Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 46

Then Wyllard gave another a glimpse of the emotion that he generally kept hidden deep in him.

"No," he said, quietly, "the hard road leads further--where we do not know--but one feels that the full knowledge will not bring sorrow when it is some day given to those who have the courage to follow."

Overweg waved a hand as he spoke. "It is not the view of the materialists, but it is conceivable that the materialists may be wrong,"

he responded. "In this case, however, it is the concrete and practical we have to grapple with, my friend. You say you are going inland to search for that man, and for a while I go that way, but though I have my base camp there is the question of provisions if you come with me."

They discussed the matter until Wyllard suggested that he could replace any provisions his companion supplied him with from the schooner, to which Overweg agreed, and they afterwards decided to send the Siwash and one of the Kamtchadales on to the inlet with a letter to Dampier. The two messengers started next day, when they found a place where the river was with difficulty fordable, and the rest pushed on slowly into a broken and rising country seamed with belts of thin forest here and there. They held westwards for another week, and then one evening made their camp among a few stunted, straggling firs. The temperature had risen in the daytime, but the nights were cold, and when they had eaten their evening meal they were glad of the shelter of the tent. A small fire of resinous branches was sinking into a faintly glowing ma.s.s close outside the canvas.

The flap was drawn back, and Wyllard, who lay facing the opening, could see a triangular patch of dim blue sky with a sharp sickle moon hanging low above a black fir branch. The night was clear and still, but now and then among the stunted trees there was a faint elfin sighing that quickly died away again. While still determined, Wyllard was moodily discouraged, for they had seen no sign of human life during the journey, and his reason told him that he might search for years before he found the bones of the last survivor of the party. Still, he meant to search while Overweg was willing to supply him with provisions.

By and by he saw Charly sharply raise his head and gaze towards the opening.

"Did you hear anything outside?" asked Charly.

"It must be the Kamtchadales," Wyllard answered.

"They went back a mile or two to lay some traps."

"Then," said Wyllard, decisively, "it couldn't have been anything."

Charly did not appear satisfied, and it seemed to Wyllard that Overweg was also listening, but there was deep stillness outside now, and he dismissed the matter from his mind. A few minutes later, however, it seemed to him that a shadowy form appeared out of the gloom among the firs and faded into it again. This struck him as very curious, since if it had been one of the Kamtchadales he would have walked straight into camp, but he said nothing to his companions, and there was silence for a while until Charly rose softly to his feet.

"Get out as quietly as you can," he said, as he slipped by Wyllard, who crept after him to the entrance.

When he reached it Wyllard's voice rang out with a startling vehemence.

"Stop right now," he cried, and after a pause, "n.o.body's going to hurt you. Walk right ahead."

Wyllard felt his heart beat furiously, for a dusky, half-seen figure materialized out of the gloom, and grew into sharper form as it drew nearer to the sinking fire. The thing was wholly unexpected, almost incredible, but it was clear that the man could understand English, and his face was white. In another moment Wyllard's last doubt vanished, and he sprang forward with a gasp.

"Lewson--Tom Lewson!" he cried.

Charly thrust the man inside the tent, and when somebody lighted a lamp Lewson sat down stupidly and looked at them. His face was gaunt and almost blackened by exposure to the frost, his hair was long, and tattered garments of greasy skins hung about him. There was something that suggested bewildered incredulity in his eyes.

"It's real?" he said, slowly and haltingly. "You have come at last?"

They a.s.sured him that this was the case. For a moment or two the man's face was distorted with a strange look and he made a hoa.r.s.e sound in his throat.

"Lord," he muttered! "if I'm dreaming I don't want to wake."

Charly leaned forward and smote him on the shoulder.

"Shall I hit you like I did that afternoon in the Thompson House on the Vancouver water front?" he asked.

Then the certainty of the thing seemed to dawn upon the man, for he quivered, and his eyes half closed. After that he straightened himself with an effort.

"I should have known, and I think I did," he said, turning to Wyllard.

"Something seemed to tell me that you would come for us when you could."

Wyllard's face flushed, but he made no answer, and it was Charly who asked the next question:

"The others are dead?"

Lewson made an expressive gesture. "Hopkins was drowned in a crevice of the ice. I buried Leslie back yonder."

He broke off abruptly, as though speech cost him an effort, and Wyllard turned to Overweg.

"This is the last of the men I was looking for," he announced.

Overweg quietly nodded. "Then you have my felicitations--but it might be advisable if you did not tell me too much," he remarked. "Afterwards I may be questioned by those in authority."

CHAPTER XXIX

CAST AWAY

Tom Lewson had been an hour in camp before he began the story of his wanderings, and at first, lying propped up on one elbow, with the lamplight on his worn face, he spoke slowly and with faltering tongue.

"We broke an oar coming off the beach that night, and it kind of crippled us," he said. "Twice the boat nearly went back again in the surf, and I don't quite know how we pulled her off. Anyway, one of us was busy heaving out the water that broke into her. It was Jake, I think, and he seemed kind of silly. Once we saw a boat hove up on a sea, but we lost her in the spray, and a long while after we saw the schooner. Just then a comber that broke on board 'most hove us over, and when we had dodged the next two there wasn't a sign of the schooner.

After that we knew that we were done, and we just tried to keep her head-to and ease her to the seas."

He stopped a moment, and looked around at the others with troubled eyes, as if trying to marshal uncertain memories. He was a simple sailorman, who contented himself with the baldest narrative; still, two of those who heard him could fill in the things he had not mentioned--the mad lurching of the half-swamped boat, the tense struggle with the oars each time a big frothing comber forged out of the darkness, and the savage desperation of the drenched and half-frozen men cast away with the roaring surf to lee of them and their enemies watching upon the hammered beach.

"It blew hard that night," he continued. "Somehow our little boat lived through it, but there wasn't a sign of the island when morning came--nothing but the combers and the flying haze! Guess the wind must have s.h.i.+fted a few points and drove us by the end of it. Then we found Jake had his head laid open by a sealing club. The sea was getting longer, and as we were too played out to hold the boat to it we got her away before it, and somehow she didn't roll over. I think it was next day, though it might have been longer, when we fetched another island.

She just washed up on it, and one of the others pulled me out. There wasn't a sign of anybody on the beach, but there were plenty of skinned holluschickie seals on the slope behind it, and that was fortunate for us."

"You struck n.o.body on the island?" questioned Wyllard.

"We didn't," Lewson answered simply. "The Russians must have sent a vessel to take off the killers after the last drive of the season a day or two before, for the holluschickie were quite fresh. It was blowing hard and the surf was getting steep, and the men had left quite a few of their things behind them. We found the shacks that the killers lived in, and we made out that winter in one of them."

It occurred to Wyllard that this was a thing very few men except sealers could have done had they been cast ash.o.r.e without stores or tools to face the awful winter of the North.

"How did you get through?" he asked.

"Well," explained Lewson, "we had a rifle, and the ca'tridges weren't spoilt. The killers hadn't taken their cooking outfit, and by and by we got a walrus in an open lane among the ice. They'd left some gear behind them, but we were most of two days cutting and heaving the beast out with a parbuckle under him. There was no trouble about things keeping in that frost. Besides, we'd the holluschickie blubber to burn, and there was a half-empty bag or two of stores in one of the shacks. No, we hadn't any great trouble in making out."

"You had to stay there until the ice broke up," Charly observed.

"And after. The boat was gone, and we couldn't get away. She broke up in the surf, and we burned what we saved of her. At last a schooner came along, and we hid out across the island until she'd gone away. It was blowing fresh, and hazy, and she just shoved a new gang of killers ash.o.r.e. There was an Okotsk Russian with them, but he made no trouble for us. He was white, anyway, and it kind of seemed to me he didn't like one of the other men who got hurt that night on the beach."

"Then some of them did get badly hurt?" Wyllard broke in.

"Well," Lewson said, "from what that Russian told us--and we got to understand each other after a time--one of the killers had his ribs broke, and it seems that another would go lame for life. Besides, among other things, there was a white man got his face quite smashed. I saw him with his nose flattened way out to starboard, and one eye canted. He was a boss of some kind. They called him Smirnoff."

Overweg looked up sharply. "Ah," he commented, "Smirnoff. A man with an unsavory name. I have heard of him."