AN ELECTRICIAN IN THE WILDERNESS.
When Cabot threw himself down on that lounge he fully intended to
remain awake, or at most to take only a series of short naps, always
holding himself in readiness to assist the sufferer on the opposite
side of the room. But exhausted nature proved too much for his good
intentions, and he had hardly lain down before he fell into a dead,
dreamless sleep that lasted for many hours. When he next awoke it was
with a start, and he sat up bewildered by the strangeness of his
environment. Daylight was streaming in at the frost-covered windows
and the storm of the night before had evidently spent its fury.
Almost the first thing he saw was the tall form of his host bending
feebly over the electric stove. His face was drawn with pain, and he
was so weak that he was compelled to support himself by grasping the
table with one hand while with the other he stirred the contents of a
simmering kettle.
"Let me do that, sir!" cried Cabot, springing to his feet. "You are
not fit to be out of your bed, and I am perfectly familiar with the
management of electrical cooking apparatus, though I don't know much
about cooking itself."
The man hesitated a moment, and then permitted the other to lead him
back to his bed, on which he sank with a groan. Here Cabot made him as
comfortable as possible before turning his attention to the stove. On
it he found two kettles, each having its own wire connections, in one
of which was boiling water while the other contained a meat stew. On
the table was a box of tea, a bowl of sugar, and a plate heaped with
hard bread. Finding other dishes in a cupboard, Cabot made a pot of
tea, turned off the electric current, and served breakfast. Before
eating a mouthful himself he prepared a bowl of broth for his patient,
which the latter managed to swallow after many attempts and painful
effort.
Cabot ate ravenously, and, after his meal, felt once more ready to face
any number of difficulties. First he went to the bedside of his host
and said:
"Now, Mr. Homolupus, I want to find out what is the trouble and what I
can do for you. Are you wounded, or just naturally ill?"
The man looked at his questioner for a moment, as though he were on the
point of speaking. Then he seemed to change his mind, and, reaching
for a pencil and pad that lay close at hand, he wrote:
"I am shot in the chest."
"Who--I mean how----" began Cabot, and then, realising that his
curiosity could well wait, he added: "But, with your permission, I will
examine the wound and see if there is anything I can do."
With this he sought and gently removed a blood-soaked bandage, thereby
disclosing a sight so ghastly that it almost unnerved him. The wound
was so terrible, and the loss of blood from it had evidently been so
great, that how even the giant frame of the man-wolf could have
survived it was amazing. Having no knowledge of surgery, Cabot could
only bathe and rebandage it. Then he said:
"Now, I am going to be your nurse, and you must lie perfectly still
without attempting to get up again until I give you leave."
Seeing an expression of dissent in the man's face, he continued:
"It's all right. I am under the greatest of obligations to you, and am
only too glad of a chance to pay some of it back. So I shall stay
right here just as long as you need me. Fortunately I know something
about both electricity and machinery, having been educated at a
technical institute, so that I shall be able to manage very well with
your plant. But I do wish you could explain a few things to me. Is
your name really 'Homolupus'?"
The sufferer smiled and wrote on his pad:
"My name is Watson Balfour."
[Illustration: "My name is Watson Balfour."]
"Of London?" queried Cabot.
The man nodded.
"Is it possible that you can be Watson Balfour, the celebrated English
electrician, who is supposed to have been lost at sea some years ago?"
Again the man smiled and made a sign of assent.
For a moment Cabot stared, well nigh speechless with the wonder and
excitement of this discovery. Then he broke into a torrent of
exclamations and questions.
"Why, Mr. Balfour, I know you so well by reputation that you seem like
an old friend. Your 'Handbook of Electricity' and your 'Comparative
Voltage' are text books at the Institute. The whole scientific world
mourned your supposed death. But how do you happen to be up here, and
how have you managed to establish an electric plant in this wilderness?
Why are you masquerading as a man-wolf? How did you lose the power of
speech? How did you become so severely wounded? Can't you tell me
some of these things?"
For answer Mr. Balfour wrote: "Perhaps, some time. Tell first how you
came here."
So Cabot, forced to curb for the present his own overpowering
curiosity, sat down and told of all that had happened since the
departure of the man-wolf from Locked Harbour. When he had finished he
said:
"And now, I ought to go outside and see if I can discover any trace of
my companions, who must be awfully cut up over my disappearance. But
don't be uneasy, Mr. Balfour, I shan't go far, and whether I find them
or not I shall certainly come back to stay just as long as you need me.
I hope you will sleep while I am gone, and I wish you would promise not
to leave your bed, or move more than is absolutely necessary, before my
return."
When Cabot first stepped outside the shelter that had proved such a
haven of safety to him, he was dazzled by the brilliancy of the day.
After becoming somewhat accustomed to the glare of sunlight on
new-fallen snow, he turned to see what sort of a house he had just
left. To his surprise there was no house; the only suggestion of one
being two windows and a door set in a wall of rock that was built at
the base of a cliff.
"It is a cavern," thought Cabot, "and that is the reason the room is so
easily kept warm. Mighty good thing to have in this country,
especially when it is lined with furs."
The snow lay unbroken, and there was no sign of the trail he had made
the night before. For a short distance, however, he could go in but
one direction, for the only way out was through the narrow defile by
which he had entered. At its mouth he found the wire over which he had
fallen, and thereby given notice of his approach by causing the ringing
of an electric bell.
"When he heard it he turned on the lights," said Cabot to himself.
"It's a great scheme for scaring off Indians and attracting white men.
I wonder if any other person ever found the place? What a marvellous
thing my stumbling on it was, anyhow. Now, which way did I come?"
Gazing blankly at the surrounding chaos of snow-covered rocks, our lad
could form no idea of the route by which he had been led to that place,
through the storm and darkness of the preceding night, nor of how he
might leave it.
"There is no use wandering aimlessly," he decided at length, "and I'll
either have to gain a bird's-eye view of the country or get Mr. Balfour
to make me a map. To think that I should have discovered him, and here
of all places in the world. What a sensation it will make when I tell
of it. Of course I shall do so, for I'll get out of this fix all right
somehow. What a state of mind poor White must be in this morning. I
know I should be in his place. He's all right, though, with Yim to
pull him through, and they'll make Indian Harbour easy enough. Then I
shall be reported lost, and after a while Mr. Hepburn will hear the
news. Wonder what he thinks has become of me anyhow? I am following
out instructions, and wintering in Labrador fast enough. Only I don't
seem to have much time to investigate mining properties, and of course
it's no use trying to find 'em buried under feet of snow. Perhaps Mr.
Balfour has discovered some while roaming around the country as a
man-wolf. How absurd to think of 'Voltage' Balfour as a man-wolf!
Wonder why he did it? How I wish he could talk! Wonder why he can't?"
While thus cogitating, Cabot had also been climbing a nearby eminence
that promised a view of the outlying country, but from it he could see
nothing save other hills rising still higher and an unbroken waste of
snow.
"It's no use," he sighed. "I don't believe I could find them, even if
I had plenty of time. As it is, I don't dare stay away from Mr.
Balfour any longer. I'm afraid he's a very sick man, with a slim
chance of ever pulling through."
So Cabot, after an absence of several hours, turned back towards the
snug shelter so providentially provided for him, and for which he was
just then more grateful than he could express. He was thinking of the
many wonders of the place when he reached its door; but, as he opened
it and stepped inside the room, he was greeted by a greater surprise
than he had yet encountered. Nothing was changed about the interior,
and the wounded man lay as Cabot had left him, but with the appearance
of the latter he exclaimed:
"Thank God, dear lad, that you have come back to me! It seemed as
though I should go crazy if left alone a minute longer."
Cabot stared in amazement. "Is it a miracle?" he finally asked, "and
has your speech been restored to you, or have you been able to speak
all the time?"
"I have been able, but not willing," was the reply. "I had thought to
die without speaking to a human being. I even avoided my fellows,
believing myself sufficient unto myself. But God has punished my
arrogance and shown me my weakness. Until you came no stranger has
ever set foot within this dwelling, to none have I spoken, and not even
to you did I intend to speak, but with your going my folly became
plain. I feared you might never return; the horror of living alone,
and the greater horror of dying alone, swept over me. Then I prayed
for you to come. I promised to speak as soon as you were within
hearing. Every moment since then I have watched for you and longed for
your coming as a dying man longs for the breath of life. Promise that
you will not leave me again."
"I have already promised, and now I repeat, that I will not leave you
so long as you have need of me," replied Cabot. "But tell me----"
"I will tell you everything," interrupted the wounded man, "but first
you must look after the dynamo. It has stopped, and if you cannot set
it going again we must both perish."