It was an uncanny night; morning whitened the east; gray daylight
stole into the woods, blotting the shadows to paler tints. It was
nearly mid-day before the sun became visible through the fine-spun web
of mist--a pale spot of gilt in the zenith.
By this pallid light I labored to strike the two empty tents, gather
up our equipments and pack them on our five mules. Dorothy aided me
bravely, whimpering when I spoke of Professor Smawl and William Spike,
but abating nothing of her industry until we had the mules loaded and
I was ready to drive them, Heaven knows whither.
"Where shall we go?" quavered Dorothy, sitting on a log with the
dingue in her lap.
One thing was certain; this mammoth-ridden land was no place for
women, and I told her so.
We placed the dingue in a basket and tied it around the leading mule's
neck. Immediately the dingue, alarmed, began dingling like a cow-bell.
It acted like a charm on the other mules, and they gravely filed off
after their leader, following the bell. Dorothy and I, hand in hand,
brought up the rear.
I shall never forget that scene in the forest--the gray arch of the
heavens swimming in mist through which the sun peered shiftily, the
tall pines wavering through the fog, the preoccupied mules marching
single file, the foggy bell-note of the gentle dingue in its swinging
basket, and Dorothy, limp kilts dripping with dew, plodding through
the white dusk.
We followed the terrible tornado-path which the mammoth had left in
its wake, but there were no traces of its human victims--neither one
jot of Professor Smawl nor one solitary tittle of William Spike.
And now I would be glad to end this chapter if I could; I would gladly
leave myself as I was, there in the misty forest, with an arm
encircling the slender body of my little companion, and the mules
moving in a monotonous line, and the dingue discreetly jingling--but
again that menacing shadow falls across my page, and truth bids me
tell all, and I, the slave of accuracy, must remember my vows as the
dauntless disciple of truth.
Towards sunset--or that pale parody of sunset which set the forest
swimming in a ghastly, colorless haze--the mammoth's trail of ruin
brought us suddenly out of the trees to the shore of a great sheet of
water.
It was a desolate spot; northward a chaos of sombre peaks rose, piled
up like thunder-clouds along the horizon; east and south the darkening
wilderness spread like a pall. Westward, crawling out into the mist
from our very feet, the gray waste of water moved under the dull sky,
and flat waves slapped the squatting rocks, heavy with slime.
And now I understood why the trail of the mammoth continued straight
into the lake, for on either hand black, filthy tamarack swamps lay
under ghostly sheets of mist. I strove to creep out into the bog,
seeking a footing, but the swamp quaked and the smooth surface
trembled like jelly in a bowl. A stick thrust into the slime sank into
unknown depths.
Vaguely alarmed, I gained the firm land again and looked around,
believing there was no road open but the desolate trail we had
traversed. But I was in error; already the leading mule was wading out
into the water, and the others, one by one, followed.
How wide the lake might be we could not tell, because the band of fog
hung across the water like a curtain. Yet out into this flat, shallow
void our mules went steadily, slop! slop! slop! in single file.
Already they were growing indistinct in the fog, so I bade Dorothy
hasten and take off her shoes and stockings.
She was ready before I was, I having to unlace my shooting-boots, and
she stepped out into the water, kilts fluttering, moving her white
feet cautiously. In a moment I was beside her, and we waded forward,
sounding the shallow water with our poles.
When the water had risen to Dorothy's knees I hesitated, alarmed. But
when we attempted to retrace our steps we could not find the shore
again, for the blank mist shrouded everything, and the water deepened
at every step.
I halted and listened for the mules. Far away in the fog I heard a
dull splashing, receding as I listened. After a while all sound died
away, and a slow horror stole over me--a horror that froze the little
net-work of veins in every limb. A step to the right and the water
rose to my knees; a step to the left and the cold, thin circle of the
flood chilled my breast. Suddenly Dorothy screamed, and the next
moment a far cry answered--a far, sweet cry that seemed to come from
the sky, like the rushing harmony of the world's swift winds. Then the
curtain of fog before us lighted up from behind; shadows moved on the
misty screen, outlines of trees and grassy shores, and tiny birds
flying. Thrown on the vapory curtain, in silhouette, a man and a woman
passed under the lovely trees, arms about each other's necks; near
them the shadows of five mules grazed peacefully; a dingue gambolled
close by.
"It is a mirage!" I muttered, but my voice made no sound. Slowly the
light behind the fog died out; the vapor around us turned to rose,
then dissolved, while mile on mile of a limitless sea spread away
till, like a quick line pencilled at a stroke, the horizon cut sky and
sea in half, and before us lay an ocean from which towered a mountain
of snow--or a gigantic berg of milky ice--for it was moving.
"Good Heavens," I shrieked; "it is alive!"
At the sound of my crazed cry the mountain of snow became a pillar,
towering to the clouds, and a wave of golden glory drenched the figure
to its knees! Figure? Yes--for a colossal arm shot across the sky,
then curved back in exquisite grace to a head of awful beauty--a
woman's head, with eyes like the blue lake of heaven--ay, a woman's
splendid form, upright from the sky to the earth, knee-deep in the
sea. The evening clouds drifted across her brow; her shimmering hair
lighted the world beneath with sunset. Then, shading her white brow
with one hand, she bent, and with the other hand dipped in the sea,
she sent a wave rolling at us. Straight out of the horizon it sped--a
ripple that grew to a wave, then to a furious breaker which caught us
up in a whirl of foam, bearing us onward, faster, faster, swiftly
flying through leagues of spray until consciousness ceased and all was
blank.
Yet ere my senses fled I heard again that strange cry--that sweet,
thrilling harmony rushing out over the foaming waters, filling earth
and sky with its soundless vibrations.
And I knew it was the hail of the Spirit of the North warning us back
to life again.
* * * * *
Looking back, now, over the days that passed before we staggered into
the Hudson Bay outpost at Gravel Cove, I am inclined to believe that
neither Dorothy nor I were clothed entirely in our proper minds--or,
if we were, our minds, no doubt, must have been in the same condition
as our clothing. I remember shooting ptarmigan, and that we ate them;
flashes of memory recall the steady downpour of rain through the
endless twilight of shaggy forests; dim days on the foggy tundra,
mud-holes from which the wild ducks rose in thousands; then the
stunted hemlocks, then the forest again. And I do not even recall the
moment when, at last, stumbling into the smooth path left by the
Graham Glacier, we crawled through the mountain-wall, out of the
unknown land, and once more into a world protected by the Lord
Almighty.
A hunting-party of Elbon Indians brought us in to the post, and
everybody was most kind--that I remember, just before going into
several weeks of unpleasant delirium mercifully mitigated with
unconsciousness.
Curiously enough, Professor Van Twiller was not very much battered,
physically, for I had carried her for days, pickaback. But the awful
experience had produced a shock which resulted in a nervous condition
that lasted so long after she returned to New York that the wealthy
and eminent specialist who attended her insisted upon taking her to
the Riviera and marrying her. I sometimes wonder--but, as I have said,
such reflections have no place in these austere pages.
However, anybody, I fancy, is at liberty to speculate upon the fate of
the late Professor Smawl and William Spike, and upon the mules and the
gentle dingue. Personally, I am convinced that the suggestive
silhouettes I saw on that ghastly curtain of fog were cast by
beatified beings in some earthly paradise--a mirage of bliss of which
we caught but the colorless shadow-shapes floating 'twixt sea and
sky.
At all events, neither Professor Smawl nor her William Spike ever
returned; no exploring expedition has found a trace of mule or lady,
of William or the dingue. The new expedition to be organized by
Barnard College may penetrate still farther. I suppose that, when the
time comes, I shall be expected to volunteer. But Professor Van
Twiller is married, and William and Professor Smawl ought to be, and
altogether, considering the mammoth and that gigantic and splendid
apparition that bent from the zenith to the ocean and sent a
tidal-wave rolling from the palm of one white hand--I say, taking all
these various matters under consideration, I think I shall decide to
remain in New York and continue writing for the scientific
periodicals. Besides, the mortifying experience at the Paris
Exposition has dampened even my perennially youthful enthusiasm. And
as for the late expedition to Florida, Heaven knows I am ready to
repeat it--nay, I am already forming a plan for the rescue--but though
I am prepared to encounter any danger for the sake of my beloved
superior, Professor Farrago, I do not feel inclined to commit
indiscretions in order to pry into secrets which, as I regard it,
concern Professor Smawl and William Spike alone.
But all this is, in a measure, premature. What I now have to relate is
the recital of an eye-witness to that most astonishing scandal which
occurred during the recent exposition in Paris.