THE SEQUEL
I worked my tried and still most workable and useful raft to the shore,
and stepped from it to the sand, between some ragged floes of ice—a kind
of ice foot. The loss of the hamper was a heavy blow, and to confront
the unknown future with a few morsels of meat and some soaked
_tortillas_ seemed only a desperate and suicidal bravado. I was for a
while stunned into a torpor of inaction. I had managed to force the raft
somewhat up on the shore, but I took the precaution of further loading
it with stones. Until I had more clearly made up my mind what would be
my next step, I would not part company with this friend, for somehow to
me _then_, the mute bundle of logs had become almost animate with a
human affection.
And now the reaction against fatigue and all the sleepless hours made me
faint and weak. I must first sleep. I untied the welcome sleeping bag
and the rug, and disengaging the heavy gold belt—what a mockery its
value seemed in this sterile solitude—and the small hatchet which it
held, I rolled myself up, and instantly fell into unconsciousness. I
must have slept almost twenty-four hours, for the sun which had been
declining to the horizon was in almost the same position when I awoke. I
was ravenously hungry, but my courage had returned, and at least I felt
equal to considering my plans.
But first it was food. I made a fire, warmed or toasted the flat
pancakes and roasted the meat chunks, and these with water contrived to
satisfy my hunger. The contents of the pack were now my sole resource.
They had been well soaked, but I had spread them on the white sands, and
in the heat of the sun they had dried, even the matches proving
serviceable again. My gun, which had been well greased (swagged) was
uninjured, and the wax-smeared cartridges retained their murderous
facility of exploding. If game was to be had the life in my body might
yet reasonably expect considerable prolongation. And why not game? I
recalled our first encounter when we were unceremoniously introduced to
Krocker Land—the musk oxen. But was I to become a prowling Robinson
Crusoe; were the days, the weeks, the months—there could not be
years—before me to be a savage struggle to just live and then
realize—_starvation_? At any rate there must be a plan. What should it
be? It was then that my mind working feverishly over a few projects—the
only ones I could conceive of, and all of them preposterous—was suddenly
arrested by recalling that this very summer, even during this month,
Coogan and Stanwix, Phillips and Spent would be pushing the “Astrum”
through that very sea—but farther east—to find us. On that peg of
suggestion I hung my hopes. I would work eastward if I could, or as far
as possible, keep a watchout, and hope for the best. What else?
At first I thought I could make use of the raft, as there was much open
water, but it required only a little circumspection to show me that the
plan was impracticable; worse, fatal. I must fight my way somehow along
the coast eastward, replenishing my larder with game, possibly with
fish, not going farther than the inevitable angle—there must be such a
turning point—where the land contours bent northward. That was a _plan_,
it had a significant value. Immediately my spirits rose, so quickly does
the mind recover its equipoise in an emergency when it is set about a
rational scheme of action. It was really difficult for me to desert the
raft. In that long drive through the canon of Homeward Bound, the
irrepressible instinct of companionship had nurtured a curious
hallucination of impersonation, and the bundle of dead logs had assumed
an indefinite but real vitality. Could not I shape or build from it a
serviceable sledge, and still, transformed, keep it in my service? Then
again, could I spare the time to effect this change? I had only my
hatchet for an implement, and the thongs and strands, rope and cords
that had so stoutly kept it intact for nails and iron bands.
I abandoned the project, but before I started on my desperate search, I
hacked enough timber from it to build a fire and cooked or roasted my
last meal over it. It partook to me of the fantastic feeling of a
valedictory.
The shore along which I now made my way was favorable for a rapid
advance. It was a low upland, mainly detrital in composition with a
beach apron of sand, gravel, and mud flats. It sloped upward to a
semi-piedmont zone of hills, beyond which towered the monarchs of the
Rim. The view landward was inspiritingly beautiful, and when the fogs
that rolled inward from the vast ice-flecked and iceberg-studded sea,
were absent the picture was entrancing. Rich verdure covered the upland,
inundating, like a green flood, the opening valleys, slopes and
sheltered ingles, and bearing on its bosom the Arctic yellow poppy and
even the golden stars of the dandelion. Surely in this land I might
expect to find game.
Nor was I to look long. I could just see, far off against a protruding
dazzling granite mound, a moving spot. It was the _Ovibos hopkinsi_. I
almost laughed. I recurred to our first encounter with this new mountain
sheep, when Hopkins and I first saw it, in an almost identical
environment, when we landed at Krocker Land. I watched it with the eye
of a voluptuary. Fresh meat would taste—Ah! my mouth watered—I could not
venture a simile.
I hastened up the beautiful Arctic glen, and the still unsuspecting
animals moved towards me. Now they saw me, and the bulls ranged
themselves in defence, behind them the still grazing cows, startled only
for a moment into attention. There was no inclination to escape. Only as
I fired and the foremost bull staggered sideways and then dropped
headlong at my second shot, did the herd shuffle to one side and then
scamper away. Before I had reached the fallen leader their shaggy heads
had disappeared over a fold of ground that shut in an adjoining valley.
I cut some steaks and loaded myself with the juicy red masses of flesh.
Although Greely and Peary had failed to smoke-dry meat, perhaps I might
succeed. I returned to the raft. It had become a base of operations.
Here I cooked my steak and with the tasteless _tortillas_ they made a
feast. But the momentary thought of jerking the meat was hopeless. It
would take too long and then it might prove futile. If Coogan was
looking for me, I must be looking for him. One more long sleep and then
I must “be going.” I felt sad, and the glorious dying day bathing the
horizon in carmine and gold, to be shifted a little further on, with
scarcely a change of color, into sunrise, from its very exorbitant
splendor oppressed me. I slept, but I tossed with forbidding dreams. I
WAS NOT WELL.
The next day I started down the coast, but I revisited the _ovibos_,
tore more meat from the carcass, and with my pack, a sleeping bag, the
rug, my gun, and a bundle of splinters of wood I began my journey. The
heaped up bundles on my back bent me, and I did not expect to make a
record in walking. I was carrying my household on my back. But the
favoring character of the shore cheered me, and it almost seemed that
the peaks, barricades and buttresses of the mountains receded. I was on
an extensive morainal or alluvial plain, furrowed by small valleys and
inconspicuous ridges, where it rose to the amphitheatrical wall of the
Krocker Land Rim. _If_ it would last!
The diary of my daily progress for the next few days need not be
rehearsed here. It was satisfactory on the whole, but the sure signs of
scurvy had begun to show themselves, and some rheumatic ailment began to
make every step I took painful. I seemed to see the end of it all, and,
anticipation fed disease. My march each day lessened; the meat had been
consumed in a few days, and was supplemented by ducks, a seal, and
another _ovibos_, so that for almost ten days I suffered no deprivation
of actual nourishment, but my swelling limbs, the pasty and aching jaws,
the occasional vanishing of all strength, and temporary collapses gave
insistent warnings that I could not continue. A dull sense of
helplessness supervened, my memory wavered, delusions visited my brain,
and ever and again the white ice-packed sea seemed a snow covered
tableland on which I might walk safely. Only some frantic remnant of
sanity prevented this suicidal impulse. I was delirious at times with
pain.
And the end of the propitious coast was in sight. I must have made, Mr.
Link, in those ten days, by superhuman exertions, some one hundred and
fifty miles, furiously driving on, almost unconscious of my motion. And
now a black rampart of bold hills, stretched out like an arresting arm,
crossed the horizon. Higher and higher rose the forbidding cliffs, and I
saw with despair that they entered the sea in escarpments, whose
vertical and gloomy walls were beaten by waves, or against which the
churned ice was flung in broken cakes. Beyond the stern barrier my
flagging strength could never take me. And yet, in my feebleness I
hastened to reach it as an ultimate goal over which, I almost thankfully
noted, so worn was I in spirit, I could not pass. Temperamental decay
was at work in me, and I became inert. _I did not care._
At last—oh how heavily dragged my feet, how wearingly surged the pains!
I had come to the dark shadow of the cliffs. It was a sheer precipice.
My wandering and scarcely seeing eyes dimly noted its immensity. It
crushed the last vestiges of effort. Its undeniable prohibition smote me
as a physical violence. I fell headlong. Nothing was with me but my gun.
Pack, rug, sleeping bag, all had been dropped, the first last, for to
its unequivocal testimony (in the gold and in the radium) of all I had
seen, all I had been through, I clung with an almost demented obstinacy.
And now that was left behind. Some recurrent spasm of vitality returned;
I struggled to my feet, shaking in an ague, and just able to support
myself against a detached splinter of rock, almost at the foot of the
overhanging bluff, that seemed to my seared sight to touch the sky.
What was it then that made me seize my gun, and, steadying myself by
some superhuman help—Yes, Mr. Link, by some help not of this earth—empty
the magazine of cartridges in a crashing volley against that
impenetrable rock? Was it madness, the last rage of defeated purpose, or
was it inspiration? I do not know, but as the sharp reports multiplied,
and to my racked nerves sounded in terrific _crescendos_ I fell forward.
The sense of hearing was the last to desert me, and though my eyes had
closed, even while the shattering reverberations from the cliff rang in
them, I HEARD AN ANSWERING SHOT. It was all I heard. I had swooned.
But, Mr. Link, the ebbing tide of life returned, slowly indeed at first,
so slowly that the friendly faces around me seemed only indefinite,
leering masks, before which I shuddered. Warmth reasserted its sway, the
warmth of life. I felt fresh, cleanly nourishment, the _elixir of
whisky_ slipping down my throat, and then a delicious thrill of comfort,
and I became conscious, to find myself eating and drinking and around me
the anxious, staring faces of Coogan, Isaac Stanwix, Bell Phillips, and
Jack Spent.
It was for an instant only, the violence of my return to consciousness
weakened me, and I sank back in their arms, but as I did, the
overmastering care that lay deepest in my heart struggled into
utterance, through all my clouded mind, and I gasped, pointing to the
path over which I had come, “The pack—the pack.”
It was not many hours later that I again awoke, in the luxurious cabin
of the “Astrum,” pillowed in an easy chair, and watching with grateful
eyes the ministering mercies of my friends. Very gradually my sapped
strength and health were renewed, but indeed it sometimes occurs to me
that I shall never be quite all I once was. The multiplied strains,
repeated, contrasted, with the unapparent but _real_ nervous shocks of
excitement suffered in the ordeals of entering Krocker Land, and those
less obviously but most certainly disordering experiences in
Radiumopolis, with the whole effect of the monstrous unreality of it
all, have unhinged my system. And then—the agony of my last humiliation
in this city.
[Illustration:
ERICKSON’S RESCUE
]
The story told by Coogan was a most simple one. It corroborated my
expectations and of course exactly justified my conduct. The “Astrum”
according to orders left Point Barrow, and steamed into the ice, which
proved to be unusually negotiable, looking for us. They failed to
discover any signs of us on the ice pack, but in an adventuresome trip
northward, invited to the undertaking by the open water, they made a
landfall, and found there the “_Pluto_,” our naphtha launch. It was on
almost exactly the place of our landing from the storm. They concluded
we had skirted the new land, reconnoitering it edgewise, as it were, or
at any rate their first and prudent course was to do so. They had
managed to creep on safely through broad leads between the shore ice and
the big floes, until they came to the _massif_, that, like an out-thrust
arm with clenched fist, cut the land in two. They had rather gingerly
picked their way through the ice around the frowning headlands when my
shots were heard. The rest is the usual story—the story I have hinted
at—and my pack was safe. _It lay at my feet._
Now to tell the truth I was rather reticent with Coogan and the others
as to my own adventure. I did not wish then to tell them everything or
even much. The whole marvel must be elsewhere and differently unfolded.
It must be given to the world through science, and the national
government of the United States must be empaneled for the rescue of my
companions. I desired the audience of a nation, and the ears of the
world. And now—deplorable reversion—I am telling it to you alone. I hid
much or all, admitted that the new continent was large, that we had
entered it, that the Professor and Hopkins were pursuing investigations
there, and that I must return in time with a larger expedition. They
seemed to understand my reticence—or was it commiseration?—and
good-naturedly left me alone. About two months later we arrived safely
in San Francisco.
(“Mr. Link”—the voice of the speaker perceptibly lowered, I might say
perceptibly trembled—“it has been a pleasure to rehearse this wonderful
experience, pleasant to recall my two friends still exiled in that
mysterious continent, pleasant to believe that through the
instrumentality of your publication, they may be extricated from their
bewildering embarrassments, but—it is not pleasant to finish my story.”
Mr. Erickson was silent for a few moments, as if he half expected me to
release him from the implied obligation of explaining more completely
the origins of the predicament in which we found him. But I was
relentlessly silent, and after a glance at my imperturbable and fixed
gaze, he turned his head aside and resumed the “last measure of his
tale.”)
I was not long in finding my former acquaintance to whom now
instinctively, in my dearth of companionship, I had recourse for advice,
and sensibly for succor—Carlos Huerta. Nothing could exceed the
boisterous ardor of his welcome. He was overjoyed and appeared almost
rapturous in his demonstrations of astonishment and delight at seeing
me. Of course I succumbed all too easily to the caresses of his
friendship—and then (the speaker paused again and a flood of carmine
filling his cheeks and glowing warmly even in his temples, revealed his
confusion), he introduced me to the most beautiful woman I have ever
seen in all my life, Angelica Sigurda Tabasco, whose intimate, Diaz
Ilario Aguadiente, was a gentleman of marvelous cordiality. I was
literally taken to their hearts. You see, sir, plainly my state of
defencelessness against these scheming reprobates—cunning parasites of
fortune—whose suave geniality disarmed suspicion, and whose enthusiastic
sympathy, not unintelligent either, warmed my weary heart and opened my
lips.
They wormed a good deal out of me, they saw the gold—_not the
buckle_—the radium, and they actually listened to the recital of our
visit to the Gold Makers. Then they laid their plans. I was to be coaxed
to New York—how many specious inducements could be given for me to go
there. The season was not too late for any relief expedition, and at New
York all the avenues of approach to capital could be reached. I was to
give a public lecture, the best social and scientific auspices would
protect it, and from New York the wave of interest would radiate to all
the capitals of the world. It seemed so simple, it was so inviting, and
then it was urged with such cordial plausibility and fervor, and all
accompanied by that personal suasion of admiration, and the artifices of
encouragement in surroundings that were sumptuous and enthralling. I was
completely taken in.
I came on to New York with Huerta, who lavished every kindness on me,
and whose incessant questioning as to the process of gold transmutation
which I had seen easily assumed the guise of a natural curiosity. The
merest accident prevented my bringing on to New York the precious pack
in which the gold souvenirs, the _gold buckle_, and the radium mineral
masses were preserved. The trio—themselves deceived by their gloating
cupidity—had urged the necessity of protecting this property by placing
it in a safety-deposit vault, and when the day arrived for Huerta and me
to leave San Francisco, at the last moment, and just as I expected to
call at the safe deposit company to claim and remove my property, I was
seized with a chill that rapidly increased into a convulsive fit,
followed by a temporary coma. I was alone in the room of my hotel and
the seizure was so sudden that I was unable to summon assistance. When
it had passed, much time had been lost, and actually fearing to reclaim
the pack in my then physical condition I concluded to leave it, and have
it forwarded later upon a written order.
This was quite feasible, and in some respects, so I thought at the
moment, safer and more preferable, as I had taken the unusual precaution
of enclosing the pack in a strong metal box.
When on the train I explained to Huerta my mishap he at first changed
his demeanor, frowned and fidgeted and nettled me by his half suppressed
acerbity. I think then I might have been saved, had his suspicious
temper prolonged itself. But it was gone almost instantly, and his
customary deceptive solicitude and optimistic confidence replaced it and
my doubts vanished. It was also supposed by me that Angelica and Diaz
would remain some time longer in San Francisco, and when I encountered
them in east Fifty-eighth Street I was stupefied, though of course, by
that time, I had no reason to feel any surprise over any development in
my relations with these monsters.
In New York Huerta conducted me to an eastside boarding house. It is
incredible how I permitted myself to follow him. Even while suspicion
and distrust began to assail me I accompanied him into a common sort of
house, apparently the resort of men only, and rather hard looking
characters at that, and yet with these pregnant signs of coming
mischief, I kept alongside of this inhuman brute, sat with him in a
duskily lighted room at a shabby table, served by some slatternly woman
waiters, under surroundings hopelessly sordid and dull. I was not
myself, Mr. Link; the stamina of resistance was extirpated in me, and I
was led like a child. The _denouement_ followed quickly.
That very night or evening I went to my room or what I supposed was my
room, only to discover it was a small bathroom, provided with a sleeping
cot. I had preceded Huerta, who pointed to the door. As I opened it my
surprise caused me to retreat, but Huerta pushed me in, and instantly he
was joined by two other men from a room near at hand, and the door was
locked. Of course, as by a flash of light, an unexpected danger was
revealed. I saw that I was trapped.
There happened to be one chair in the place. Huerta, whose whole
demeanor now altered, motioned toward it with a scowl and the other men
stepped forward. Each of them carried a short leaden pipe. Mr. Link, I
am not a timid man—what I have gone through shows that—but I was
intimidated then. I glanced around me; there was not a window in the
room; it was lighted by a smoking gas jet.
“Well,” I said, collecting my thoughts to meet the situation, “I guess
you have me. What is it? What do you want?”
Huerta’s agreeable style was resumed. “Why just this, Mr. Erickson. You
have got a sort of knowledge which is rather valuable, and we want to
make an agreement with you; you might call it a sort of combine. You
have got hold of some very interesting information. Let’s pool it and
work it for our common benefit.”
“What information,” I asked and leaped to my feet, infuriated at the
smiling, insulting visage that he wore as an answer to my question.
“Oh! Calm yourself. These gentlemen and myself are not icebergs, but
perhaps we can hit as hard. The thing is simple enough. Sign this
paper.”
He held out a folded sheet which I at once recognized as having been
torn from a writing pad in the Pullman in which we had come to New York.
It was an order on the safe deposit company in San Francisco to forward
to him, Carlos Huerta, my pack, the satchel of gold and radium. Then
followed his address, which was—east Fifty-eighth Street, the very house
in which you found me, Mr. Link.
I threw the paper in his face. It was _maladroit_. His temper—and he had
the passion of a fiend—broke loose and he struck me. I jumped at him,
and hurled the chair straight at his head, but it was intercepted, and,
in a trice, the three rushed at me and held me, kicking, squirming, and
shouting, on the narrow bed. No help came; I was bound and was knocked
almost senseless.
(It was some time before Erickson could continue; he was in a pitiful
agitation, walking over and across the room with a most distressful
expression on his face. At length he pulled himself together and resumed
his story.)
Well, they kept me in that room some five days. I was fed and attended
by my captors—I think now partially drugged by them. But my will
remained stubborn. I had faced death before, I could face it now, though
it seemed more terrifying in this wretched shape than meeting it
undisguised beneath the open skies. This obstinacy drove Huerta frantic.
I calculated that it would lead to an outbreak or issue soon. _It did._
The sixth night the room was entered by the three men to whom, now
weakened, dazed, nervous with disgust, I could offer no resistance. I
was really sick. They tied my arms and legs and gagged my mouth, and put
me in a sack. It was then, before they completed their task, that I
managed to secrete a few scribbled words on a slip of paper, which I had
kept by me, and later succeeded in forcing through an aperture in the
bag. This paper your boy Riddles found. I was whisked off in an
automobile, unloaded like a sack of potatoes at the door of—east
Fifty-eighth Street, and taken to the attic floor where you and the
police found me.
Before you came I was confronted with Angelica and Diaz, and the
proposition was very attractively made that nothing should be said in
any public way about Krocker Land, but that my gold specimen should be
sold as bullion, and that we four should form a transmutation plant with
the radium that I had brought back. Accede to this, they explained (they
were somehow convinced that I was withholding the secret technique I had
learned of the process of transmutation), and combine with them, and my
life and freedom would be assured.
I saw through the ruse, feeble as I had mentally become. My life, at
least its short continuance, depended upon my resisting their demands.
Once granted, the paper signed, what I knew of the transmutation
revealed—and I now sedulously encouraged their belief in a more or less
recondite process which demanded physical apparatus and silver
bullion—and my life would be but a flash in the pan—out—like that. (And
Erickson snapped his fingers.) If I could delay the upshot—inevitable in
any case unless relief came—until some lucky chance brought me
deliverance and I hoped the paper scribble would—I might yet survive.
Therefore I pleaded, I argued, I promised everything if they would
liberate me, and then upon their savage refusal, I grew dogged and
silent. It was then or a little afterwards that the conversation
occurred that you and the police overheard and then, when these
ruthless, bloodless imps of Hell were about to inflict their brutal
torture—the door was burst open, _and all was over_.
* * * * *
I recall distinctly the evening on which Mr. Erickson concluded his
stupendous narrative. It had been agreed that, apart from some brief
announcements before the various proper scientific bodies of the world,
no details should precede the publication in book form of Erickson’s
personal account and the serial report in the _Truth Getter_. All this
is now a part of history, and a part which fairly challenges comparison
with those thunderstruck days when Columbus and Cabot, Vespucius,
Hudson, and Verrazani rolled up the curtain that hid the western world.
I say I remember the evening. It was a sombre dying twilight in March.
The servant had just lit the lamp of the library, and a hoarse wind rose
petulantly outside, like the distant drone of a fog whistle. A vision
stood at the door. It was my daughter, Sibyl. She was resplendent. I
noticed Erickson’s awed rapture. She held an evening paper in her hand.
Her voice was as beautiful as her person. Its music conveyed this
message:
“Father, this paper has a telegram from St. John’s, Newfoundland, saying
that Donald McMillan has reached Krocker Land, and below it is one from
Point Barrow, saying Stefansson has reached Krocker Land. Isn’t that a
surprising coincidence?”
Erickson sprang toward her, and she handed him the paper; his face in
the red reflection from the hearth looked sallow. He read the lines.
“My God, it’s true—Then Hopkins and the Professor are saved.”
“But,” I interjected with proper journalistic trepidation, “where do we
come in, Mr. Erickson?”
He gazed at me as if petrified:
“RUSH THE COPY.”
It was rushed, and before McMillan or Stefansson were again heard from,
Erickson’s story was the property of the world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDITORIAL NOTE
There are many things in the foregoing pages that perhaps awaken
incredulity. There are some inconsistencies of statement. There seems to
be discoverable a feeble effort at invention. The reader will almost
instantly, upon reading the last word of it—and surely he can afford to
skip none—feel that perhaps a little enlightened cross examination would
have confused a veracious chronicler. I am inclined to suppose that
almost mechanically he might murmur to himself, “Those balloons,
_dubious_—those tubes, _impossible_—the Crocodilo-Python,
_preposterous_—the little Hebrews, _madness_—the radium chasm, _a
nightmare_—transmutation, _poppy-cock_—the Perpetual Nimbus, _deliberate
lie_,” and so on, until affected by his own overheated thoughts and a
partially justifiable resentment at having been made the victim of a
fabrication, which has consumed some ten hours of his time, and would
have, assuming its reality, supplied him with the most perdurable
reasons for rejoicing that his lot was cast at the beginning of this
twentieth century, he indulges in some specific appeals, _more majorum_,
to the demon of darkness to make away with its editor.
_Gentle_—pardon the inappropriateness of the word, but to say _Irate_
might only increase my condemnation—Reader—_wait_. _We shall all see._
Vilhjalmar Stefansson and Donald McMillan are on the very verge of this
new continent.
THEY WILL TELL US.
“Not so fast, Mr. Editor”—It is the voice of the wife of the Gentle
Reader—“Not so fast! What connection had Spruce Hopkins with either
Angelica or Diaz? You remember the flat silver medal that Hopkins flung
into the air on Krocker Land Rim, and which was the last token Erickson
received from the Yankee?”
_Ah—Madame, that is another story._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).