'Peters,' I cried, 'you know you have no right to be doing things like
that without consulting me! Do that once more, and I swear I have
nothing further to do with you!'
'Rubbish,' said Peters: 'why all this unnecessary heat? It was a mere
flea-bite. I felt that I needed it.'
'He injected it with his own hand...' remarked Clodagh.
She was now standing at the mantel-piece, having lifted the syringe-box
from the night-table, taken from its velvet lining both the syringe and
the vial containing the morphia tablets, and gone to the mantel-piece to
melt one of the tablets in a little of the distilled water there. Her
back was turned upon us, and she was a long time. I was standing; Peters
in his arm-chair, smoking. Clodagh then began to talk about a Charity
Bazaar which she had visited that afternoon.
She was long, she was long. The crazy thought passed through some dim
region of my soul: 'Why is she so _long_?'
'Ah, that was a pain!' went Peters: 'never mind the bazaar, aunt--think
of the morphia.'
Suddenly an irresistible impulse seized me--to rush upon her, to dash
syringe, tabloids, glass, and all, from her hands. I _must_ have obeyed
it--I was on the tip-top point of obeying--my body already leant prone:
but at that instant a voice at the opened door behind me said:
'Well, how is everything?'
It was Wilson, the electrician, who stood there. With lightning
swiftness I remembered an under-look of mistrust which I had once seen
on his face. Oh, well, I would not, and could not!--she was my love--I
stood like marble...
Clodagh went to meet Wilson with frank right hand, in the left being the
fragile glass containing the injection. My eyes were fastened on her
face: it was full of reassurance, of free innocence. I said to myself:
'I must surely be mad!'
An ordinary chat began, while Clodagh turned up Peters' sleeve, and,
kneeling there, injected his fore-arm. As she rose, laughing at
something said by Wilson, the drug-glass dropped from her hand, and her
heel, by an apparent accident, trod on it. She put the syringe among a
number of others on the mantel-piece.
'Your friend has been naughty, Mr. Wilson,' she said again with that
same pout: 'he has been taking more atropine.'
'Not really?' said Wilson.
'Let me alone, the whole of you,' answered Peters: 'I ain't a child.'
These were the last intelligible words he ever spoke. He died shortly
before 1 A.M. He had been poisoned by a powerful dose of atropine.
From that moment to the moment when the _Boreal_ bore me down the
Thames, all the world was a mere tumbling nightmare to me, of which
hardly any detail remains in my memory. Only I remember the inquest, and
how I was called upon to prove that Peters had himself injected himself
with atropine. This was corroborated by Wilson, and by Clodagh: and the
verdict was in accordance.
And in all that chaotic hurry of preparation, three other things only,
but those with clear distinctness now, I remember.
The first--and chief--is that tempest of words which I heard at
Kensington from that big-mouthed Mackay on the Sunday night. What was it
that led me, busy as I was, to that chapel that night? Well, perhaps I
know.
There I sat, and heard him: and most strangely have those words of his
peroration planted themselves in my brain, when, rising to a passion of
prophecy, he shouted: 'And as in the one case, transgression was
followed by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, I warn
the entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a
lowering sky, and thundery weather.'
And this second thing I remember: that on reaching home, I walked into
my disordered library (for I had had to hunt out some books), where I
met my housekeeper in the act of rearranging things. She had apparently
lifted an old Bible by the front cover to fling it on the table, for as
I threw myself into a chair my eye fell upon the open print near the
beginning. The print was very large, and a shaded lamp cast a light upon
it. I had been hearing Mackay's wild comparison of the Pole with the
tree of Eden, and that no doubt was the reason why such a start
convulsed me: for my listless eyes had chanced to rest upon some words.
'The woman gave me of the tree, and I did eat....'
And a third thing I remember in all that turmoil of doubt and flurry:
that as the ship moved down with the afternoon tide a telegram was put
into my hand; it was a last word from Clodagh; and she said only this:
'Be first--for Me.'
* * * * *
The _Boreal_ left St. Katherine's Docks in beautiful weather on the
afternoon of the 19th June, full of good hope, bound for the Pole.
All about the docks was one region of heads stretched far in innumerable
vagueness, and down the river to Woolwich a continuous dull roar and
murmur of bees droned from both banks to cheer our departure.
The expedition was partly a national affair, subvented by Government:
and if ever ship was well-found it was the _Boreal_. She had a frame
tougher far than any battle-ship's, capable of ramming some ten yards of
drift-ice; and she was stuffed with sufficient pemmican, codroe,
fish-meal, and so on, to last us not less than six years.
We were seventeen, all told, the five Heads (so to speak) of the
undertaking being Clark (our Chief), John Mew (commander), Aubrey
Maitland (meteorologist), Wilson (electrician), and myself (doctor,
botanist, and assistant meteorologist).
The idea was to get as far east as the 100°, or the 120°, of longitude;
to catch there the northern current; to push and drift our way
northward; and when the ship could no further penetrate, to leave her
(either three, or else four, of us, on ski), and with sledges drawn by
dogs and reindeer make a dash for the Pole.
This had also been the plan of the last expedition--that of the
_Nix_--and of several others. The _Boreal_ only differed from the _Nix_,
and others, in that she was a thing of nicer design, and of more
exquisite forethought.
Our voyage was without incident up to the end of July, when we
encountered a drift of ice-floes. On the 1st August we were at Kabarova,
where we met our coal-ship, and took in a little coal for emergency,
liquid air being our proper motor; also forty-three dogs, four reindeer,
and a quantity of reindeer-moss; and two days later we turned our bows
finally northward and eastward, passing through heavy 'slack' ice under
sail and liquid air in crisp weather, till, on the 27th August, we lay
moored to a floe off the desolate island of Taimur.
The first thing which we saw here was a bear on the shore, watching for
young white-fish: and promptly Clark, Mew, and Lamburn (engineer) went
on shore in the launch, I and Maitland following in the pram, each party
with three dogs.
It was while climbing away inland that Maitland said to me:
'When Clark leaves the ship for the dash to the Pole, it is three, not
two, of us, after all, that he is going to take with him, making a party
of four.'
_I_: 'Is that so? Who knows?'
_Maitland_: 'Wilson does. Clark has let it out in conversation with
Wilson.'
_I_: 'Well, the more the merrier. Who will be the three?'
_Maitland_: 'Wilson is sure to be in it, and there may be Mew, making
the third. As to the fourth, I suppose _I_ shall get left out in the
cold.'
_I_: 'More likely I.'
_Maitland_: 'Well, the race is between us four: Wilson, Mew, you and I.
It is a question of physical fitness combined with special knowledge.
You are too lucky a dog to get left out, Jeffson.'
_I_: 'Well, what does it matter, so long as the expedition as a whole is
successful? That is the main thing.'
_Maitland_: 'Oh yes, that's all very fine talk, Jeffson! But is it quite
sincere? Isn't it rather a pose to affect to despise $175,000,000? _I_
want to be in at the death, and I mean to be, if I can. We are all more
or less self-interested.'
'Look,' I whispered--'a bear.'
It was a mother and cub: and with determined trudge she came wagging her
low head, having no doubt smelled the dogs. We separated on the
instant, doubling different ways behind ice-boulders, wanting her to go
on nearer the shore, before killing; but, passing close, she spied, and
bore down at a trot upon me. I fired into her neck, and at once, with a
roar, she turned tail, making now straight in Maitland's direction. I
saw him run out from cover some hundred yards away, aiming his long-gun:
but no report followed: and in half a minute he was under her fore-paws,
she striking out slaps at the barking, shrinking dogs. Maitland roared
for my help: and at that moment, I, poor wretch, in far worse plight
than he, stood shivering in ague: for suddenly one of those wrangles of
the voices of my destiny was filling my bosom with loud commotion, one
urging me to fly to Maitland's aid, one passionately commanding me be
still. But it lasted, I believe, some seconds only: I ran and got a shot
into the bear's brain, and Maitland leapt up with a rent down his face.
But singular destiny! Whatever I did--if I did evil, if I did good--the
result was the same: tragedy dark and sinister! Poor Maitland was doomed
that voyage, and my rescue of his life was the means employed to make
his death the more certain.
I think that I have already written, some pages back, about a man
called Scotland, whom I met at Cambridge. He was always talking about
certain 'Black' and 'White' beings, and their contention for the earth.
We others used to call him the black-and-white mystery-man, because, one
day--but that is no matter now. Well, with regard to all that, I have a
fancy, a whim of the mind--quite wide of the truth, no doubt--but I have
it here in my brain, and I will write it down now. It is this: that
there may have been some sort of arrangement, or understanding, between
Black and White, as in the case of Adam and the fruit, that, should
mankind force his way to the Pole and the old forbidden secret biding
there, then some mishap should not fail to overtake the race of man;
that the White, being kindly disposed to mankind, did not wish this to
occur, and intended, for the sake of the race, to destroy our entire
expedition before it reached; and that the Black, knowing that the White
meant to do this, and by what means, used me--_me_!--to outwit this
design, first of all working that I should be one of the party of four
to leave the ship on ski.
But the childish attempt, my God, to read the immense riddle of the
world! I could laugh loud at myself, and at poor Black-and-White
Scotland, too. The thing can't be so simple.
Well, we left Taimur the same day, and good-bye now to both land and
open sea. Till we passed the latitude of Cape Chelyuskin (which we did
not sight), it was one succession of ice-belts, with Mew in the
crow's-nest tormenting the electric bell to the engine-room, the anchor
hanging ready to drop, and Clark taking soundings. Progress was slow,
and the Polar night gathered round us apace, as we stole still onward
and onward into that blue and glimmering land of eternal frore. We now
left off bed-coverings of reindeer-skin and took to sleeping-bags. Eight
of the dogs had died by the 25th September, when we were experiencing
19° of frost. In the darkest part of our night, the Northern Light
spread its silent solemn banner over us, quivering round the heavens in
a million fickle gauds.
The relations between the members of our little crew were
excellent--with one exception: David Wilson and I were not good friends.
There was a something--a tone--in the evidence which he had given at the
inquest on Peters, which made me mad every time I thought of it. He had
heard Peters admit just before death that he, Peters, had administered
atropine to himself: and he had had to give evidence of that fact. But
he had given it in a most half-hearted way, so much so, that the coroner
had asked him: 'What, sir, are you hiding from me?' Wilson had replied:
'Nothing. I have nothing to tell.'
And from that day he and I had hardly exchanged ten words, in spite of
our constant companionship in the vessel; and one day, standing alone on
a floe, I found myself hissing with clenched fist: 'If he dared suspect
Clodagh of poisoning Peters, I could _kill_ him!'
Up to 78° of latitude the weather had been superb, but on the night of
the 7th October--well I remember it--we experienced a great storm. Our
tub of a ship rolled like a swing, drenching the whimpering dogs at
every lurch, and hurling everything on board into confusion. The
petroleum-launch was washed from the davits; down at one time to 40°
below zero sank the thermometer; while a high aurora was whiffed into a
dishevelled chaos of hues, resembling the smeared palette of some
turbulent painter of the skies, or mixed battle of long-robed seraphim,
and looking the very symbol of tribulation, tempest, wreck, and
distraction. I, for the first time, was sick.
It was with a dizzy brain, therefore, that I went off watch to my bunk.
Soon, indeed, I fell asleep: but the rolls and shocks of the ship,
combined with the heavy Greenland anorak which I had on, and the state
of my body, together produced a fearful nightmare, in which I was
conscious of a vain struggle to move, a vain fight for breath, for the
sleeping-bag turned to an iceberg on my bosom. Of Clodagh was my gasping
dream. I dreamed that she let fall, drop by drop, a liquid, coloured
like pomegranate-seeds, into a glass of water; and she presented the
glass to Peters. The draught, I knew, was poisonous as death: and in a
last effort to break the bands of that dark slumber, I was conscious, as
I jerked myself upright, of screaming aloud:
'Clodagh! Clodagh! _Spare the man...!_'
My eyes, starting with horror, opened to waking; the electric light was
shining in the cabin; and there stood David Wilson looking at me.
Wilson was a big man, with a massively-built, long face, made longer by
a beard, and he had little nervous contractions of the flesh at the
cheek-bones, and plenty of big freckles. His clinging pose, his smile of
disgust, his whole air, as he stood crouching and lurching there, I can
shut my eyes, and see now.
What he was doing in my cabin I did not know. To think, my good God,
that he should have been led there just then! This was one of the
four-men starboard berths: _his_ was a-port: yet there he was! But he
explained at once.
'Sorry to interrupt your innocent dreams, says he: 'the mercury in
Maitland's thermometer is frozen, and he asked me to hand him his
spirits-of-wine one from his bunk...'