THE HEART OF UNAGA
Alone in the great silence. Without even the cry of desolation wrung
from starving wolf, or the howl of depression which ever seems to haunt
the heart of the coyote world. Alone with groping thought, with burning
hope, and the undermining of doubt which the strongest cannot always
shake off. Steve had taken the plunge which robbed him of human
companionship.
It was the prompting of that spirit which borders so closely the line
where earthly sanity passes. It was the spirit which finds its
inspiration in the Great Purpose which drives on for the achievement of
the human task on earth. The dreamer of dreams is born to translate his
visions into reality, or to lie broken before the task. Steve was no
visionary. He was something more, something greater. His was the stern
heart of purpose selected for the translation of the dream of the
dreamer who had fallen by the way.
Steve permitted himself no reflection upon the spiritual appeal of his
purpose. These things might concern those of a wider, deeper
intelligence. Or, perhaps, those whose weakness unfitted them for the
battle of the strong. It was for him to claim issue in the battle he
sought. And come life and victory, or death and defeat, he was prepared
to accept the verdict without complaint.
The twinkling eyes of the heavens searched down upon the infinitesimal
moving figure. Their cold smile was steely, perhaps with the irony the
sight inspired. Their world was so coldly indifferent to human survival.
The snowless breasts of the valley rose up miles away to the north and
south. And between their swelling contours lay a country of lesser hills
and valleys, equally snowless, and whose heart was the flood of a great
river.
Sterility had passed. Here were no barren hill-crests with a hundred
weatherworn facets. Here were no fields of snow, driven by the fierce
gales of the polar seas. Here were no glacial fields bound in an iron
grip throughout the ages. The fires in the heart of Unaga were burning.
Their warming was in the breath of the breeze. It was in the very earth,
yielding its fruit with the freedom of the temperate world.
A wood-clad country of almost luxurious vegetation, there was in it a
suggestion of the sub-tropical. But under the twilight of Arctic winter
it had lost the happy hues of a sunlit season. True, the conifers
retained their dull, dark foliage, but, for the rest, the bare branches
were alive with a new-born cloak that possessed the whiteness of
fresh-fallen snow. Even the lank grass under foot was similarly
awakening.
The wonder of it all must have been amazing had Steve not been prepared
for some such phenomenon. Was not this crazy valley the reality of that
vision he had set before Marcel? It was the melting spring of temperate
latitudes transposed to the confines of the Arctic Circle. It was a land
of still, wonderful, voiceless life, whose air was sweet, and heavy
laden with a subtle perfume.
He wondered, as he paced on under the burden of the pack his broad
shoulders were supporting. His mind was a riot with questioning. What of
the rest? Would the whole dream become reality? Why not? What of the
day when the sun rose again from its long winter sleep?
For answer he gazed out ahead where a pillar of fire looked to be
supporting the clouded heavens. The logic of it all was plain. There was
no real question in his mind. With the returning light of the sun, and
the steadily rising temperature, the ghostly foliage would promptly
assume Nature's happy green and the world would ripen with the rapidity
of a forcing house. Then----
Steve's eyes were suddenly raised to the dark vault of the skies. The
lights of the night had been largely obscured. Only the heart of Unaga
still remained shining with unabated splendour. It was _raining_!
Rain had ceased. The dripping figure of Steve was at rest on the low,
white-clad summit of a hill. He had no care for his condition as he
steamed under the dank heat of the valley. His eyes were steadily
regarding the wonder world of the west.
For a long time he stood almost without movement. He was seeking,
seeking in every direction. But the rosy twilight baffled him. Unaga
buried her secrets deeply, and only was there the perfume in the air
which she could not conceal. This was the key with which Steve meant to
open the door of her treasure house.
He raised his face and drew a deep breath through sensitive nostrils.
Then he exhaled slowly, deliberately, and his lips moved. Now there was
taste in the air as well as perfume. The change had come with the
rainfall.
He stooped and deposited his pack on the moist ground. Then he
unfastened it. A few moments later he was standing erect again, and his
face was half hidden under a curiously constructed mask. Again he turned
to the west. Again he inhaled deeply. And as he did so satisfaction lit
his steady eyes. The scent of the air, its sickly sweetness, had
entirely passed as he breathed under the mask.
He returned to his pack and fastened it up. Then he reslung it upon his
shoulders. When he passed from the summit of the hill the mask that was
to serve him when the danger line was reached had been removed.
* * * * *
Steve laboured on sweatily. He had halved the weight of his pack. He had
even removed his buckskin shirt. The heat was amazing. It nearly stifled
him.
With each mile gained the spectacle of Unaga's fires grew in intensity
and sublime fury. The whole of the western world looked to be engulfed
in a caldron of fire; while the belching source of it all flamed at the
summit of its earthly column, amidst a churning, rose-tinted froth of
cloud banks.
Changes came in swift succession. Perhaps the most significant of all
was the complete change in the aspect of the heavens, and in the
sulphurous grit with which the air was laden. The stars had vanished.
The flood of northern light had lost its clearness; now only a ghostly
shadow of its glory remained. There was only one moon. Its manifold
reflections were lost in the mist, and the shining silver of its own
light was painfully tarnished.
For all this, however, the light in the valley was no less. Its
character had changed. That was all. The rosy twilight was growing to an
angry gleaming.
Steve knew his journey's end was near. How near he could not tell. He
reminded himself that there must be a barrier, a dividing line, beyond
which no life could endure. But he also knew that the field of Adresol
must lie on the hither side of it. If that were not so, what of the
Indians to whom it yielded supplies for the pleasant calm of their
winter's sleep?
Steve knew he was by no means witnessing a simple volcanic eruption. It
was something far greater. The suggestion of it all was so colossal that
he could find no concrete form in which to express his belief. In his
mind there had formed an idea that here was a whole wide territory
forming one great vent to the subterranean fires demanding outlet. It
seemed to him that those fires had been lit just where they now burned.
Maybe they had been lit on the day that dry land was first born upon the
earth, and throughout the ages had never been permitted to die out.
Fascination held him enthralled as he laboured over the weary miles of
the valley. Every swamp became a potential objective for examination.
Every broken hill might conceal some secret valley where subterranean
heat produced a growth foreign to the more open regions. He could afford
to miss no canyon however small, lest the secret he sought lay hidden
there. And all the time with the hot breath of the westerly breeze in
his nostrils, the lure of the sickly perfume beckoned him on.
* * * * *
It was sheer mental and bodily weariness that brought Steve to a
prolonged halt. The heat was overpowering him at last. This strange land
with its ruddy twilight had become a labour beyond endurance. It was as
if the waters of the river were being evaporated into a steam which left
the air unbreathable.
Halfway to the summit of a great wood-clad hill, that jettied across
from the southern slopes of the valley to the northern limits beyond, he
had flung himself to rest in a wide clearing surrounded by the cold
delicacy of white-hued foliage. In his moment of helplessness there
seemed to be no end to his journey. He felt that the great summit he
was reaching towards meant only a descent beyond, and then again
another, and still another steep ascent.
Only for a few moments had he sprawled, seeking rest. He was thinking
and gazing back over his long solitary trail, peering into the reverse
of that upon which he had looked so long. It was intensely restful thus
to turn his gaze from the belching fires. Once his heavy eyelids closed.
But he bestirred himself. Later he would sleep, but not now. His day's
work was--Again his eyes closed heavily, and his hand fell from the
support of his head.
It was that which wakened him. And in a moment a thrill of panic flashed
through his nerves. With all his will flung into the effort, he forced
himself to complete wakefulness. He sat up. He groped in his loosened
pack. He pulled out of it the mask he had tested once before, and, with
desperate haste, adjusted it over mouth and nostrils.
It had been near, so near. He knew now how nearly disaster had clutched
at him. Furthermore he knew that even now the danger was by no means
passed. The heavy fumes of Adresol were creeping through the woods about
him. They were stealing their ghostly, paralyzing way low down upon the
ground, drifting heavily along until the open below brought them to the
stronger air currents which would disperse them on their eastward
journey, robbing them of their deadly toxin, and reducing them to a
simple sickly perfume.
He had leapt to his feet. He stood swaying like a drunken man, while a
strange bemusing attacked his brain and left a singing in his ears.
Staggering under the influence of the deadly drug, he fled from the
clearing up towards the hill-top.
* * * * *
It was victory! Complete, overwhelming.
Steve was gazing out upon a wide, seemingly limitless table-land. In
every direction it spread itself out, far as the eye could see. To the
west it looked to launch itself into the very heart of the land of fire
which was shedding its ruddy light from miles and miles away. To the
north it went on till it lost itself against the slopes of the lofty,
containing hills of the valley. Southward, its spread was swallowed up
under a rolling fog of smoke, which settled upon the world like a pall.
It was a great, white, limitless field of dead white lily bloom,
unbroken, unsullied, like the perfect damask of napery, purer in tone
than virgin snow.
The great cup-like blooms stood up nearly to the height of his
shoulders. They were superb in their gracious form, and suggested
nothing so much as a mask of innocence and purity concealing a heart of
unimaginable evil.
Steve gazed at those nearest him with mixed feelings of repulsion and
delight. Nor could he wholly rid himself of the fear his knowledge
inspired. His mask was closely adjusted over mouth and nostrils, and he
knew that it was only that product of the dead chemist's genius that
stood between him and a dreamless sleep from which there would be no
awakening.
And as he gazed he became aware of a strange phenomenon. Each lily was
slightly inclining its gaping mouth towards the distant heart of Unaga,
which inspired its life. To him it suggested an attitude of the
devoutest worship. It seemed to his mind that these strange plants,
containing all that was most beneficent, and all that was most deadly in
their composition, were yielding a silent expression of thankful worship
to the tremendous power which saved them from the frigid death to which
the dead of Arctic winter would otherwise have condemned them.
His feelings yielded to the profound wonder of it all. For all his fear
his soul was stirred to its depths. And his thankfulness was no less
than his wonder.
Yes, it was victory at last, after years of ceaseless effort. It was a
victory surpassing even his wildest hopes. Here was the wonderful field
of growing Adresol in all the glory of full bloom. Here was an
inexhaustible supply of the drug the world of healing science was crying
out for. It was here, in its deadliest form, awaiting the reapers. A
harvest such as would accomplish everything he had ever hoped to
achieve.
And as the moments passed, and his confidence in the protecting mask
grew, so a wonderful spirit buoyed him. It was a condition he had parted
from many years ago. A happy, joyous smile lit his eyes. It grew, and
broke into a laugh. He reached out and daringly plucked a great stem
supporting a perfect bloom. He stood gazing into the deep, cup-like
heart for prolonged moments. He was thinking of Ian Ross and the days so
far back in his mind. Fifteen years? Yes. More. And now----
He contemplated with joy the labours ahead. The return to Oolak and
Julyman. The work of the harvest. The portaging of it. The packing of
the sleds. Then the long, last homeward trail with a success achieved
beyond his dreams. It was something indeed to have lived for and
laboured for. Marcel!