And after some five minutes I saw--I thought that I saw--it. The fog
had, if anything thickened; and it was now very near the end of my
watch.
It had entered the ship, I concluded, by the boards which slanted from
an opening in the port bulwarks down to the ice. Once before, in
November, a bear, having smelled the dogs, had ventured on board at
midnight: but _then_ there had resulted a perfect hubbub among the dogs.
_Now_, even in the midst of my excitement, I wondered at their
quietness, though some whimpered--with fear, I thought. I saw the
creature steal forward from the hatchway toward the kennels a-port; and
I ran noiselessly, and seized the watch-gun which stood always loaded by
the companionway.
By this time, the form had passed the kennels, reached the bows, and now
was making toward me on the starboard side. I took aim. Never, I
thought, had I seen so huge a bear--though I made allowance for the
magnifying effect of the fog.
My finger was on the trigger: and at that moment a deathly shivering
sickness took me, the wrangling voices shouted at me, with 'Shoot!'
'Shoot not!' 'Shoot!' Ah well, that latter shout was irresistible. I
drew the trigger. The report hooted through the Polar night.
The creature dropped; both Wilson and Clark were up at once: and we
three hurried to the spot.
But the very first near glance showed a singular kind of bear. Wilson
put his hand to the head, and a lax skin came away at his touch.... It
was Aubrey Maitland who was underneath it, and I had shot him dead.
For the past few days he had been cleaning skins, among them the skin of
the bear from which I had saved him at Taimur. Now, Maitland was a born
pantomimist, continually inventing practical jokes; and perhaps to
startle me with a false alarm in the very skin of the old Bruin which
had so nearly done for him, he had thrown it round him on finishing its
cleaning, and so, in mere wanton fun, had crept on deck at the hour of
his watch. The head of the bear-skin, and the fog, must have prevented
him from seeing me taking aim.
This tragedy made me ill for weeks. I saw that the hand of Fate was upon
me. When I rose from bed, poor Maitland was lying in the ice behind the
great camel-shaped hummock near us.
By the end of January we had drifted to 80° 55'; and it was then that
Clark, in the presence of Wilson, asked me if I would make the fourth
man, in the place of poor Maitland, for the dash in the spring. As I
said 'Yes, I am willing,' David Wilson spat with a disgusted emphasis. A
minute later he sighed, with 'Ah, poor Maitland...' and drew in his
breath with a _tut! tut!_
God knows, I had an impulse to spring then and there at his throat, and
strangle him: but I curbed myself.
There remained now hardly a month before the dash, and all hands set to
work with a will, measuring the dogs, making harness and seal-skin shoes
for them, overhauling sledges and kayaks, and cutting every possible
ounce of weight. But we were not destined, after all, to set out that
year. About the 20th February, the ice began to pack, and the ship was
subjected to an appalling pressure. We found it necessary to make
trumpets of our hands to shout into one another's ears, for the whole
ice-continent was crashing, popping, thundering everywhere in terrific
upheaval. Expecting every moment to see the _Boreal_ crushed to
splinters, we had to set about unpacking provisions, and placing
sledges, kayaks, dogs and everything in a position for instant flight.
It lasted five days, and was accompanied by a tempest from the north,
which, by the end of February, had driven us back south into latitude
79° 40'. Clark, of course, then abandoned the thought of the Pole for
that summer.
And immediately afterwards we made a startling discovery: our stock of
reindeer-moss was found to be somehow ridiculously small. Egan, our
second mate, was blamed; but that did not help matters: the sad fact
remained. Clark was advised to kill one or two of the deer, but he
pig-headedly refused: and by the beginning of summer they were all dead.
Well, our northward drift recommenced. Toward the middle of February we
saw a mirage of the coming sun above the horizon; there were flights of
Arctic petrels and snow-buntings; and spring was with us. In an ice-pack
of big hummocks and narrow lanes we made good progress all the summer.
When the last of the deer died, my heart sank; and when the dogs killed
two of their number, and a bear crushed a third, I was fully expecting
what actually came; it was this: Clark announced that he could now take
only two companions with him in the spring: and they were Wilson and
Mew. So once more I saw David Wilson's pleased smile of malice.
We settled into our second winter-quarters. Again came December, and all
our drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would
not work, leaving us without the electric light.
Ah me, none but those who have felt it could dream of one half the
mental depression of that long Arctic night; how the soul takes on the
hue of the world; and without and within is nothing but gloom, gloom,
and the reign of the Power of Darkness.
Not one of us but was in a melancholic, dismal and dire mood; and on the
13th December Lamburn, the engineer, stabbed Cartwright, the old
harpooner, in the arm.
Three days before Christmas a bear came close to the ship, and then
turned tail. Mew, Wilson, I and Meredith (a general hand) set out in
pursuit. After a pretty long chase we lost him, and then scattered
different ways. It was very dim, and after yet an hour's search, I was
returning weary and disgusted to the ship, when I saw some shadow like a
bear sailing away on my left, and at the same time sighted a man--I did
not know whom--running like a handicapped ghost some little distance to
the right. So I shouted out:
'There he is--come on! This way!'
The man quickly joined me, but as soon as ever he recognised me, stopped
dead. The devil must have suddenly got into him, for he said:
'No, thanks, Jeffson: alone with you I am in danger of my life....'
It was Wilson. And I, too, forgetting at once all about the bear,
stopped and faced him.
'I see,' said I. 'But, Wilson, you are going to explain to me _now_ what
you mean, you hear? What _do_ you mean, Wilson?'
'What I say,' he answered deliberately, eyeing me up and down: 'alone
with you I am in danger of my life. Just as poor Maitland was, and just
as poor Peters was. Certainly, you are a deadly beast.'
Fury leapt, my God, in my heart. Black as the tenebrous Arctic night was
my soul.
'Do you mean,' said I, 'that I want to put you out of the way in order
to go in your place to the Pole? Is that your meaning, man?'
'That's about my meaning, Jeffson,' says he: 'you are a deadly beast,
you know.'
'Stop!' I said, with blazing eye. 'I am going to kill _you_, Wilson--as
sure as God lives: but I want to hear first. Who _told_ you that I
killed Peters?'
'Your lover killed him--with _your_ collusion. Why, I heard you, man, in
your beastly sleep, calling the whole thing out. And I was pretty sure
of it before, only I had no proofs. By God, I should enjoy putting a
bullet into you, Jeffson!'
'You wrong me--you, you wrong me!' I shrieked, my eyes staring with
ravenous lust for his blood; 'and now I am going to pay you well for it.
_Look out, you!_'
I aimed my gun for his heart, and I touched the trigger. He held up his
left hand.
'Stop,' he said, 'stop.' (He was one of the coolest of men ordinarily.)
'There is no gallows on the _Boreal_, but Clark could easily rig one for
you. I want to kill you, too, because there are no criminal courts up
here, and it would be doing a good action for my country. But not
here--not now. Listen to me--don't shoot. Later we can meet, when all is
ready, so that no one may be the wiser, and fight it all out.'
As he spoke I let the gun drop. It was better so. I knew that he was
much the best shot on the ship, and I an indifferent one: but I did not
care, I did not care, if I was killed.
It is a dim, inclement land, God knows: and the spirit of darkness and
distraction is there.
Twenty hours later we met behind the great saddle-shaped hummock, some
six miles to the S.E. of the ship. We had set out at different times, so
that no one might suspect. And each brought a ship's-lantern.
Wilson had dug an ice-grave near the hummock, leaving at its edge a
heap of brash-ice and snow to fill it. We stood separated by an interval
of perhaps seventy yards, the grave between us, each with a lantern at
his feet.
Even so we were mere shadowy apparitions one to the other. The air
glowered very drearily, and present in my inmost soul were the frills of
cold. A chill moon, a mere abstraction of light, seemed to hang far
outside the universe. The temperature was at 55° below zero, so that we
had on wind-clothes over our anoraks, and heavy foot-bandages under our
Lap boots. Nothing but a weird morgue seemed the world, haunted with
despondent madness; and exactly like that world about us were the minds
of us two poor men, full of macabre, bleak, and funereal feelings.
Between us yawned an early grave for one or other of our bodies.