LOST IN A BLIZZARD.
So numbed was our poor lad by the shock of his discovery that, for a
few moments, he stood motionless. Of course it would be of no use to
continue his hopeless struggle. Even if he had come in the right
direction he must ere this have passed the place where his companions
were encamped. If he could only regain the timber there might be a
slight chance of surviving the night; but even its location was lost to
him, and a certain death stared him in the face. At any rate it would
be a painless ending, for he had only to lie down to be quickly covered
by a soft blanket of snow. Then he could go to sleep never again to
waken. He was very weary, and already so drowsy that the thought of
sleep was pleasant to him. Such a death would certainly not be so
terrible as drowning after a hopeless struggle with black waters.
With this thought every incident of that awful night after the loss of
the "Lavinia" flashed into his mind. How utterly hopeless had seemed
his situation then and how desperately he had fought for his life. But
he had fought, and had won the fight. What was the use of learning a
lesson of that kind if he could not profit by it? Was not his life as
well worth fighting for now as then? Of course it was; nor was his
present position any more hopeless than that one had been. Then he had
drifted with the wind, and now he would do the same thing. If he could
hold out long enough he would fetch up somewhere sometime. It was
merely a question of endurance. Even in that howling wilderness, with
death on all sides, there were still three chances for life. The drift
with the wind might take him to the igloo that Yim must have built ere
this. How bright, and warm, and cosey its lamplighted interior would
be. How glad they would be to see him, and how he would laugh at all
his recent fears. But of course there was not one chance in a million
of his finding the igloo. It was not at all unlikely, though, that the
drift might take him to a belt of timber, into which the bitter wind
could not penetrate; and where he could crawl under the thick,
low-hanging branches of some tent-like spruce. Even such a shelter now
seemed very desirable, and would be accepted with thankfulness. If he
failed to reach timber, the wind might blow him to some region of
cliffs and rocks that would shelter him from its cutting blasts. If he
missed all these chances, and if worse came to worst, he could always
go to sleep beneath the snow blanket, and it would be better to do that
with the consciousness of having made a good fight than to yield now
like a coward.
All these thoughts flashed through Cabot's mind within the space of a
minute, and, having determined to fight until the battle was either won
or lost, he flung away his now useless burden of firewood and started
off down the wind. Tramping through that newly fallen snow, even with
the support of racquets, was exhausting work, but the effort at least
kept him warm, and, before he came to the end of his strength, some
hours later, he had covered a number of miles. He had also come to the
least promising of the three places he had hoped for, and found himself
in a region of cliffs, precipices, and huge rocks, among which he could
no longer make headway, even though he had not reached the limit of
endurance.
But he had reached that limit, and now only sought a spot in which he
might lie down and go to sleep. Of course the snow would quickly cover
him, and doubtless he would be buried deep ere the fury of the storm
was past. But he had a vague plan for putting his snowshoes over his
head like an inverted V, and hoped in that way to be kept from
smothering. At the same time he had little thought that he should ever
see the light of another day.
"Only a bit further and then I can rest," he muttered, as he pushed
into the blackness of a rift between two tall cliffs, and experienced a
partial relief from the furious wind. It seemed as though he ought to
penetrate this as far as possible, and so he struggled weakly forward.
Then he stumbled over something that lay across his path and fell
heavily. As he lay wondering whether an attempt to regain his feet
would be worth while, he seemed to hear the distant but strenuous
ringing of an electric bell, and almost smiled at the absurdity of such
a fancy in such a place. The thought carried him back to the
electrical laboratory of the Institute, and he began to dream that he
was still a student of ohms, volts, and amperes.
In another moment his consciousness would have been wholly merged in
dreams, but suddenly the place where he lay was filled with a blaze of
light that apparently streamed from the solid rock on either side. So
intense was this light that it penetrated even Cabot's closed eyes, and
aroused him from the stupor into which he had fallen. He lifted his
head, and, still bewildered, wondered why the laboratory was so
brilliantly illuminated.
Then, through the glare, he saw the driving snow-flakes with their
dancing shadows magnified a hundred fold, and, all at once, he
remembered. Staggering to his feet, and groping with outstretched
arms, he pushed forward along the narrow pathway outlined by the
mysterious light. He no longer heard the sound of bells, but in its
place came strains of music that blended weirdly with the shrieking
wind, and irresistibly compelled him forward. The pathway sloped
downward and then took a sharp turn. As Cabot passed this the light
behind him was extinguished as suddenly as it had appeared, the wild
music sounded louder than ever, and directly in front of him gleamed
two squares of light like windows. Between them was a dark space,
towards which he instinctively stumbled. It proved to be as he had
hoped, a door massive and without any means of unclosing that his blind
fumblings could discover. So he beat against it feebly and uttered a
hoarse cry for help. In another moment it was opened, and Cabot,
leaning heavily against it, fell into a room, small, warm, and brightly
lighted.
For a few minutes he lay with closed eyes, barely conscious that his
struggle for life had been successful, and that in some mysterious
manner he had gained a place of safety. Gradually he became aware that
some one was bending over him, and opening his eyes he gazed full into
a face that he instantly recognised, though it had sadly changed since
he last saw it. At that time it had expressed strength in every line,
but now it was haggard and worn by suffering.
"The Man-wolf!" gasped Cabot, in a voice hardly above a whisper.
A slight smile flitted across the man's face, and then, without
warning, he sank to the floor in a dead faint. His mighty strength had
been turned to the weakness of water, and the iron will had at length
relaxed its hold upon the enfeebled body. As the man-wolf fell, a
stream of blood trickled from his mouth, and he choked for breath as
though strangling.
There is nothing so effective in restoring spent strength as a demand
upon it from one who is weaker, and at sight of the big man's
helplessness Cabot was instantly nerved to renewed effort. He sat up,
cut loose his snowshoes, closed the open door, and rid himself of his
snow-laden outer garments. Then, by a supreme effort, he managed to
drag the unconscious man to a bed that was piled with robes and lean
him against it. His eyes had already lighted on a jug of water, and
fetching this he bathed the sufferer's face, washed the blood from his
mouth, and finally had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes unclose.
Then he helped him on to the bed, and though during the operation the
man's face expressed the most intense pain, he uttered no sound. But
the movement was accompanied by another hemorrhage, so severe that it
seemed to our distressed lad as though the man must surely bleed to
death before it was checked. When it finally ceased the exhausted
sufferer dropped asleep, and, for the first time since entering that
place of mysteries, Cabot found an opportunity for looking about him.
Although the room was small it was comfortably furnished with a table,
chairs--one of which was a rocker--a lounge, and the bed on which the
man-wolf lay. There were no windows nor doors except those in front.
The ceiling was of heavy canvas tightly stretched, while the walls were
hung with the skins of fur-bearing animals, and the floor was covered
with rugs of the same material. At first Cabot paid no attention to
these details, for his eyes were fixed upon the most astonishing thing
he had seen in all Labrador. It was a lamp that, depending from the
ceiling, gave to the room an illumination as brilliant as daylight.
"Electric, as I live!" gasped the young engineer. "A regular
incandescent, and those lights out on the trail must have been the
same. That was an electric bell too. I know it now, though I couldn't
believe my ears at the time. The light he scared the Indians with must
have been an electric flash, worked by a storage battery. But it is
all so incredible! I wonder if I am really awake or still dreaming?"
To assure himself on this point Cabot went to the light, and, as he did
so, came upon another surprise greater than any that had preceded it.
He had wondered at the comfortable temperature of the room, for there
was nowhere a fire to be seen, and the blizzard still howled outside
with unabated fury. Now, on drawing near to the lamp, he found himself
also approaching some heretofore unobserved source of heat, which he
discovered to be a drum of sheet iron. It stood by itself, unconnected
with any chimney, and apparently had no receptacle for any form of
fuel, solid, liquid, or gaseous.
"A Balfour electric heater," murmured Cabot, in an awe-stricken tone,
"and I didn't even know they had been perfected. I don't suppose there
are half-a-dozen in use in all the world, and yet here is one of them
doing its full duty up here in the Labrador wilderness, a thousand
miles from anywhere. It is fully equal to any tale of the Arabian
Nights, and Mr. Homolupus must, as the natives say, be either a god or
a devil. I do wonder who he is, where he came from, what has happened
to him, where he gets his electricity, and a thousand other things. I
wish he would wake up, and I wish he could talk."
Cabot's curiosity concerning the weird music that had drawn him to that
place had been partially satisfied by the discovery of a violin on the
floor beside the sick man's bed. Now, as he flung himself wearily down
on the lounge for a bit of rest, he became conscious of the muffled
b-r-r-r of a dynamo. That accounted in a measure for the electric
lights, but still left our lad in a daze of wonder at the nature of his
surroundings.