Beyond the Great South Wall
[Illustration:
THERE WAS A HUM AND A FLICK AS THE ROPE PARTED.
_Page 220._
]
Beyond The Great South Wall:
The Secret of the Antarctic
BY FRANK SAVILE
Author of “The Blessing of Esau,” “John Ship, Mariner,” Etc.
WITH SUNDRY GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS PAINTED BY ONE ROBERT L. MASON
[Illustration: FAREWELL TO THE SOUTH]
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY
_156 Fifth Avenue_ : NEW YORK CITY : MCMI
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
BY
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A GREAT DEPRESSION, 1
II. THE TALE OF A COINCIDENCE, 18
III. THE TESTIMONY OF SIR JOHN DORINECOURTE, KNT., 30
IV. WHAT BAINES KNEW, 44
V. PROFESSOR LESSAUTION’S OPINION, 59
VI. WE SAIL SOUTH, 78
VII. A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS, 93
VIII. BEFORE THE GALE, 109
IX. THE LEAPING OF THE WALL, 128
X. BEHIND THE BARRIER, 150
XI. A GLACIER CAVE AND WHAT LAY THEREIN, 166
XII. THE GREAT GOD CAY, 184
XIII. A CLOSED DOOR, 198
XIV. IN THE NINTH CIRCLE, 215
XV. THE MOUNTAIN WAKES, 236
XVI. THE TEMPLE AND THE LAIR OF CAY, 252
XVII. A LITTLE DOG’S STUMBLE, 267
XVIII. A DESPERATE BETROTHAL, 284
XIX. A WONDROUS BREACHING OF THE WALL, 304
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
——OUT ... OF THAT YEASTY WHIRLPOOL CAME MY LOVE, 103
IT WAS THE FACE OF ONE ALONE WITH DEATH, 177
THERE WAS A HUM AND A FLICK AS THE ROPE PARTED, 220
IT WAS THE LAST WORSHIP OF THE PRIESTS OF CAY, 253
“IT’LL SOON BE OVER,” I SAID, 296
A RED STORM OF LAVA DASHED IN A CLOUD OF STEAM TO THE FAR END OF
THE LAKE 305
BEYOND THE GREAT SOUTH WALL
CHAPTER I
A GREAT DEPRESSION
The purr and throb of London was quivering in stuffily through the open
windows. The squeals of the “special” newsboys and the hansom-whistles
of the early diners-out splashed across the blur and din, standing out
against the immeasurable roar as against a silence. The heat of a London
summer lay heavily over us; the undying rattle of wheels beat up to us
wearily, the mid-season blare and hurry of town echoing irritatingly in
their jingle and clatter as they streamed ceaselessly by. The stew and
hubbub of the afternoon enclosed us as with a pall of depression.
By us I mean Gerry and myself. Flung back listlessly was I in my club
chair, and watching him as he strolled monotonously up and down before
the great bow-window that gave upon Pall Mall. His hands were scabbarded
hilt high in his pockets. His brows and the corners of his eyes were
hard and wrinkled. His gaze was cast steadfastly before his toes. He did
a very sentry-go of moody vexation.
Each time he paused, as he turned against the light, every wrinkle and
line was silhouetted mercilessly. Wretchedness covered his face as with
a mask. My heart began to go out to him, bursting through its own crust
of dejection. Wretched we both were, but I was seven years his senior. I
began to commune with myself, seeking comfort for him out of my own
hard-won store of disappointment, and trying to forget that our sorrows
sat upon an even base.
Suddenly he turned towards me and broke the silence that had lasted
between us the greater part of the afternoon.
“Well,” he said harshly, “that’s the end of most things for me.”
“Possibly,” answered I, “but probably not. The future’s very spacious
yet, my dear boy. I don’t say it in any patronizing spirit, but you’re
only twenty-four. Try to forget the ‘might-have-been,’ and buck yourself
up into imagining the ‘maybe.’ It’s not all over yet.”
He grunted contemptuously, tramping off again upon his beat. A waiter
who chanced in with the evening papers coughed ostentatiously, and with
obvious intention towards the cloud of dust that followed hard upon his
track. Gerry stared him down, and as the door closed behind him, brought
himself to anchor before me again.
“That’s all rot, and you know it, Jack,” he said dogmatically. “Do you
think I’m going to stay here and see Vi come back another man’s wife?
I’m sick of it all—sick of the work, sick of the play. Deathly sick of
the utter sameness of what we call life. I’m going to chuck it, I tell
you. Hausa Police, Egyptian Army, Hong Kong Regiment—something of the
kind I’m going to try. There’s nothing most assuredly to keep me any
longer in her Majesty’s Foot Guards. I’m dipped, and I’ve lost the one
thing that might have kept me to the collar. Great Heavens! what in the
name of goodness _should_ I stay for?”
I stared back at him answerless. I knew he was talking a cheap sentiment
which a month or two later he would be the first to despise. I too was
feeling in a modified form all he felt. To me had also come the animal
desire for action that follows hard upon mental stress. But that seven
years made the difference. Though that day had brought me the supreme
discontent of my life, I was still aware that the world continued to
wag, and that we should swing along with it. Yet how could I comfort
without offending?
Now the reason of all this affliction was simple enough and old as time.
To each of us had come the desire of his life, and to each had it been
denied. That morning we had spent at the Albert Docks, and had seen a
tall ship sail out for foreign lands, bearing upon her decks two maidens
who were taking with them our hearts to the world’s end.
I never was much of a chap for lover’s rhapsodies, so I will make no
effort to explain to you how sweet a girl was Gwen Delahay, nor why she
held my heart in the hollow of her hand. She was one of the many good
and beautiful women—God bless them—who walk this earth, and are to their
lovers peerless. And as I worshipped her, so did Gerry worship Vi, her
sister—a thing perhaps inexplicable, in that he had seen Gwen, but one
to be truly thankful for, seeing that we were friends beyond the
ordinary sympathies of life. And now were we left hopeless.
Plain Captain Dorinecourte was I, with a slender six hundred pounds
beyond my pay, and Gerry, poor lad, had less. You will not exhaust
yourself with wonder then, when I relate the fact that Lady Delahay
declined on behalf of her daughters our attentions, contemned our
eligibility, and hated poisonously the sight of our ingenuous faces. For
all these things, I take it, a Society mother is bound by her allegiance
to Society to do. Yet though we felt that she played the game as we
understood it, none the less did we cry out upon our luck in being the
losers. And now it seemed that we might well throw down our cards.
The fond mother’s fears of the blight which our undivided attentions
might throw upon her daughters’ careers had culminated that morning. A
month before an announcement in the _Morning Post_ had spurred her to an
action which her fear alone would never have conceived. It ran as
follows—
“Among the passengers by the s.s. _Madagascar_, which sails on August 4
for her winter’s cruise around the world, will be the Earl of Denvarre.
His lordship will be accompanied by his brother the Hon. Stephen
Garlicke.”
This item of intelligence had caught the dutiful mother’s eye, and taken
vigorous root in her somewhat languid intelligence. Two eligible young
men were to be shut up for eight or nine months in a space not more than
one hundred yards long by twenty wide. Walking lawlessly in London were
two extremely ineligible youths, unchained, ready and willing to wreck
her daughters’ happiness. Why not extract the victims from this
hazardous propinquity, placing them at the same time in the financially
commendable vicinitude of a live earl and his brother. Action was born
only too rapidly from reflection. We had seen them off that very
morning.
So there sat we in the desolation of a mere club, disconsolate amid the
roar of the city, while the sunset became the twilight, the shadows of
the lamp-posts lengthened, and darkness fell upon the town even as upon
our hearts. And out of the plenitude of my regret I failed to find the
word of sympathetic comfort for Gerry.
Lost in our heavy-hearted musings, it was past eight when we realized
that food was yet a distasteful necessity of existence, and sought the
club dinner. Silently we entered the dining-room, Gerry with the air of
one who approached poisoned dishes, and chose a table apart. Though the
soup and sherry warmed my companion to conversation, it had a bias of
marked contempt.
Clubs, he showed beyond dispute, were traps for the unwary, committees
were things of naught, secretaries insolent and overpaid. Waiters were
plucked from the gutter to be trained in pot-houses, and cooks cherished
the idea that to evolve a savoury it was but necessary to taint an olive
with a decayed anchovy. Women who were guests of brother members—it was
Wednesday night—were all dressed in seventeen tints of garish atrocity,
and were of a mediocrity of feature which he plainly condemned. He
mentioned the names of no less than six social resorts off which he
purposed to take his name in the morning. This, of course, preparatory
to stirring activities which would remove him beyond their sphere of
usefulness. Still soured, but evidently relieved, he then retired behind
the sheets of the _Westminster_, with which he screened himself from
further intercourse with his fellows. Apathetically I proceeded with my
repast.
Suddenly the decorum of the room received a shock. A sound burst from
Gerry’s throat which I can only term a crow. He endeavored frantically
and indecently to masticate the portion which he had placed between his
teeth, beating the paper at me furiously. The sounds which continued to
issue from his lips were such as no one could approve. He mouthed
unutterable things.
Hastily I rose and thumped him on the back, and noticed that his finger
continued to tap viciously upon a headline which he thrust into my face.
As the distressing symptoms modified themselves he gradually found his
breath, but ceased not to bulge his eyes upon me.
“Look, old man, look,” he insisted faintly, and I took the paper from
his hand.
“We regret to announce the death of Viscount Heatherslie at Greytown,
Central America. His lordship had lately been travelling in the
vicinity, and his death is ascribed to malarial fever. As yet no details
can be ascertained.”—_Reuter._
The words turned red before my eyes as they danced up and down the green
columns. Uncle Leonard was dead—was dead. And I—well, I had to think it
very hard indeed before I dared repeat it silently even to myself—I was
Lord Heatherslie. Only one thought had possession of my mind. Not a
regret did I spare for the dead, not a single reflection as to what this
thing meant to me or my prospects did I give beyond the fact that my
luck—my cursed Irish luck—had been too late. That one idea had hold of
me. A week earlier—a few hours earlier, and what might have been?—what
might have been? A curse snarled from between my teeth as I sat down
again to stare white-faced across at Gerry.
The excitement had died from his face. His sympathy was quicker than
mine had been. He stretched his hand across the table and gripped mine
hard.
“Frightful luck, old chap,” he murmured; “I know what you’re thinking.
But—but it needn’t be too late yet, Jack.”
I shook my head. Things had become blurred in my brain, but one fact
stood out bright as a searchlight to my mind’s eye. Gwen was going out
of my life, going away from me as fast as breeze and steam would take
her. And the thing that might have stayed our separation—have given her
to me—was a week—nay, only a day—too late. I could have smitten my head
against the wall in my agony of disappointment.
And yet I had resigned Gwen as fatalistically as any son of Islam. I had
schooled myself to think of her as already belonging to another. I had
bidden her good-bye without a quiver. Even the look she had given me at
the last—a tender, questioning look it was too, and straight from her
heart through her dear eyes—I had met with a smile that told of nothing.
To me the hopelessness of it all had come home long days before, and I
simply wouldn’t sadden the poor child and prolong the pain of parting. I
meant that parting to be the absolute separation of our lives—one that
should leave no dropped threads to be gathered up in future days of
further hopelessness.
And now—now I had the right to win her, and honourably. Only a soldier I
might be, but I had a place of my own to take a wife to. Nor would she
come to me to sink into a nobody. Half a county would welcome Lady
Heatherslie, though half that county might be in rags. Poor we should
always have been, but not desperately. Modestly we should have had to
live, but we could have kept our rank befittingly. And now the chance
was gone. Away beyond the seas she would set herself to forget me, and
Denvarre would show her how. The black curses fell over each other in
their haste to reach my tongue, and the salt tears nigh fled out along
with them. I made an effort and pulled myself together.
“Come along,” said I hoarsely to Gerry in a voice that I hardly knew
myself, and blundered out of the room. Without another word I crept into
the hansom the commissionaire called, and together we drove down the
glaring streets to my rooms, Gerry offering no sympathy but a silence
which I understood and was grateful for.
You know the heavy, choking pain that lies leaden in your throat when
one you love has gone out into the emptiness—the desperate unbelief in
your torture—the mad hope that insists that this thing is too horrible
to bear. My suffering came home to me like that. I could only think of
Gwen as of one dead and gone from me, but with the added agony of
knowing that to me she might have been life and love itself. I felt that
I could beat the air, wrestling with my fate for my desire. I gasped,
unmanned with wretchedness.
Then Gerry rose and put his hand upon my shoulder. Here again his
selfishness was seven years younger than mine. He could lose his sorrow
in sympathy.
“God be good to you, dear old chap,” he said; “it’s desperate, desperate
luck, but after all _is_ it too late? You’ve the place, the title, and
all that—and after all, you know, the old boy might have come home and
married any day—why can’t you follow them? Surely you might drop in with
them somewhere.”
“Too late? Of course it’s too late,” said I bitterly. “Is a girl to wait
for ever? Besides, they can’t hear of it for weeks—very likely not at
all. By then Denvarre will have settled matters, if he isn’t the most
consummate idiot on earth.”
“That may be all very well about Denvarre,” quoth Gerry wisely, “though
I don’t see that it is for certain, all the same. But what about Gwen?
You don’t allow her much independence of thought. Why should he happen
to meet her fancy? Do you think she doesn’t _know_ you worship the
ground she walks on?”
I stared at him, gnawing uneasily at my moustache, and with the sense
that he spoke the truth. Gwen knew it—must know it, but she must have
seen, as did I, the hopelessness of the business—must have known that
the farewell of that morning was to be the end. And yet—and yet that
look she gave me. Was it merely questioning, or did it tell me
something? I fell into that moody, unhealthy mind when one forbids
oneself to hope for very hope of being mistaken—assuring myself that I
knew there could be nothing but despair for me in the future, trusting
all the same that wanton fate would prove me wrong. Which is a phase of
unreason, I take it, more wearing than an utter yielding to desperation.
“Now, old chap,” went on Gerry soberly, “if you begin to muse and wonder
you’ll never sleep to-night. I believe this thing comes in the light of
luck for both of us. I feel twice the man I did half-an-hour ago, and
I’m going to whine no more. However matters go you’re very much better
off than you were this morning, and, as I said before, what’s to prove
that either Gwen or Vi may not come back to us again? Heaps of things
may happen in a year. Why,” he went on smiling, “with the influence of
the Heatherslies at my back I mean to get an _attachéship_ and marry Vi
myself. At any rate I believe now that the game’s _not_ over. I’ll be
your best man yet, unless we’re both married together, and I won’t say
that’s not possible.”
It was good to hear him say it, but all the time I was telling myself
frantically that it was rot—that I mustn’t listen to him, and I backed
my inward despondency with the spoken word.
“But even now,” I demurred, “what am I but a pauper peer? Fifty thousand
acres of bog are mine, and a few English farms. What’s that to
Denvarre’s forty thousand pounds a year and Gleivdon? I’d take an offer
of five thousand pounds a year for all I possess.”
He rose and slapped me on the back cheerily, smiling as he reached for
his hat.
“There, there,” said he, “that’s quite enough, Jack. I’m off, and you’re
going to tumble in. You’ll be twice the man in the morning. You’re upset
with it all, and to-morrow when you’re a bit steadied you’ll see it all
in another light. We’ll have a long collogue about it then, and you’ll
know what you’re going to do. Night-night, old man, and don’t dream if
you can help it,” and he passed across to his rooms whistling, though I
could but notice it was a very reedy, quivering attempt.
In spite of Gerry’s veto I did dream that night, seeing Denvarre in many
a heroic attitude save Gwen from desperate perils by flood and
field—masterful deeds which I could only watch in restless helplessness.
I rode a nightmare which trampled my every aspiration in the mud of
desolation, leaving me to awake heavy-eyed and low-spirited, but yet, as
Gerry predicted, with some of the hope that each new day brings. And
after my bath—and what a mental as well as bodily tonic a cold bath is—I
was chastened, maybe, but myself again. I filled my clothes without
feeling three sizes too small for them, and ate my breakfast with
appetite. As I was at it, Barker brought in a telegram. I ripped the
dirty orange-colored paper and read, “Please call at your earliest
convenience. Meadows and Crum.”
They are our lawyers—have been for generations. My former meetings with
them had been, for the most part, embarrassing. Hunted by some
pertinacious dun, I had occasionally fled to their chambers in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields as to a sanctuary, and they had always responded nobly to my
appeals. I smiled to think how continually and tactfully they had warned
me against backing other men’s bills and such-like futilities. Well, at
any rate that sort of thing was over. As a bachelor—I still assured
myself that I should live and die celibate, with an eye to the possible
fate which might be listening—I should not be so badly off. I could look
forward to commanding the regiment some day without beggaring myself.
Little rifts of sunlight like this began to break through the fog of my
depression, and when I strolled forth to call upon my solicitors, I had
pretty well regained the self-possession which that sudden announcement
of a tardy good luck had knocked completely out of my system.
Crum received me. Meadows is an anachronistic figment of the imagination
long deposited in a Hampstead vault. His partner continues the business
with other partners, who are considered to be sufficiently dignified by
the title of Co. He is a benignant old man, with an unblemished bald
head and character. I believe a warm heart beats under his deliberation,
and he has shown good faith and personal service to my family for more
years than I dare say he cares to count. He welcomed me with a quaint
subdued tolerance hovering on the outskirts of the chastened air he
thought befitting the mournful occasion. For myself I will say frankly
and at once that I could pretend no regret for the accident which led to
my being Crum’s future client. I had never even seen my uncle since I
was at Eton. In point of fact I felt the matter to be, personally, only
one for self-gratulation.
“Desperately sudden, my lord,” quoth the old gentleman, making me twitch
in my chair as I heard myself addressed by my title for the first time,
“desperately sudden. We received advises from his late lordship on
financial matters only a week ago, and now—it’s come like a thunderclap,
I assure you.”
“These are matters of fate, my dear Mr. Crum,” said I piously. “I
suppose there’s no doubt about the report?”
“None whatever, as I learn this morning. We cabled his lordship’s valet
last night and got the press message confirmed. Death took place
up-country, it seems. Baines, his man, talks of bringing the body to the
coast and sailing next week by the Pacific Mail Steamer.”
“That of course is the only decent and orderly thing to do,” said I,
“and no doubt you’ll kindly see to all these matters—arranging for the
funeral and so forth. But what about funds now? I expect this horrible
succession duty will make me as poor as a rat for the first year or two,
won’t it?”
He lifted his pince-nez, regarding me with a curious expression. I
immediately divined by a sort of intuition that he purposed giving
himself the pleasure of surprising me. There was a decorously cunning
light in the corner of his eye that made him appear not unlike a
respectable and intelligent magpie.
“I think you and your uncle were comparatively strangers to each other,
were you not? Ah, I thought so. You have the impression, doubtless, that
he was restless by choice and temperament alone? I can assure you, in
that case, that you are mistaken. Your uncle, for the last few years of
his life at any rate, has been dominated by a very determined purpose.”
“Philanthropic or personal?” I queried. “Not the former I sincerely
trust, or the pickings will be even less than I hope for. I know he’s
been roaming the wide world mysteriously ever since I can remember, but
I thought it was the inherited taint of travel. We’ve had a lot of
sailors in the family, Mr. Crum.”
“That is very true,” answered the man of law impressively, “and in a
certain indirect sense I won’t say you are altogether wrong. But the
simplest way will be to put the whole matter before you as I learned it
from your uncle. Excuse me a moment.”
He turned to where a row of tin boxes, shiny and white-lettered, lined
the walls along a broad shelf. Taking down one labelled “Viscount
Heatherslie,” he took up a key that had been lying handy upon the desk
and opened it. He extracted a bundle of papers tied in red tape, and
began sorting them with neat precision. I occupied myself in wondering
with unaffected curiosity what on earth was coming next.
Of course Uncle Leonard had been a wanderer on the wide earth, but he
had always been to me not so much a man as an impression. My poor dear
mother used to remark occasionally, “I see your uncle’s wintering in
Egypt,” or “Leonard’s in Japan again,” wondering always, as women do,
what could induce him to leave the comforts of his native isle for such
outlandish realms. But I had paid but slight attention. Uncle Leonard
was nothing to me—I was his heir-at-law, of course, but then he had
always been expected to marry late in life, as most of his ancestors had
done, and I had never troubled about him. I remember his coming down one
Fourth at Eton and stumbling across me, more by accident than intention,
and tipping me a fiver. But that was a feat he had never followed up and
improved upon in later life, so I had let him drop out of my
calculations, and he—well, he never spent three weeks of the year in
England, I suppose. Some men have the regular gypsy taint in the blood.
They must move in aimless joy of moving, or they absolutely shrivel up
for want of occupation. The mania in his case was more or less
inherited, I knew. Half-a-dozen of our forebears have been
adventurers—not to say buccaneers—in the past. They pop up in various
capacities all across the pages of Elizabethan and eighteenth century
history. So the fact that in my late uncle’s case there was more behind
this activity than was his by birth and ancestry came to me truly as a
surprise. I awaited developments pondering many possibilities.
Old Crum found what he wanted at last. Replacing all the papers but
one—rather a musty-looking document—he kennelled his legs comfortably
beneath his writing-table and began his revelation, tapping his fingers
upon the dusty law books before him to emphasize his remarks.
I’ll give you the tale as he gave it to me. Then judge me if I was a
consummate fool or not, in that I followed in the footsteps of my uncle.