I got secret orders from my firm not to waste time fishing, but just to slip away to the Enderby quadrant, and see what I could find. I don't know whether you know. . . ."
"Yes," they both said, "we understand that." (Had they not both been busy last night with Antarctic maps?)
But he pulled out one of his own, spreading it on his knees, and pointing as he went on.
"The fleet made for the Weddall Sea, but I slipped off in the night, with Coat's Land a hundred leagues on the starboard bow, bearing south-by-east as the pack-ice would let me through. The Maryland was the stoutest ship of the fleet, and they'd given me a picked crew, sober men, who could be trusted to keep a shut mouth over what we found, if it were made worth their while. I wasn't looking for new lands, or caring how far south I could get. The less ice the better for me. All I wanted was whales, and I looked to find a fresh feeding-ground there, if there were any left in the world. . . . Well, I found that right enough.
"I found it when I was further south than was over-safe with the season as far gone as it was, and I in the worst part of the Antarctic, as all the records show it to be, though there's not many of them, for the ships that have gone east of Coat's Land since 1830, when Enderby's sent John Briscoe, could be counted on one hand, and it's little but battered hulls that they could have brought back.
". . . . Well, I'd been dodging the pack-ice for about ten days, keeping dear enough, but being forced south all the time. That was the queer thing. The winter was coming on, and the ice thickening everywhere, but there'd always be a lane to southward, and perhaps a broader one beyond that, till we came at last to an open sea.
"That was the first of the queer things I had to tell when I got back. Not that they doubted that. And whales I We saw more in three weeks, than I'd set eyes on for the ten years before. They were the big blue whales mostly, and some of them a size that I'd never hoped to see, except in a dream. And all the water was pink with the diatoms on which they fed.
"I thought it was fortune for the owners, and a bit for me and the crew, and we were in good spirits enough, though the ice wouldn't let us through. It kept closing in, and we kept feeling our way, east or west as we best could, but always trying to get out to the north, and it ever heading us south, till it brought us to land at last. . . ."
He paused here, as though hesitating how to go on, and it was more to rouse him to speech than with any purpose of questioning the tale that Franklin said:
"Your firm believed that?"
"Yes. It wasn't hard to believe, more or less. You see, the Enderby quadrant, as it's called, has never been penetrated very far. It's been supposed that the Antarctic continent extended further on that side, and the few who've tried to sail along it have met such weather as did little to tempt the next. But no one's really known how the land lay. It's been fog or blizzard or snow, and the ice-pack round the bows, and to south'ard here and there a loom of land or a wall of ice, which may be island, if it's land at all, and the mist closes again. No, they listened to that. It was just what they'd hoped to hear."
"Then it's hard to see why they didn't give you another chance. . . . Did they send other ships to find out if the report was true?"
"They wouldn't say, if they had. But I don't think they ever did. I guess I know all the boats they've got, and where they've been since then. . . . I said they believed all right, and so they did at the first, but when I went on. . . . Well, they thought it was the mad-house for me."
"And you could get there again?"
"Yes. I know where it is. I could find it, if I could get through."
"And there's no reason you shouldn't," Miss D'Acre interposed, "with a good ship?"
"Yes. It's likely enough. But, ma'am, I don't want to tell you wrong. It was the mildest summer down there that year that's been known since the first whaler went south. When Kemp sailed that way in 1833 he didn't get within miles of where I got through the pack."
"But you know the way if you could get through?"
"Yes. There's only ice in the way." He spread the map on his knees, and his two auditors bent forward from either side, as he laid his finger on a spot about 500 miles east of Coat's Land, where a space as large as Europe was shown as an unexplored vacancy crossed by no more than the dotted line that marked the limit of the doubtful land - land that did not exist at all, or, at least, continuously, if Captain Sparshott's tale were true.
"Couldn't you expect to get through," Miss D'Acre asked again, "if you took full advantage of the summer months? - I mean, got on the spot by when the summer starts, and went prepared to stay the winter there if there weren't time to get back?"
"No, ma'am, I couldn't promise for sure. I expect you could. It all depends on how the ice breaks, and the storms that you'd have to face."
"But I thought that the summer - I know it's short, but I've heard that the Arctic summer's a lovely thing, when the sun never sets. It's all sunshine and flowers."
"But, ma'am, this isn't the Arctic. The south is another tale. There's no flowers there at any time of the year. There's not a tree in a thousand leagues. There's no foxes or bears. It's what you said last night. It's like the rim of the dish. . . . There's one point here" - he laid his finger on Ross's Sea as he spoke - "where you can go deeper in. It's like a crack in the edge. But you come to the ice-wall there. You come to that if you go on long enough anywhere. It's ice or rock, eight or ten thousand feet high. Hard as iron, and barren and cold. . . . There's no summer there like there is in the Arctic lands. There's no summer, and there's no life of man, or bear, or tree. There's a bit of moss, at the best, and even that making a hard fight. . . . And the weather's hell. . . . I've seen storms in the Behring Straits, but the wind was like a cat purring at home to what you meet there."
"If there's a wall of rock or ice everywhere round the Arctic pole - or rim, if that's what it is - " Franklin persisted, "I suppose you'd have come to that sooner or later if you'd gone south by the way you went?"
He had his own reason for doubting Captain Sparshott's tale, and he kept to his point of drawing him further on as persistently as Miss D'Acre held to that of the practicability of repeating his expedition
There was a short pause, as though the man feared that if he said more he would be led further than he had a mind to go, and then he answered:
"You're right in that. We came to that just as you'd think we would. There's a cliff there like a wall - a cliff that's ten thousand feet, if it's ten. . . . But it isn't that, it's the way through. . . ." He fell silent again.
"You mean there's a way through the cliff?"
"Not through. There's a way between. There's lower land on the coast. It's there you can shovel up coal from the water-side. And there's a river that flows out. It's a river that doesn't freeze. We steamed up it at last, when the ice closed from the north, and kept heading us in. . . . There was the great wall, and the canyon split it through, and the river came out of that."
"So I suppose you went up? Was it wide enough for the ship to go?"
"Yes. We went up. . . . We steamed up that canyon with the new coal we'd picked up on the beach. . . . We steamed three weeks and it never changed. . . . and you could see the stars all the time."
"But the sun wouldn't have gone by then," Franklin objected.
"You mean it was so deep?" Miss D'Acre asked. She was leaning forward with her hands clasped round one knee, and her eyes on the seaman's face. He seemed to have gained one convert at least, and her tone may have given confidence to his own speech, for he answered as one who sees again, and whose eyes are fixed on a distant thing.
"It was wide enough for the ship to steer through, and it never altered its width, and the wind blows up it, cold and steady, like a draught that never stops, and it's smooth and deep. There's no rapids nor shallows, nor any change in its depth. And the cliffs are so high that there's little light down below. They're. . . ." He seemed to feel the lack of any word to interpret the vision that held his eyes, and ended weakly, "so high." If he were an actor, he was a very good one, Franklin thought as he watched, but he remembered what had been told him scarcely two hours ago.
His thought was interrupted by an unexpected question from the girl. "Are you married, Captain?"
"No, ma'am. That's to say, not to matter."
"I mean, is there anyone who is dependent upon you - who would be worse off if you were to die?"
"No. Not to matter, that is."
"Then I'm going to make you a sporting offer. I'll tell you first that I shan't alter a word. It's just to take or leave. Is it worth your while to try for £10,000?"
He made no answer to that. Perhaps he thought there could be no need. The small bright eyes in the puckered face did not leave her own as she went on.
Franklin had a fear that she was going to involve herself in a reckless gamble, from which a word would have saved her. If only he had been resolute to speak before! He gave a half-articulate protesting sound, the meaning of which must have been plain enough, though it had no influence, for she
made a motion of silence, and threw a "please" in his direction before she went on.
"I'm going to offer you that. You must guide me to that canyon, whether it takes twelve months or twelve years, and I'll pay every expense, but not a penny beyond that. If we find it, and you come back alive, there'll be £10,000 for you at my London bank whether I'm living or dead. And I won't ask you a word more as to what you found at the end of the three weeks, or how you came back alone. I don't want you to tell. I'm not one to glance at the last chapter before I begin the book."
Captain Sparshott's eyes lit as with a sudden satisfaction as this offer commenced, but before it ended they had fallen to the hearth-rug. He had the look of a troubled man. But he said: "Thank you, ma'am. It's a big sum. What if I don't come back?"
"It will be paid to whoever you direct."
"And if none of us comes back?"
"In that case, at the end of three years, it shall be paid in the same way."
He seemed satisfied at that, and his mind turned to the practical issues of the expedition which had been so casually determined. "At this time of year - ," he began.
"Oh, I'll see to all that," she said. "I'll do it now, not to lose any time." She picked up the telephone from a little table at her left hand.
"Miss Collinson, please get through to the Stores, and ask them for a quotation for equipping an expedition to the Antarctic for two years. It must be timed to reach Enderby Land, or thereabouts, as the ice breaks. A good whaler to sail from Cape Town I should think, but I leave that to them. There'll be equipment needed for two women - yes, of course, and three men. Tell them if they overlook anything that matters it's the last order they'll get." (That seemed likely enough!)
She laid the instrument down, as she added, "It costs more doing it that way, but it adds ten years to your life. Miss Collinson says if I wanted to marry I should ring up the Stores. 'I want a husband at St. Margaret's, at twelve-thirty on Tuesday next. A short mild-mannered man, with blue eyes.' Or something of that sort. I've no doubt they'd have him there, if I did."
She rose, saying: "You'd better let me have your address, Captain," the men rose also, her manner and words giving the impression that the interview was at an end.
Captain Sparshott said: "It's the Beaver Hotel, ma'am. Off Moorgate. I'll be at hand any time." His eyes still had a look of preoccupation, as though the plan of returning to the scene of his strange adventure had brought back some sight of wonder or horror too vividly to be put aside. He said: "I don't know but you ought to know before then." But he spoke rather to himself than her. Then he went out.
Franklin would have gone too, but she held him back with a glance, which he was quick and willing to understand. He felt bewildered by the display of an efficiency which did not require his help, and strangely saddened by the thought that his day-old acquaintance would disappear from his life as completely as the confines of the earth allowed. Yet there was one warning that he ought still to give, though he might have no thanks for giving it.
But he met the unexpected again. The door had scarcely closed on the seaman's exit when Miss D'Acre reseated herself, and said: "And now tell me the lurid tale."
CHAPTER FOUR
THERE'S nothing definite against the man," Franklin said, "so I'm told, except that. But, in this connection, its a good deal. He's nick-named Tell it Sparshott, and they called him that years before he came back alone from his last cruise. Stimson says he believes he had it from a boy. If his mother sent him round the corner for a quarter of tea, he'd come back with a tale of a run-away racehorse, or a house on fire with the flames a mile high.
"His owners knew this, but they didn't mind, for he's allowed to have been a good sailor, and a steady man, but this last time it was a bit too much. He came back having lost his ship, and he wouldn't tell what happened. Not a sensible tale, that anyone could believe. . . . They even had to make a compromise on the Insurance, as they daren't have taken such a tale into court. Stimson knows some underwriters who held part of the risk, so he had it at first hand."
Miss D'Acre listened to this tale in a thoughtful silence.
"It does rather queer the pitch," she said at last. "But it doesn't really prove anything. A queer thing might happen to a man who'd been inventing them all his life; and then, of course, no one would believe a word."
"The question is whether you'll ever see him again."
"Oh, I don't. . . . Do you really think that? . . . Well, there'll be an amended quotation needed for one man less."
"You mean you'd go all the same?"
"Rather. Think how I should have wasted the morning If I dropped it now! I've got a feeling that there'll be something interesting in the Enderby quadrant, and, after all, he hasn't given us any very definite assurances as to what it is. . . . but, of course, if you feel differently, it would be for two less instead of one."
"You mean that the three men were to include me?"
"Well, of course. I thought we settled that yesterday."
Franklin Arden was conscious of a bewildering confusion of feelings that delayed reply. He was aware of a very pleasurable excitement; perhaps aware also, however sub-consciously, that the event was certain, and that he would follow this cool and masterful young woman to the world's end (or even further!) if she would permit him to do so; but he was conscious of the bewildering, almost casual speed of the decision, and resentful of the way in which his coming was unconditionally assumed. And the last feeling, though not the deepest, was the most active upon the surface of his mind. And while he hesitated, the telephone-bell rang.
Miss D'Acre heard the voice of her secretary. The Stores wished to know whether they should estimate for sledges only, or Siberian ponies. It was a question at which to pause. If the programme were to be the sailing up an endless canyon to an unknown end, the utility of either was less than certain. She realized that it might be difficult to obtain a satisfactory outfit without a larger measure of confidence than she would be willing to give. But she was not one to show indecision. She said: "Tell them if they're in any doubt about anything they'd better estimate both ways."
She put the receiver down, and repeated the inquiry she had received. She added: "We shall need a few more words with Captain Sparshott about this equipment."
Franklin had had a vague idea during this moment of interruption, He would not be dragged at her tail in this way. He would follow to protect and rescue! Then he had rejected it instantly on financial grounds. He had an indistinct recollection of reading that Shackleton had raised £20,000 for his expedition, and had then been embarrassed for lack of means. Then he became very sure that it was not a thing to be attempted by a woman at all. Even the ordinary perils of the Antarctic - if ordinary they could be called - were something that no woman had ever faced. Why should he not go alone, and bring back report of the unknown? She could finance the expedition. That would be glory for her. He had an illogical feeling that he would not mind her financing it, if she were not there. But if she were both to finance and control. . . . Besides, it was not a woman's work. Arabia was a very different thing. So was Tibet. The question about the ponies made it more real, more definite, than it had been previously. He said:
"I wonder whether you've got any idea what the Antarctic's like. I don't know that a woman ought to go there at all. I don't believe one ever has."
"Then it's time one did," she said lightly, "if not two." And then added, in a more serious tone: "You're not backing out, are you? . . . If there's any difficulty about getting away. . . ." Her hand reached instinctively to the cheque-book which removed so many impediments.
"No, thank you," he said, his eyes following her hand. "I can look after my own affairs."
"Sorry. But when I'm dragging you away suddenly like this. . . ."
"You mentioned five. May I ask who are the other also-rans?"
Miss D'Acre might have an impetuosity that was her own, and an imperiousness that wealth and beauty are apt to give, but she was no fool.
"The also-rans? Oh, I see. . . . Mr. Arden, I want you to come as Leader of the Expedition. Of course, you'll be in control. You'll have Captain Sparshott as guide. The also-rans will be my cousin, Bun Weldon - you'll like Bunny Weldon well enough - and two women to sew the buttons. Of course, you'll name your own fee. Whatever's reasonable for engaging a Consulting Engineer for two years, and leaving practice to go to pot. But I hope you won't be rude to me by putting it too low. I know when I've got the best, and I like to pay for it."
Her eyes met his as she finished, in a very feminine, almost pleading way. He thought, as he had done last night, that her beauty was softer, more alluring, than her pictures showed. Illogically again, the thought made him determine that he would take no fee. His little capital could be realized, and his office closed. He would have ample means for his personal equipment, and his independence would remain. He said:
"Of course, I'll come. But we won't talk about fees, or leaders for that matter. You can finance the expedition, and I'll just come along, and pay my own expenses. That doesn't mean much. We shan't put up at hotels."
"Mr. Arden," she answered seriously, "you can have it your own way about the fee. Anyway, we can leave it till we come back, if we ever do. But I've seen enough to know that someone's got to lead in a thing like this. Only Communists don't know that, and that's why they'll come croppers until they do. So if I put up the money and you lead, it's a fair deal."
He said no more on that point, though he might have noticed that she was having her own way, even then. He was becoming conscious of an exhilaration of excitement, hard to control to his usual quiet manner, as he committed himself to the wild folly of this adventure. He only asked:
"You said two ladies. May I ask who is to be the other?"
He had a thought that she might not easily secure a companion on such a voyage.
"Oh, I should have told you. Miss Collinson, my secretary. You'll like Gwen, too."
"Does she know her fate?"
"Yes. She's known it for half-an-hour. Didn't you hear me tell her to get the estimate? She wouldn't think I'd be mean enough to leave her behind."
CHAPTER FIVE
DOVE-GREY sky, and a sea of silver and lead: a cold wind from the south, and a distant glint of pack-ice, On the starboard bow. So they came to seas which had been unknown of man except that once, a hundred years ago, the white wings of Briscoe's brig had glided through the mist - glided and gone.
Ahead, even if geographers were right as to the nature of the earth's extremity, even then, to right and left there were three thousand miles of icebound coast which was not even outlined on the maps of men. An iron coast, it was said, from which there came a blizzard, often at a hundred miles an hour. A blizzard that never ceased. That, at least, was the explanation given by explorer and whaler for the fact that there was, even now, no clear continuous map of the outmost edge of that side of Antarctica.
Blizzards there might be, but it seemed that the Bergen came on a quiet day. Quiet, and lifeless too, except that once a flight of Antarctic petrels had crossed the stern, and a slate-blue albatross hovered below the clouds.
The Bergen was an ice-breaker from the Arctic seas. It was the best of its kind that the world held, unless for one which is Russian-owned, and that even Miss D'Acre's purse could not have secured. Its owner, Captain Ericson, was to navigate it to the Antarctic circle, when the command was to be taken over by Captain Sparshott. So the charter had specified, and Sven Ericson did not like the idea. Sparshott might be a good seaman, but of that he had no proof. He might also be mad, of which he had heard tales enough.
The terms of the charter had been too liberal to reject but it had the sound to him of a crazy cruise. And with women, too! Not that he objected to them. He would have been pleased to see more. But the women messed apart. The ship had settled that for them. It was not designed for passengers, nor for a large officers' staff. There were two small cabins, in which, if cubic capacity had ruled the decision, they would have messed three and three. But Miss D'Acre had vetoed that, with discretion. Had she given that preference to Bunford Weldon he would have burst his skin with conceit, and how Mr. Arden would have taken it she could not say. Probably he would have given no sign. But if Bunny had been put out, and Franklin preferred, he would have sulked like a whipped dog. Besides, he was her cousin. No; she couldn't do that. The men must manage as best they could.
The two captains had sat together, when the mate was in charge above, and the others had turned in. Ericson had tried with deliberate purpose to loosen his companion's tongue with the rum-bottle. Not that he intended to make him drunk while he kept sober himself. Captain Ericson was a gentleman, and he knew that there are things that a gentleman does not do. But to get your companion tight, and remain just a little more under control yourself - that is a permissible cunning. To finesse is not to cheat.
Whatever may have been the ethical basis of this experiment is the less important, as it had no success. Tell it Sparshott was an abstemious man. The rum that he took was moderate in quantity, and it had no visible effect whatever.
Apart from that, he belied his name. It was not only that he was silent upon the object of the voyage before them. He didn't tell anything. He had become a silent preoccupied man. He seemed to live in the shadow of some approaching moment. Was it merely that he expected to be revealed as the liar that he most probably was? Suppose that the bones of his ship might still lie, not up some canyon of a hundred leagues, but on the shore of the coal-strewn bay?
That was a wonder which came at times to Franklin's mind. Captain Ericson might have thought the same, but that he knew less. All he knew was that he was to navigate his ship to the Antarctic Circle, at longitude 16¡ east, and then hand over its direction to Captain Sparshott, only to resume its control on written instructions from Mr. Arden, and that he was to be prepared to winter in the ice or to return to Cape Town, and take in fresh stores for a relief expedition as he might be required. His charter was for two years, with the right of renewal for a further year if required, and he had received the first year's money before he sailed.
Beyond that, there was the evidence of the motor-boat which was lashed down on deck. A new boat, beautifully built, and appointed. And the evidence of the stores he carried. Was it to be a new try for the Southern Pole? With two women to drag along! And the Enderby quadrant too! He had never been in the southern seas, but everyone knew that the Antarctic was unapproachable from that side. Well, after all, Captain Sparshott's ideas didn't matter much, as long as he understood how to handle a good boat, because what would happen was plain enough. There would be some weeks, prolonged to months, during which they would be sailing through fog and blizzard and dodging ice, with perhaps a glimpse of high inhospitable rocks, or perhaps not. And then they would be steering north again, or locked in the ice with six frozen months to think it over in the Antarctic night.
With such thoughts in his mind, Sven Ericson had brought his ship to the Antarctic edge, sailing south-by-east, until this morning he had handed over his charge to Captain Sparshott, who had put the helm due south for the polar seas.
CHAPTER SIX
THE expanse of water which lies south of Africa and India is the largest loneliest ocean that the earth holds. Southward of New Zealand, or the Falkland Islands, there may be traffic north-and-south, and the whalers have made precarious footing on the barrier-ice But here were seas where they might sail eastward for ten thousand miles and see neither steam nor sail, or south a thousand, more or less, till the ice should challenge their further way. Perhaps ten million square miles of storm-held waters, where not a dozen ships had crossed since Cook had first adventured in his tiny vessels Cook first, and then at different points Briscoe, and Kemp, and Bruce, and later Mawson. All to come back with the same report of ice that spread further north than on the other sides of the Antarctic, and of more dreadful storms.
Steaming south, day after day, across this lonely ocean, it was easy for Franklin to imagine that his jest was true, and that the Antarctic was really the outer rim of the world, rather than a terminal extremity. Here, said the geographers, the earth began to narrow towards its southern end, and yet, here more than anywhere, was a sense of vastness which had defied the explorations of men, of an interminable ocean surrounding a barrier of unexplored immensity, a barrier which had even defied the efforts of men to follow around its edge. There was no such expanse of ocean around the North Pole. No such unexplored barrier, such impenetrable continental vastness of land, as the Antarctic held. Franklin had a feeling that there would not be space for these around the north pole. Suppose after all. . . . suppose really. . . . what wonder might they be the first to see? Or, rather, the first after the crew of Sparshott's ship. . . . who had not come back.
He mentioned the idea to Captain Ericson, making it half a joke, to see what he would say, but Sven Ericson had no use for jokes. He was a literal-minded man. He answered with some argument about longitudes, and observations, which was conclusive to him, and which might have been so to Franklin had he understood it more thoroughly.
As to why there was more ocean in the southern hemisphere, he had an explanation also, though it was less clear than his knowledge of navigation. It was something that he had read. Something about the moon.
Franklin said no more to Captain Ericson on that subject but he resumed it with Miss D'Acre as they bent together over the Antarctic map. Even as it is conventionally presented, its contrast to the North Polar regions is beyond concealment. Vague immensities of ocean, vague and vast suggestions of uncharted land - land which no man has trodden, no man has seen. There was one white blank on which all Europe would have lain, and it would have remained uncovered. Ice bound, mist-hidden barriers, that is all we know, and the rest is guessing.
It was true that there were two widely separate points at some penetration had been made, and which were represented as approaching one another at a southern pole. But the position of these was obviously determined by the fact that New Zealand and South America approach most nearly to the outer rim of the world. The points of landing had been opposite these extremities. They had penetrated some distance over the icy barriers, each to be confronted at last by a high plateau of barren frozen land, of more than Arctic severity. A land where summer never came. Where no beast lived. Where no flower ever grew. Surely the rim of the world!
They might claim to have approached the same spot, but what proof was there in that? It was what they had supposed that they must inevitably do. They could not have considered the evidences with impartial minds, for prejudice was too strong. Even if they had walked straight, what did it prove? You can reach the same place from two points on a flat surface, as well as a sphere.
They looked at the records of Antarctic voyages, and the growing doubt that possessed their minds was increased when they failed to find any ship had circumnavigated the Antarctic. There were voyages that had been made round the world in more temperate regions, which were claimed as evidence of its rotundity. But, in fact, they proved less than that, as a child - an unprejudiced child - could see. It was strange that such a fact should be accepted as serious argument. Could you not sail round a plate?
But a close encircling of the Antarctic regions it did not appear that there had ever been. Here and there men had nibbled along the edge.
"Yet it seems strange," Franklin said, "if there be a rim to a flat world, that men have never made a more resolute effort to look over the edge."
"I don't know that it does, when you consider the extent of ocean that surrounds it, and the nature of the icy rampart itself, as it has been described by those who have ventured its exploration. We've got to remember that sailing-ships have their limits of capacity. It's wonderful what was done in those times; and since the time of the steam - and, of course, long before - it was assumed that there was nothing to cross."
"Besides that," he added, "we don't know that no one ever has. They might not have come back. They might not have - been allowed."
"They might not have wanted to," she replied more cheerfully. "But there's another thing that might help to account for it, if any further explanations were needed. It's the fact that men can't walk straight if they try.
"I was thinking about it last night, and remembered an experience I had in the Arabian desert. But it's a thing everybody knows. We all begin to walk in a circle if there's no landscape to help us to keep straight. "Of course, it doesn't prove anything, but it's curious how all the evidence seems to fall into one scale as soon as you examine it with an open mind. If we had made a world of cheesemites, and meant them to live on a plate, what should wc have done? Shouldn't we have put the cheese - that's the land in the middle of the plate? And if we'd let them think that there wasn't any way off, wouldn't it have made it a lot simpler? And if we'd made them so that if they got away they'd just run round in a circle while they thought they were going straight on, wouldn't it have been a good thing to do? . . . I suppose that's where Captain Sparshott's canyon scores - it keeps you straight whether you will or no."
But Franklin scarcely heard what she said. He was directed by the colour in a girl's hair. Hair that had been very close, as they had bent over the chart together
She became conscious of his eyes as he answered: "Well, we shall find out before long. It would be fine if we found that there really is a rim to the world, and we be the first to look over the edge. There's a line of verse I can't get out of my mind. 'Beyond the utmost purple rim.' I must have learnt it at school. We had to do poetry there. I've always hated it since. I've no idea where it comes from, or what it's about. Have you?"
Miss D'Acre gave him an enquiring and slightly self-conscious glance. Was it a genuine ignorance? She knew the context quite well. If he didn't, she wasn't going to complete the quotation. And yet, why not?
"No," she said deliberately. "I never heard it before." Yet she was a girl who very rarely lied.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TOWARD evening there were signs of thicker pack-ice to starboard, and Captain Sparshott altered his course a point or two to the south-east for the clearer sea. He seemed more cheerful, more confident, now that the time for action had come, and he was once more in command of a good ship, and showed willingness to talk, when Franklin halted beside him, leaning against the rail.
"I understand you can't often expect to find a clear sea at this time of the year," Franklin said. "We seem in luck so far."
"Maybe, yes," was the cautious answer. "But it's not always the best start that gets soonest there." Still, he admitted cheerfully, every mile southward was a mile gained.
He was in a mood to be optimistic, though he knew that the most probable meaning of the clear water was that the ice was breaking late, and that there would be delay further south, if there were nothing worse. But even that wasn't sure. He went on at greater length than it is needful to follow, explaining how there is a barrier of ice that stretches out from the land for hundreds of miles, two hundred feet high, and twice as deep underwater. It is a floating continent of frozen water, behind which rises the Antarctic land, to the highest table-land on the earth: twice as high as the great Asiatic plateau which we call the roof of the world. And from this high continent, where there is no life of beast or insect or tree, enormous glaciers move slowly, inexorably, down its valleys, and push the ice-field further out to sea, so that it splits at times under these pressures, and huge fragments, sometimes larger than an English county, are floated loose. Always, ice is forming on the high plateau, and round the winter coasts. Always, with the coming of the milder severity which is miscalled summer, it breaks away, and is driven by current and tempest to be dissolved in the warmer seas. But how much will break away is an uncertain thing, and so, to a less degree, are the directions in which it drifts.
Franklin had read this before, but it had an increased reality coming from the lips of a man to whom it had been a familiar knowledge, and a continual sight. Anyhow, as Captain Sparshott said, they were moving freely now, and every mile was something gained; and the weather, though the wind had a biting quality, was fine and clear. So it seemed to him, but the Captain had a more doubtful mind. He looked to the south-east, toward which they steered, and he ordered that there should be no loose raffle about the deck. Franklin noticed that two of the crew had been detailed to test and strengthen the lashings that held the motor-boat down. Sven Ericson noticed it too, and decided that the madness of Captain Sparshott was not of a dangerous kind. He was not familiar with Antarctic weather, but he was also looking at the horizon in a thoughtful way.
Then Miss Collinson came on deck, to ask if Mr. Arden would make a fourth at bridge, which he was very willing to do.
We have not seen Miss Collinson previously, though we have heard of her at the other end of the telephone. She had been supplied - need it be said? - from the Stores, in response to a request for the best secretary in London, and she had justified the description. She was slightly plump, it is true; but there is no social or national law which forbids it. Had there been, there is no doubt that the extra stone would have been quietly and efficiently done away with. She was attractive in appearance and manner, but not sufficiently so to rival or eclipse her employer. She had a clear and pleasant voice, and a ready wit, which only appeared when it was needed. She was of good birth and well-educated. Of good health, and good at games, either of brain or muscle. She showed no objection to departing at short notice for Thibet or Arabia, and had been unperturbed and efficient under the variety of disconcerting circumstances which are liable to arise in such wanderings. She had other qualifications which it would be wearisome to detail. In the course of four years, the business association had developed into an intimate friendship, and the two women were Eleanor and Gwen to one another, except in their most official and public moments.
To reach the ladies' cabin you had to pass through that which the men occupied. Captain Ericson, now relieved of official duties, sat there in conversation with Bunny Weldon. Bunford had been reading about the Antarctic regions, and was uneasy in mind. They seemed to him to be very unpleasant places, where, in the intervals of being frost-bitten and having your toes sawn off without an anæsthetic, you fell into hidden crevasses, usually with fatal consequences. It was a place where even Siberian ponies came to a violent end. He might prove to be as hardy as a Siberian pony, but it seemed unlikely. The deduction is obvious. He did not like it, and decided that it was getting time to turn back.
It was just like Eleanor to want to visit the Antarctic. He would not have been surprised if she had set out to visit the moon. Nor would he have refused to follow. But he didn't want to visit moons or glaciers. He hadn't wanted to visit lamas and sheiks. He didn't suppose that anyone (except Eleanor) really did. But if she wanted the Antarctic, well, here it was, with a horribly cold wind, and ice in the water. Lots of ice. Even Eleanor ought to be content with that. It was getting time to turn back.
He put this view before Captain Ericson with some vigour. It appeared that when the night came in this region it went on more or less for six months. No one wanted to stay indoors for that period. On the other hand, it did not appear to be a country in which a lady should be out after dark. Clearly, it would be best to turn back while they still could. He thought that Captain Ericson would support this view, but that gentleman was in a contentious mood.
With an aspect of judicial impartiality he considered the problem. He pointed out that women are better swimmers than men, or, at least, that they float more easily, having more adipose tissue. Adipose tissue is just what the Antarctic requires. Are not women therefore better equipped by nature than men for such explorations? He was inclined to think that the North Pole would have been discovered much earlier, if the women had undertaken the enterprise.
Confronted with this unexpected theory, Bunny remarked desperately that Miss D'Acre was of a thin build, to which the Captain replied that she had been laying on fat for the past three weeks like a prize pig.
Mr. Welford was shocked at this metaphor, and was also inclined to dispute the fact, and an absurd quarrel was on the horizon when Franklin and Miss Collinson entered, and led the indignant gentleman into the next cabin to complete he required quartette.
Franklin looked at Miss D'Acre, and decided that the sea-man was right, however objectionably he might have stated the result of his observation. She might still be of a slim figure, but the good appetite which had come with the cold brightness of this southern voyage had certainly given a somewhat more rounded softness to her attractive contours.
Gwendolen Collinson had been, as we have remarked, of a reasonable plumpness before she started. But though he observed the fact, he was unwilling to recognize the logical consequence of the suggestion which he had overheard, and send the ladies forward alone. Besides, the programme (as far as he knew) would not involve the traversing of glaciers, and the climbing of icy slopes. He said: "Oh, beg pardon, three diamonds. No, four."
For the next two hours he was sufficiently occupied in supporting Miss Collinson's very capable game, and then, just as he had declared two spades with a pleasant consciousness that the rubber was in his grasp, Captain Sparshott put the helm over, and the engines back, and the litter of the card-table slid smoothly into Miss D'Acre's lap.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MISS D'ACRE reached out an unhurried hand for her cloak. "I think we might see what's happening up above," she said, as she led the way. Up to now she had shown little interest in the voyage, and even the beauty of its horizons had received an unwilling or perfunctory regard. It was an attitude which had puzzled Franklin, till it had been illuminated by Miss Collinson's remark. "She wouldn't let anything rouse her now. She always saves herself up for the real time." Well, the real time might be getting near.
They climbed up through a slopping of water, and to the sound of the running feet of the crew, but the peril of the moment, if it had amounted to that, was already passed.
They looked out on a sight such as might be common enough in the coming days, but is seen by few of our kind. Seen, indeed, by few creatures that live, except the snow-petrels, and the albatrosses, and the skua-gulls. They were in the midst of the pack, and the low sun, skimming a horizon below which it would not sink, made a dazzling splendour of berg and floe that tossed on a swelling sea.
Far to northward, by the way they had come, the ice-pack ground and heaved. Far to the western horizon it showed alike in the light of a reddened sun. Far ahead was the same, but here and there a larger block, scarcely of size to call a berg, rose twenty or thirty feet out of the sea.
It was one such which had overbalanced as the Bergen passed, and rolled over, as they sometimes will, almost falling upon the deck, which it had deluged with the wave it raised.
But when they looked to the east, they saw a different and grander sight. There there were actual bergs, not towering in irregular grandeur as those of the Arctic do, but flat-topped, and of an even height. Straight-sided too, for the most part, and floating with lanes of water, more or less narrow, between them.
There was a mass of hurrying cloud overhead, though it was still clear along the sunlit west, and a south-east wind blew in rough gusts, and was very bitterly cold.
Sven Ericson stood beside Captain Sparshott, surveying a scene so like and yet so different from those he had known in the arctic north.
Captain Sparshott looked at the sky: he looked into the wind: he looked longingly at the clear lanes of water between the bergs: he looked at the lifting sea.
"They can't be much, by the swell," he said, as one who speaks half to himself, and with a note of doubt in his voice. Captain Ericson answered, "Ay, she should win through." The ship's head came round slowly to port among the grinding floes.
Captain Sparshott's doubt was a simple thing. The clear lanes of water could be passed at a good speed; could, indeed, only be passed with reasonable safety in that way. He knew the pace at which ice-bergs move, and he did not wish to be crushed between two of those floating walls. He thought a blizzard was near. There might be clear water beyond the bergs. He did not wish to be among the ice-floes when the blizzard came. Still less did he wish to be among the bergs. But he looked at the swell which came from the direction where the bergs were, and he decided that they did not extend very far. Yes, it was worth the risk. So he ported his helm, and the ship was soon steaming at the greatest pace it could make in narrow lanes of sea, between high walls of ice that might unite to crush it should it delay too long.
The sky darkened, and the wind screamed through the bergs with a scatter of sleet. The blizzard was already upon them when Captain Sparshott saw open water through a gap which was so narrow that there would scarcely be space for the Bergen to pass between the icy walls. It looked to be a desperate chance, but he was a man of courage on his own deck. It was already hard to see ahead through the driving sleet. The way between the bergs, lying north-eastward, was sheltered from the direct force of the storm, and could be seen clearly enough. There are times when boldness and caution are the same word. Captain Sparshott steered for the gap.
Ten minutes later the Bergen was facing the fury of an open sea.
CHAPTER NINE
THE next fortnight was a hard time alike for those who fought their way half-blindly through a blizzard that never ceased, and those who seldom ventured upon the storm-swept decks.
It was toward the end of January when the wind fell for a time, and then came steadily from the north, and the sky cleared, and a sun which was still high in the summer sky set the ice dripping from the shrouds.
They looked round on a sea where no pack-ice showed; a sea that tossed and sparkled, and with a school of whales blowing astern. They went ahead now at full steam, wishing to take every mile's advantage of a calm that the next tempest might wake at any moment to a further fury. So they steamed for three days, and were then hindered again by a drifting ice-pack, which they skirted eastward for forty miles before a southern passage opened to let them through. A week later they sighted land, and came to the low beaches of which Captain Sparshott had told them.
And, so far, it had become evident that his tale was true. They had sailed through a sea of whales - whales of every variety that is known in the southern Hemisphere, but with the blue whales predominating. They came to a coast that was barren and bleak enough, but which showed less of the barrier ice than had been recorded in any part of the Antarctic land. A few miles inland at some places, at others almost close to the tide-line, basaltic cliffs rose too straightly for ice or snow to find any permanent lodgment upon their sombre sides.
They found the beach where the crew of the Maryland had landed, and where relics of their camping were still scattered about. The lower cliffs showed sandstone here, and coal out-cropped from the sloping beach and could be taken with no more toil than the handling of pick and shovel. There was nothing strange in this. Such outcrops have been found before in Antarctic lands. But it confirmed again the accuracy of the Captain's narrative, so far as he had told it to them.
The beach was of a dull brown colour, being mingled with volcanic sand, which at some places predominated, blown there by the wind, or, it might be, washed up by the water.
For there was a current here that was almost fresh, and that gave a surprisingly high temperature to Franklin's thermometer. Following this current along the coast, they came to the final confirmation of the Captain's tale in the opening of a great gap in the cliffs, through which the river of which he had told flowed black and rapid into the bay.
They saw the mouth of this river from the ship's whale-boat, for the motor-boat was still lashed on the deck. They looked up a canyon of black precipitous walls that rose so high that they narrowed the river's actual width. Its sides washed the cliffs, leaving no space on which a man might walk either right or left. It stretched straight inward, showing neither turn nor change of character as far as sight could reach. Only, it seemed that the black close-closing cliffs rose ever to a greater height.
Franklin stood that night with Eleanor - they had all dropped the formalities of address as the days of confinement lengthened in the narrow cabins - alone on deck.
They looked on the desolation of the barren coast and to the black heights of the cliffs which no man had ever scaled, over which the moon shone. The sun still showed its light beneath the western horizon, paling the stars. In the water there came the sudden flurry of a frightened seal, and the plunging rush of the killer whale that pursued it. Then the silence resumed. The air was cold. There was perhaps thirty degrees of frost, perhaps more, but they were well clad and well fed, and felt it little in a still air. Even now, they knew little of the Antarctic in its moods of terror. It seemed that, so far, it had contemptuously let them through.
"You still want to go on?" he asked in a voice which he endeavoured to make as toneless as possible. He knew that the moment of decision had arrived. A decisive moment, even to life itself. If they went back now, they had done much. Their names might be recorded for ever after. Even financially, the knowledge of that sea of whales meant fortune if it were sold judiciously to those who would bring wholesale daughter to its quiet peace.
If they went on to the unknown - well, all they knew was that the Maryland had not returned.
She looked at him with a surprised questioning that was baffled by the passivity of the eyes that met her. She said: "I thought that was understood. I was to leave everything to you. But we were to go on till we were turned back."
"Then don't you think it's time we made Sparshott tell bit more?"
"If you like; but I shouldn't unless he offers. He's either a fraud, or he's got something he's sure we shan't believe, and that he wants us to see for ourselves. Of course, his difficulty may be that he's told the truth to this point, and invented whatever went further. If he's never been up the river before, you can see his difficulty. If he says anything, he's almost sure to give himself away. But if he keeps a shut mouth, we can come to Heaven or Hell, and he'll just say: "Yes, I knew that all the time."
"If we make him talk, we shan't know whether to believe him or not, and we may be worse off than we are now."
"Yes," he said, "I've thought much the same myself. I half-expected to see the ribs of the Maryland sticking out of the sand."
"It isn't only that," she added frankly. "I told you that I'm not one who likes to read the last chapter first. It might make it all like a stale show. It's the unknown for me."
"Very well," he said. "I shan't raise the question again. There'll be some of us feeling tired by tomorrow night."
Half-laughing, half-seriously, she held out a fur gloved hand. "It's for you to order from now," she said. "I've no more to say beyond this. Life or death, we go on."
He took the slim strong hand, and his tone answered to hers. "It's the unknown for us. Life or death, we go on." But the contact roused another thought, stirred within him a more immediate passion. The unknown for her! Was there an unknown country that she would always miss? Not if he could guide her to it. But he saw that the time, if ever, was not now.
CHAPTER TEN
IT is one of the greatest difficulties of the penetration of the Antarctic that the ice does not break immediately when the spring comes. The summer light will be half over before the invading keel can push inward through berg and floe to its goal of the frozen land. And when it reaches land, it will be already time to turn on its backward course, if it would win free before the new winter's ice will gather and close it in.
Franklin's plans had been ready, only waiting for the sight of the river-canyon of which Sparshott had told, and next morning word was given which changed the quiet scene into one of fevered activity that scarcely slackened when the short darkness came.
There were huts, which had been brought out in sections, to be carried up the beach, and erected where a bend in the cliff wall would give wind shelter when the winter came. There were great quantities of stores to be landed. There was the motor-boat to be launched and equipped.
For three days the solemn penguins lining the beach watched the incessant activity, only scurrying aside with a squawk of protest if some erratic movement of these strange invaders threatened to overrun them. Then the wind rose again, and, for four days, a blizzard swept land and sea, such as no man could face and live. Fortunately the anchors held, and crew and passengers emerged from under hatches at last to the sight of a blue sky that was still crossed by flying clouds, and a beach on which their piles of timber and tinned stores were buried in new-frozen ice. For the storm had driven the water upward along the beach, and it had frozen over the lumber, making fantastic hummocks, from the centre of which the tins must be extracted with axe and pick.
Then the unrelenting toil was resumed, for it was a task which was shared by all. Captain Ericson was to take his ship back to Cape Town, and return next season with further stores. Every hour that he could save increased the probability of easy passage through the soon-gathering ice. Franklin's party were equally anxious to have their winter quarters prepared, and to make a start up the river-canyon while yet the light endured, and they might hope to go far and return before the falling of the Antarctic night.
They might, it is true, have left at once, and trusted to Captain Ericson for the erection and equipment of the base on which their lives might depend, but it was not a risk that Franklin was disposed to take. It was a position in which any oversight might be a dangerous, or even deadly thing. Not to be lightly trusted to men who worked in a haste to go.
Captain Sparshott superintended these operations on shore, and Miss Collinson fulfilled her secretarial duties with a notebook and pencil, checking everything with unremitting oversight, and accepting no assurance, even with the picturesque oaths that the seaman knows, till she had verified its accuracy or exposed its guilt. Bunford Weldon took his part also in this activity, and did well enough, till he slipped in landing on a frozen rock, and must nurse a sprained knee for a few days in the ship's cabin, while Franklin and Eleanor made expeditions right and left, beneath the cliffs on foot, or rowing in a small dinghy that they had brought to be towed after the motor-launch, seeking a place where the high cliffs might be scaled; for it had come to Franklin's mind that as they ascended the river-canyon they would see nothing of the country through which they passed, and it would be well to have some idea of its character. But they gained nothing by these expeditions beyond some increased knowledge of the coast line, for the cliffs were an impregnable barrier. Franklin's alpine experience could do no more than assure him that they could not be scaled by any resources at his disposal. They must ascend the river with no knowledge of the country through which they would have to pass.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE Blanche was moored in a little rock-bounded cove near the river mouth. When she came back from its exploration, if come back she did, it was where she would have to lie in the frozen water through the winter months, for, even unballasted, she was too heavy for them to drag her ashore.
She was a boat which had been first built for a millionaire's whim, and was a model of comfort and speed. She was half-decked, with cabins fore and aft, the better of which, in the bows, was assigned for the ladies' use, while the three men were to make the best of the accommodation at the stern. They loaded her with all the equipment suggested by Captain Sparshott's experience, or the advice that they had received. They took, as a precaution, six weeks' provisions, though they did not expect to be away many days. At the boat's speed they could go far in a short time, and Franklin resolved that, whatever they might find before them, they would be back again when the long darkness closed, in the security of their winter quarters, and with their stores safely anchored around them. If there were a temptation to go further, it should be put forward to the spring, when they would have three months of increasing light and warmth - if that word were not too complimentary to the efforts of the Antarctic sun - before the Bergen could force its way once more through the breaking ice. So he planned, as a leader must, but how many plans are for the derision of the watching Fates?
Looking at the instruments and apparatus which were being handed down for accommodation in the stern cabin, as the loading of the launch proceeded (while the Bergen still lingered, taking on some extra coal from that which the shore offered so freely), Miss D'Acre observed a couple of sporting rifles and a large box of cartridges which she knew to be the cherished property of Mr. Bunford Weldon.
"Gwen," she said, "who put those on the list? I should have thought even Bunny would have been content with one. We're not going to shoot the Antarctic, and everyone knows he won't find any animals here."
Miss Collinson looked doubtful. "You'll break his heart if you don't let him take them," she answered. "I asked Franklin, and he said: 'Oh, yes, they won't sink the boat. You can throw them in.' "
"So I did," Franklin added, coming up at the moment, and overhearing the words. "You never know, and it's always best to be on the safe side, though I don't expect he'll get any crocodiles here."
Eleanor had accepted without protest a limitation of weight which had obliged her to leave many personal comforts in the huts which she would have preferred to bring, and a moment's annoyance was natural enough, but it was a question for his decision. She said no more.
He did not explain that he had had a similar hesitation. He had not handled a rifle himself since he had been a school cadet, and whatever might be before them he did not propose that they should engage it in violent combat. They were too weak for that. It must be retreat, or an effort for peaceful passage.
He was not surprised at her protest, for he knew that she held the opinion that a show of weapons increases the dangers of wandering in the wild places of the world. She had said that, once at least, she had owed her life in Tibet to the fact that her escort carried no arms of aggression. "And once," she had said very sensibly, "is a good deal."
Besides that, he had not thought of Bunford as a man of war. But the fact was that that gentleman's favourite sport had been the stalking of red deer in the Scottish forests, and though it is not an occupation for which any courage is needed, it does teach familiarity with the long-range rifle and some skill in its use. Mr. Weldon was in a panic at the frozen solitudes into which his somewhat doglike devotion to his cousin, and the fear of her contempt (complicated by the fact that he was financially dependent upon her), had led him on this occasion. He was in real need of the moral courage which the presence of his rifles gave.
But Franklin had not been influenced by these considerations. Captain Sparshott, if he told the truth, had been up that canyon before. He had seen him looking carefully to the loading of a revolver which he had dropped into his hip-pocket. Franklin said nothing to that, but he had armed himself with a similar weapon. He let the rifles go.
As to the Captain, being asked nothing, he offered no further information. Since he had handed the command of the Bergen back to its owner, he had become as morosely is silent as he had been earlier. That he had some doubt or trouble on his mind was a certain thing. But, beyond that attitude, he did his part in the work of preparation, and made no protest.
So they came to the day when the Bergen hauled up its anchors and steamed out to a misty sea. It was early morning of March 3rd when they watched it go, and as its hull became lost in the mist, the little party turned, not without some feeling of desolation, toward the motor-launch which was in readiness to take them to a destination which, to four at least of their number, was beyond their guessing.
The Blanche, as Franklin had renamed it, before he became sufficiently familiar with Miss D'Acre to know that she preferred the earlier of the names which her parents had bestowed on her, had been specially adapted for the journey which was now before it, and refitted with new air-cooled, four-cylinder engines, as water-cooling would have been unless in those frozen regions. They could drive the boat at perhaps five times the speed at which the Maryland (if Captain Sparshott's tale were true) had steamed up the narrow gorge. And the river offered a straight passage, with no hint of shallow or rapid, running smooth and swift between its confining walls. They looked right and left, and the cliffs were further off than they had expected them to be. They looked up, and the strip of sky was so slight and far that it seemed that they were closed by walls too narrow to let them through. It was never too light for the stars to show in that ribbon of distant sky.
So they went on, and the hours passed. The cliff walls grew higher yet, and the gloom deepened. The entrance through which they came dwindled to a point of light, and went out, but they could not see that they bent at all either to right or left, and the canyon still opened ahead. Except for the rising height of the black basaltic walls that confined their course, there was no difference at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT was the second morning. Franklin steered, as he had done most of the time, but there had been little sleep for any of the five. Four who watched for they knew not what, for something that never came, and one who might know more, but who found no comfort in what he knew.
So Franklin judged, observing a furtive restlessness which Captain Sparshott controlled with difficulty, and which appeared to increase as the days passed. Yet what was there to fear? Franklin, feeling that the lives of all were in his hands, went ceaselessly over the question, imagining many fantastic and some impossible things. The way back was clear at any time. That seemed certain. They had encountered no difficulty of fall or rapid. With the current's aid, they could return even more quickly than they had come. Even should the engines fail, they would drift down at a pace which would return them long before their provisions would be exhausted.
Nor could he see that anything could cut off their retreat. All the time he had watched for any opening in the rocky walls, and when the need of sleep had become imperative, he had charged others with the same duty. But they were all tense with expectancy of what this canyon would show at last.
For it could not go on for ever. Already they might class it with the greatest wonders that the world contains. A wonder that might be doubtful if they should return with no proof to show. And, so far, there would be nothing at all.
It was the second day, and there had been no change except that the walls had increased in height, the sky was narrower and further yet, and the gloom had deepened, so that they had lighted a lamp from the acetylene outfit that the boat carried, and the white glare was thrown forward on the black water, and the blacker cliffs.
Once the narrow strip of sky had shown a vivid crimson for several hours. They could not tell what that might mean, but it had ended at last, and some time later there had been a thin falling of frozen snow.
But it was not intensely cold. Twice Franklin had taken the temperature of the water, and had found it slightly warmer than it had been at the river's mouth.
He had not made any set rotation for the steering of the boat. He had a vague distrust of Sparshott, and was unwilling either to give the helm to his hands or to make a disposition which would pointedly exclude him from his natural turn. Yet the man had done nothing on which suspicion could fix. Only, once he had shown concern as to the security of the rope that towed the little dinghy behind the launch. Franklin remembered that he had been active in suggesting that this smaller boat should be brought along. Did he know of some narrower passage which they must take, where the Blanche must be left behind? Franklin did not like to think of the five of them in that little boat, depending on oars alone, and with such provision as it would carry. He would think twice - indeed, many times - before he would agree to that.
So he had kept to the helm himself as long as he could command the alertness of mind which the situation required, and then handed it over to one of the women or Bunford for a short time, telling them to watch incessantly for any change in what was before them, and to slow up and wake him instantly at any happening of whatever kind. For at the pace at which they advanced it would not do to doze at the helm on that narrow and unknown way.
And then he had resumed his charge, and still nothing happened, and so, once again, he called Bunford to take the helm, and settled down for the short sleep which he could not safely defer. Bunford steered with a loaded rifle beside his hand. He had a timidity which was unashamed. He said that place gave him the jumps, and if he hadn't got something handy that could give the other fellows what for . . . . Franklin said he hoped he wouldn't do anything rash, but may have found some confidence also in the loaded weapon. Not knowing what was before them, who could tell what was best?
So he dozed for a time, and was awakened by Bunford's frightened voice. "Damn you, you swine," and then, as Franklin sat up quickly from where he lay, "Sparshott's off in the skiff. . . . He whacked me across the head."
Franklin was conscious of a moment of hesitation. The man had bolted, meaning doubtless to drift down in the dinghy. He would have the run of their stores. But he could not use everything. He would be unlikely to do any wanton damage. Why not let him go? Or was he so sure that he would never see them again? That he would not want to see them again was a sure thing. He would have to wait until Ericson's return, and then make the best tale that he could. He might say that they had left him in charge, and had not returned. Who could blame him for that? But he would not want them to return before Ericson's arrival, and his explanation of that cowardly flight. Suppose he removed enough of the stores for his own use to some secret hiding-place, and set fire to the huts and all they held? That would make their fates sure.
All these thoughts came as Bunford brought the boat round, and the white light shone down the narrow canyon. Bunford passed him the helm. He went forward, rifle in hand.
"Bunford, you're not going to shoot?" he called, and got for answer: "You don't want him back here, do you?" Even as the answer came, the light settled on a man who was sculling desperately down the stream. He could not have seen Bunford, who was behind the light, but he must have had a fear of what that pursuing light would mean, for he dropped the sculls and crouched down in the boat. Bunford saw no more than the top of his head, but it was enough for him. He fired once, the shot sounding like thunder in that narrow space.
"You can turn her up again, unless you're wanting the boat," he called, as he laid the rifle down.
Gwen Collinson, who missed little, noticed how his hand shook, though it must have been steady enough as it pressed the trigger. She said: "You'd better let me tie up that wound. You've got blood all down the side of your head."
It was an episode of two frightened men. There is nothing more pitiless than fear.
Eleanor said only, as the Blanche turned up-stream again: "Franklin, hadn't we better go slow? It looks as though there's something about here that he wasn't anxious to meet."
Franklin said yes to that. He added: "They can't say we've called on the sly. I mean, not without knocking. That noise might have waked the dead."
He was hardly conscious of what he said, and was annoyed to feel that his own excitement was not easy to control. Then Gwen said quietly: "I think there's something on the cliff on the left. We've passed it now. I couldn't see what it was."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THEY brought the Blanche to the cliff face and found no more than a metal ring, bolted into the rock. The ring was thinned and corroded with age. They threw the light of the lamp upon it, and Franklin scraped it with his knife. He said: "It seems like bronze. It must have been here for a long time." And then, as he lifted it: "I think there's an inscription on the underside." It was less worn underneath. There were faint marks which it would be hopeless to try to read. They might be Aramaic or Hittite for all he knew, but they were inscribed in no modern tongue. He tried to turn it round to get a better view, and the worn bolt slipped from the rocks. He was not quick enough to tighten his grip, and the ring fell into the water with a loud splash.
"Well," he said, "it's a long while since any boat could have been tied up by that ring. . . . Sparshott didn't run from that."
No one spoke in reply. A sense of mystery was upon them. There was a remote antiquity when this far place had been known to men. How had they come here? How lived? What did it mean? What was before them now?
There may have been more than one of them who would have lacked courage to protest if the boat had turned down-stream at that moment, though there was none to be the first to propose it. Yet they had seen nothing but an old ring, and even that was no longer there.
But very soon they saw more. It was on the left-hand side still. A great gap in the cliff face, through which a liner could have steamed in without lowering its funnels. They threw the light inward, and had an impression of an enormous natural cave. But the sides of the entrance were of mortised stone. Here, again, however distant, was the work of man.
Franklin said: "Shall we go on, or go in?"
Eleanor answered: "It's for you to say that."
"Then we'll have a look round. I don't like leaving anything behind that we don't understand. So far, we've got a fast boat, and a safe rear. . . . Bunford, you can keep that rifle ready, but don't fire unless you're sure it's the right thing to do. You girls had better go into the cabin. We'll call you out if there's any show."
"I think, if you don't mind, we'd rather stay where we are," Eleanor answered. He said no more. It was unlikely that they were entering anything more formidable than a long-empty cave. He steered the boat inward at a crawling pace. Gwen had moved to the light. She threw it upward and round. The roof rose as they went inward to a height which the lamp could not penetrate, nor could they see anything but black water ahead. On the right hand the cave wall rose sheer from the water. On the left there was a shelving ledge, and black openings, as of dry recesses, above it. They kept along the left-hand side. There was no sound, nor any sign of life, till Gwen said, with an unusual sharpness in her voice: "What's that over there?"
There was no doubt of the answer. The shifting light settled on a vessel's name. It was the Maryland, lying half out of the water, heeled over on her side, an empty, abandoned wreck. Franklin let the boat come to a standstill while they gazed in silence at this evidence of the truth of Sparshott's tale. But what did it mean? What had been the fate of its crew when their captain had fled in an open boat, once before, as he had attempted to do again? There was no answer in the darkness of the silent cave.
And then, shrill in the silence, sounded a baby's cry. . . .
Gwendolen was the first to speak. She said: "That's a child."
Bunford added: "With its mother's hand over its mouth, or wringing its neck by now." He had a vision of hidden enemies that watched them from every side, and that would bring them to the same end that had befallen the crew of the ship they had just seen. He said: "We're best out of this," and his voice shook with the words. And then the child's cry came again.
Certainly it did not sound as though there were any effort either to silence or comfort it. It was like the cry of a child that is hungry or alone. Franklin had a thought that it might be a cunning lure, such as had drawn the Maryland's crew to their fatal end. He had read somewhere that there are creatures that can cry like a human child. He could not remember what they were. But his instinct agreed with Bunford's protest. They would be best out of this. On the other hand, they had said that they would go on until they were turned, and what was there to turn them here? An empty wreck, and a child's cry. He pulled out his pistol as he said: "We don't know that it's a child at all."
Gwen said: "But it is. Anyone could tell that. Any woman I mean."
It was continuous now.
Eleanor spoke at last. She shared Franklin's doubts, but she had come to see, not to turn from an unsolved cry. She said: "We can't gain by delay. We'd better have a look, as Gwen is so sure. We can't go without finding anything out." She reminded herself that Miss Collinson was not often wrong.
Franklin said: "Bunford and I will go. You girls had better stay in the boat, and be ready to take us in."
"I'd rather come if you don't mind." That was from Gwen. Eleanor said: "Then I'll stay. We can't all leave the boat. It's not far, by the sound."
Gwen led the way, the two men following with ready weapons, not knowing to what they came. She had a flash-lamp in her hand, but it was of little use, for Eleanor swung the boat's light round upon them so that they saw where they went, except as their own shadows obscured their way.
But it was only a few paces ahead that they found the source of the cry, where a pile of fragments of rock made a semi-circular hollow against the wall, and as Gwen's flash-light illuminated the interior, they gazed down on two young creatures that squirmed in a nest of dried water-weed of a pallid unfamiliar kind.
She reached down and brought one up for a clearer view. "Yes, they're babies right enough. . . . But the poor thing's blind." They saw what looked to be a human child, with a long, slim, well formed body, and exceptionally long fingers and toes, showing starkly white in the glare of the acetylene light, but the eyes were closed and very tiny, hardly developed at all.
"I wonder whether the other's like it," she was saying, and bent down to look, when there was a warning cry from the boat. "Look out! Shes coming for you."
They turned round at the cry, and saw the figure of a woman, if such it were, that had risen from the water with some kind of fish in her mouth.
She had run crookedly at first, as though confused by the light, and in a useless fury, but when she had her back to it, and was guided by her child's cry, she sprang snarling at Gwendolen's throat.
Gwen had the child on one hand, which she did not drop, but her left arm came up with a quick instinct to guard her throat. Strong projecting teeth met in a well-covered elbow, and there it ended for her, for Bunford fired, and the woman fell at their feet.
"Oh, Bunford, you shouldn't have done that. She's a woman."
So she seemed to be, of a queer kind, with a projecting, long-toothed mouth, and rudimentary eyes, but otherwise well favoured enough, lying still now, and very white in the acetylene glare.
Bunford's teeth chattered as he tried to answer. "She's not a woman, she's a horrible thing." He looked with expert eyes to see where the bullet went. "She'll get over that," he said with assurance. "She'll be up again in five minutes, making another rush, and then you can deal with her in your own way."
Gwen made no answer, for they were suddenly aware at once of Eleanor's warning cry, and of a score of forms swimming swiftly toward them, rippling the water as they came, or running with a barefooted silence along the edge. The noise of the rifle had done its work.
It was the light that saved them then, for there was an instant's delay after Bunford leapt into the boat. Gwen turned to put the child back into its nest, and Franklin stood aside for her to go first. But those who came were plainly blinded by the glare that met them as the boat's head slid along the side.
Then, as Eleanor brought it round to the cave's mouth, and the light shone outward, the rush came upon them. Franklin, beside Eleanor now, used his revolver-butt to beat off a clutching hand, but the boat's speed, though they could not let her go as she would till they had turned at the cave mouth, was too great for those that followed.
Eleanor heard Franklin's low voice at her side: "Have you had about enough now? Which way is it to be? Up down?"
It was a decision which must be made in five seconds. There was the clear course backward down the river, too swift for pursuit, as Captain Sparshott had doubtless taken it in a slower boat seven years ago; or they might go further on to the unknown, leaving this peril to bar their return. How could they know how many caves there might be from which similar creatures would swim out to seize them? How they might return later through waters alive with hundreds to drag them down? How did they know what resources for their destruction they might possess? Only the crew of the Maryland could have answered that.
Franklin called out: "Don't shoot again, Bunford. There's e in that," and as he did so he heard Eleanor's answer. "We're not going Sparshott's way." She brought the rudder sport, and the boat turned up the river with a foaming wake,
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"I OUGHT not to have brought him," Eleanor said. "I see that now. But he's been all right other times."
"More or less," Gwen admitted. She had a very private dislike of Bunford Weldon, which she believed to be unsuspected of any. He was her employer's cousin, and it was an opinion best kept to herself. But he was not her cousin, and he did not wag his tail like a dog if she patted his head. Perhaps she saw him with clearer eyes for these differences. She added: "Anyhow, I'm not the one to complain this time. It was my silliness in wanting to look at the child that made all the trouble, and she was in a blood-thirsty mood. She'd have had a few drops more if he hadn't fired when he did."
Gwen had bared her elbow beside the stove in the tiny cabin, and showed tooth-marks that had broken the skin, though little more. "It's a good thing we go well clothed in this climate," she said cheerfully. "But I'm not sure we oughtn't to have brought a doctor along. There's Bunny's head already, and this elbow, both of which might have been worse, and I've got a feeling that we're in for a livelier time than we've had yet."
"I thought you knew everything."
"Well, I don't. All the surgical knowledge we've brought along is in Bunny's head. He knows what a bullet doesn't or does, and there's no one better able to tell us when we're quite dead, but that's the limit with him; and I know just that much less. Don't you remember about Aleppo?"
But Eleanor did not want to remember about Aleppo, and it is a tale which it would be unkind to tell, there being no need. She returned to their first subject, saying: "It wouldn't be so bad if Franklin'd make him give up those guns. He shoots first, and thinks afterwards."
"It wouldn't matter if he'd only shoot when he's asked. A shot's sometimes a useful thing." Gwen was a fair-minded girl, and she saw that her elbow might have been worse. It was throbbing quite enough now.
But they both knew the folly of going into strange lands in an attitude of offensive violence. It is just the way to get killed. Gwen went on: "He'll hate Franklin if he makes him give up those guns. It's only you can do that without a row."
"Yes, I suppose I must. . . . What do you think they were?"
Gwen knew that, as the best secretary in London, it was her duty to have her head furnished with any information which her employer might require. She had just admitted her deficiency in regard to the repair of the human body, and it was much too soon to do so again. She answered confidently:
"Oh, I suppose there was a time when ships of some old civilization used to come here. Perhaps it wasn't as cold then as it is now. And then something happened, and they didn't come any more, and the people who had been left here had to live in the caves, and penetrated further in, because there wasn't anywhere else to go, and so they've gradually lost their sight, and grown teeth that can catch their prey in the water.
"When you come to think of it, it's the only thing that could happen. There wouldn't be any wood in the caves to build another ship. There isn't any wood in the whole Antarctic, for that matter. What a ghastly place it seems, when you think of that! And the only food they could get would be under water, so they'd soon learn to pursue it there. When you think it out, it's just what would be sure to follow."
"Sounds simple," Eleanor answered sleepily. "But how many million years do you think it would take to get eyes like that? To say nothing of the teeth. Even the babies. . . ."
But Gwen held her own theory, as a competent secretary may be expected to do. "I don't ever take those millions of years very seriously. Think of the last five or ten thousand, and of how much we know has changed in that time. It's easy enough for scientists to say anything took a few thousand million years. It's only adding a few noughts, more or less. If they had to live through it, they might be a bit more moderate in their ideas."
"Yes. I expect they would." Eleanor was more interested in the facts around her than in their problematical origins. She yawned as she added: "Anyway, they're a ghastly sight. . . . But what makes you so sure they came up the river? We haven't seen what the ships were like. Why not down?"
Gwen had to admit to herself that it was an idea. "Yes," she said thoughtfully, "there is that."
They knew little, and could guess as they would. All they knew was that the straight river continued, and the high cliff walls, for Franklin had promised to call them if there should be change, of whatever kind, and the engines throbbed, and the water swirled from the stern, and they went onward to a goal which they could not guess.
"Suppose we smash up the boat," Gwen suggested, with her usual cheerfulness, "and the skiff's not exactly lost but gone before, as the tombstones say. It looks rather like a life sentence for us. I wonder how long we should take growing such useful teeth. I expect when we got hungry enough we should do it in about a week."
"Don't be ghastly," Eleanor said, even more sleepily than before. "You ought to know that Franklin'd manage better than that, and I've got a useful secretary, too. Besides, I've told the Stores they're to send for us if we're not back in two years, and they won't forget. It's about the best order they've ever had."
"Well, I hope they won't have to make out the invoice. It wouldn't matter to you. You've got the devoted Bunford, but there'd be nothing better than Franklin left over for me." Miss Collinson watched her employer's face as she said this. She, at least, was not in a sleepy mood. Eleanor's eyes half-opened, as though there were something in the last remark which might have stirred her at a livelier time. "Bunford?" she said. "If you'll just sling over that cushion, you can have him, rifles and all."
Gwendolen considered this answer. It gave her no pleasure, and no surprise.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FRANKLIN was a tired man, but he kept the look-out himself, for he felt that the women needed rest, and he would trust Bunford if he must, but not otherwise.
He had a more definite anxiety now, watching for further openings in the cliff wall, and wondering, with a too active imagination, what means of communication might be known to the dwellers of the subterranean caves. He had a vision of vast populations that the dark interior of the mountains held, and of a sudden swarming forth of thousands of these amphibious men, to surround the boat. He saw them rise in the water from all sides. What would be the use of speed? They clutched at the boat's bows. The body of one of them jammed the propeller. They clambered aboard from every side. What was the use of resistance? To kill a few before they themselves were torn asunder with bloody teeth?
But as the time passed, and the cliff walls showed unbroken fronts, his thoughts went forward again to what must be the end of this endless-seeming way. Did it really go beyond the confines of the earth we know, to some unimagined mystery? Would it ever end?
. . .Yes, it was ending now. He called to the others as he had promised, and they looked together on a prospect of lessening cliffs, and to what they could not yet distinguish as more than a blackness that barred the way.
He noticed that Bunford Weldon had picked up a rifle, as though to defend himself from some visible foe. Bunford was in an evident fear.
He was aware himself of an excitement which was half apprehension of what the next hour might bring. He had not had such a feeling since he had approached the noticeboard to see the result of the examination on which his future depended. It steadied him somewhat that the women took it in a more casual way. Not that they were indifferent. Who could be so, having penetrated by such a route to a country that no man might have trodden since the dawn of time? Yet it was likely that it might be no more than a frozen waste, already threatened with the iron severity of the Antarctic night. What more was there to hope? What else to fear?
"I wonder," Eleanor was saying calmly, "what we're really expecting to see?"
"If we all said that, we should know some things that won't be there," Gwendolen answered. "Life's always different. That's the one sure thing. What you expect is just what you never get."
"And we mostly expect too much."
"The only way not to be disappointed is not to expect anything."
Perhaps the exchange of these platitudes told a tale of suppressed excitements, which they would not show.
Bunford said irritably: "There's no sense in rushing on at this rate, before we know what's ahead. We might at least slow up a bit, and wait till it gets dark."
It was afternoon, and as the cliffs diminished the light increased. Franklin had already switched off the light in the bows. He answered Bunford: "I think we're all rather inclined to expect to see more than we shall, when we get clear. It's the way Sparshott told us about it first. But we've seen what scared him, and that's behind us now. If there's nothing here but a frozen plain, we'll be turned round, and going back before night. We can come again in the spring, if we think it's worth while, to look around a bit more."
His words influenced his own mind, as much as those others who heard them. They had been excited beyond reason, and with an unspoken apprehension that was more foolish still. But they kept their eyes upon the forward prospect, and the lessening walls. "It seems a long time."
"It looks like nothing more than a blank wall."
"It can't be that."
"Suppose it's only that the river turns?"
"That would be an event, after the time it's kept straight."
"It must be a thousand miles."
"Scarcely that."
"No. A lot more."
"It can't be only that the river turns. Look at the way the cliffs have come down."
The last was a fact that could not be significant of less than a great change in the land above them. They had run on hour after hour between walls that might have been ten thousand feet high, or more than that, through the Antarctic heights, of which it was known already that they would reduce Mount Everest to a little hill, but now these walls were not of a height of more than five hundred feet either to right or left, and the far distance, which had been before them so long, had changed to a darkness which they quickly neared.
Franklin put down the glasses with which he had been examining that approaching shadow. "I think," he said, "the river flows underground."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THAT was how they found it to be. Before them, and on either side, the straight rock rose for five or six hundred feet, and, smooth and dark, the river flowed from a hollow that arched it with a roof that was not ten feet high.
Franklin cut off the engines as they approached, and the boat lost way rapidly against the current. He looked at the cliff walls on either hand and before. They were straight beyond hope of climbing. It was a case of return, or advance beneath the gloom of that low roof from which the river flowed.
It was not an inviting prospect, so soon after the adventure of the cavern in which the Maryland lay. He had a mind to say that they had come far enough. Perhaps in the spring. . . . But there was one of the four who could not endure the suspense which his silence held.
Bunford said: "We've had too much of this. If you're thinking of going under there, it'll save time to tell you that you think wrong."
Eleanor said sharply: "Bun, don't be a fool."
Franklin saw the panic the man was in. He saw the rifle that was beside his hand. He was dangerous in such moods, one whom it was best to answer discreetly, though it must be plain that he was not taking orders from him. He said: "You shouldn't cry out before you're hurt. I haven't decided yet whether to go on or not."
But the answer was not sufficient to quieten the nerves of a frightened man. He answered with a sudden truculence. "No. But I have. This damned folly's gone far enough. I've got the ladies to think of, if you can't. You'll put this boat down-stream in ten seconds, or I'll put a bullet where it won't be worth while cutting it out." He lifted the rifle as he spoke, with a finger on the trigger. Franklin knew that his life was in a deadly peril if he should fail to obey. A word of refusal or even argument might have been answered with an instant shot. Yet he was unwilling to give way to such an order, and the seconds passed as he sat inactive, wondering what could be the word which would reduce this frightened madman to reason. What might have happened is hard to guess, but the two women interposed in their own ways.
Gwen said, in her most casual tone: "Mr. Welford, if you wouldn't be so melodramatic we might get back quite as soon." Eleanor did not trust to further speech.
She was immediately behind him as the threat was spoken. She reached forward suddenly, striking the rifle from his hand.
"Bun," she said, "you'll give me both of those silly things, and you'll do whatever Franklin says." She picked up the loaded rifle, and passed it backwards to Gwen, who put it into their own cabin.
He made no movement to retain the weapon, but broke into excited protest. "Eleanor, you don't understand I If we go under there, there'll be the same creatures again I We shall be eaten alive. And it's all for nothing at all. And, besides, it's too low. We shall get upset more likely