THIRTY DAYS
Before many hours Scoland raged quietly when he found that his "wild
man" had flown from the cage. But he was tongue-tied. He set cautious
inquiry on foot to ascertain what had become of the refugee. He could
do no more without publicity, which he did not court. His agents were
able to tell him no more than did the broken door of Burleson's cabin
on the Felix. Polaris was traceless.
Worried intensely at the first by the disappearance and still
apprehensive of a blow at his fortunes from the hand of the snow
wanderer, as days went by and nothing was heard from the missing one
Scoland breathed more freely. Doubtless the man had gone overboard and
drowned; or, if he had reached shore, he had wandered on his ways and
would not be heard from again.
Concealing the anxiety she felt, Rose Emer also secretly endeavored
to trace the lost Polaris. She met with no better success than had
Scoland. Her great-hearted protector was gone.
Rumor had coupled her name with that of the hero of the hour, the
discoverer of the pole,[1] and with the foreecho of wedding bells.
Several times the subject was mentioned to her by the captain himself.
He found the girl strangely silent on the matter that, before their
trip to the south he had considered was almost settled. She did not
speed his wooing, and he was too busy a man for the time to try and
regain his lost advantage.
[Footnote 1: The South Pole was actually discovered by Roald Amundsen
in 1911, a fact which the editors feel it is necessary to mention in
deference to the great explorer. The discrepancy need not detract from
the value of the great fantasy of the snow-country.]
Dinners, receptions, fetes, and the lecture platform made continual
demands on him, and then the summons came to go to Washington and lay
the proofs of his polar discovery before the savants of the National
Geographic Society.
Nearly a month had worn away since the Felix docked when Scoland
journeyed to the Capital to place in the hands of the gray and critical
members of the society the data of his explorations, that should fix
him for all time in the firmament of famous discoverers--first man to
stand at the southern pole.
* * * * *
More than two hours after he left the side of the Felix, Polaris
propelled his little craft into an angle at the side of a long, low
building that lay close to the harbor shore. He reached up, and his
fingers hooked over a stone edge. Softly he drew himself up and over.
He stood for the first time on the soil of his father's country.
With many a close escape from the wheels of ferries and the noses of
propellers of other craft, of which a bewildering number were moving,
even at that hour, but without being seen of any man, he had made the
passage of the harbor. It was no mean accomplishment of itself. He was
both weary and hungry after the toil. The second need must wait for a
while. He saw near him the shrubbery of a little park. He crawled into
the bushes and fell asleep.
Some three hours later, the dawn light shone revealingly on the soles
of his bare feet, thrust from under the bush. They caught the eye of a
policeman who was good-naturedly clearing the park of its "boarders."
He investigated. The appearance of the man who owned the feet was so
different from that of the ordinary "vag" habitués of the park, that
the bluecoat decided he must "run him in."
Still sleepy and only half understanding, Polaris went meekly with the
policeman. He knew that he was in the hands of a representative of the
law of America, a law that his father had taught him must be reverenced
and obeyed in all its manifestations.
With every instant unfolding to him a new wonder--from the startling
height of a many-storied skyscraper to a belated messenger boy puffing
at a cigarette--he was haled to a nearby station-house.
Because he could not, or would not, explain how he came to be in the
park, and because his intense interest in the proceedings about him
tended to make his answers casual, the judge dismissed him with a curt,
"Ten or thirty." The son of the snows went to jail and knew no help for
it.
He grew restive with the passing of the days in confinement. He had
left but one object in life, and that was the delivery of his father's
message. He had guessed for a long time that it had to do with a quest
similar to that of Scoland. Now the name of the captain was on every
lip. He had gone to Washington, to receive the official recognition of
his discovery.
In Washington, Polaris would also liked to have been. And his message?
He had given it into the keeping of Rose Emer. Where was she? Would she
keep faith?
Then it struck him with the suddenness of a blow that his message
might, even now, be in the keeping of the captain, the man who was to
be her husband. When he was on the verge of delirium, he had put his
most sacred trust into the hands of his enemy!
He laughed at the irony of it. Still, he would go to Washington. The
rest was on the knees of the gods. She would keep faith, he knew, but
did it rest with her?
Polaris learned much in those thirty days, for there is excellent
wisdom even in the bowels of a jail. Came at last the day of his
release, and found him in the middle of a puzzle. Not in all America
was there a person to whom he could turn in his extremity. He was
friendless and penniless. Under the circumstances, he could not bring
himself to ask aid of Rose Emer, even if he knew where she was to be
found.
Then it was that his dead friend Kalin raised up friends for him,
friends and the power to carry out his project.
On the day of his release he was directed to the window of the
property clerk's cage in the office of the prison. He found a small,
dark-browned man talking with the clerk at the window, who eyed him
curiously through thick, tortoise-rimmed spectacles of exaggerated
size, that were perched on his high, curved nose.
"My necklace?" said Polaris, as he stood at the window of the cage.
For a moment the clerk hesitated, and he and the little man stared
at Polaris. Up and down the little man's eyes roved, and finally a
friendly gleam came into them.
"I have come down here to see you about that necklace," he said. "Mr.
Atkins, here, he has seen nothing like that necklace of yours. So he
has shown it to a friend of his who is one of my employees, and that
friend has told to me so much about it that I have come all the way
here once just to see it, and then again to see you."
He paused and looked steadily at Polaris, who returned the gaze with
interest. What could the man want? Ah, he had it! Money! He would
give money for the necklace of Kalin; and money in this land would do
anything. It would take him to Washington. He could go as other men
went. His face brightened.
* * * * *
"Your necklace," pursued the little man, "would you consider selling
some of the stones? They are fine rubies, my friend, as no doubt you
know. Now tell me, and I read it in your eyes that you cannot lie,
are the stones yours? Would there be any legal question as to their
ownership?"
"The necklace is mine," said Polaris gravely. "It was the gift of a
friend of mine who died, in a foreign land. Do you wish to buy it? I
will sell--"
The little man smiled and answered quickly:
"No, not even I wish to purchase the entire necklace. I should have to
float a loan to pay its value. But I would like to purchase three or
four of the stones."
The end of it was that Polaris parted with three of the smaller stones
of the necklace at a price of seventeen thousand dollars--and glad
enough the jeweler was, to get them at that figure. By a miracle
Polaris had fallen into the hands of a man who could help him. He was
one of the most noted experts in gems in the metropolis--and honest.
Where another might have robbed him easily, this man gave him good
value for the stones.
So it was that while the members of the geographic society were poring
over the notes and records of Scoland, and plying the captain with many
an admiring question, a young man broke in upon the deliberations.
"Never mind the name," he said to the clerk in the anteroom. "I came
from the south with the Captain Scoland. They will wish to hear me."
That sufficed, and he entered the council room of the society. He was
an exceedingly personable young man, he who thus strode into the den
of the savants. He stood a good six feet from his soles, but he was so
generously constructed as to shoulders and chest that he did not seem
tall.
June had come, and he wore a handsome light textured suit. From the
top of his flaxen poll to his shoes, he bore evidences of the best
work of the metropolitan artists who had fitted him out in haste. A
native dignity almost obscured the stiffness with which he wore the
unaccustomed garments.
Scoland sat at the head of a long table. On either side of it were
grouped the members of the society, the men of science who were
weighing his claims to the title of discoverer of the south pole. As
the young man entered the room the captain looked up quickly.
Their eyes met. For an instant the brow of the captain was wrinkled,
as though he strove to recall a half-forgotten face. Then the interest
in the eyes faded, and he turned them back toward the table. The
metamorphosis was too complete for his recognition.
Testy old President Dean turned his leaping blue eyes on the stranger.
At the foot of the table a little bowed old man with a puckered face
and snapping bright black eyes leaned forward in sudden excitement and
gripped the edge of the table until his gaunt knuckles whitened.
"Well, young man, who are you, and what do you want here?" rapped out
the president.
"My name is Polaris, which, so far as I know, is all of it," replied
the young man, and instantly the odd name he gave himself and the
quaintness of his speech had drawn him the interest of every man at the
table.
"That which I want here, it may be more difficult for me to tell you,"
he continued. "I came here from the far south in the ship of that
man"--he pointed to Scoland--"bringing a message to the world from a
man now dead, the man whom I believe first stood at the place of the
southern pole. He--"
Polaris got no further. Scoland sprang to his feet in white rage.
"What's this?" he shouted. "Some crazy man has wandered in here. I
never laid eyes on him before. Have him put out!"
* * * * *
For an instant there was silence in the room. At the foot of the table
old Zenas Wright, who had put some marks on the maps in his own day,
stared and stared.
"Steve, Steve, I thought you had come back to me," he murmured. "But
you were a larger man, Steve, and that was years ago--years ago."
"Yes, you have laid eyes on me before," said Polaris, addressing
Scoland. "A sick man came to your camp through the snows, bringing
a member of your party who was lost. You took him to the ship, and
your Dr. Clawson nursed him. You brought him to America. You thought
him crazy and--But that matters not. I am that sick man, the man who
disappeared. Any of your men will remember, or Dr. Clawson."
Scoland sank back into his chair with a troubled face. President Dean
turned to him and said rather acidly: "You told us nothing of the
finding of a strange man in the polar regions. Is the story of this man
true?"
Quickly the captain thought. It was true what this man said. Any member
of his crew would remember the "wild man." It would profit him not at
all to lie.
"Why, yes," he assented. "There was such a man. But he could not, or
pretended that he could not, speak English. He appeared to be a savage
and an imbecile to boot. We brought him back with us. He disappeared
the night we reached quarantine. Now that I look at this man, it
seems that he may be the same, although he is changed greatly. He is
undoubtedly crazy."
Scoland spoke confidently. Still, he felt in his heart a return of the
forebodings that had warned him against this man since first he had set
eyes upon him.
"Who are you, lad, and how did you come to be in the south?" old Zenas
Wright spoke up from the foot of the table. His tone was kindly, and
there was no suspicion, only deep interest, in the keen eyes he turned
on the youth.
"As best I may, I will answer those questions," said Polaris. "I was
born in the white south. My mother I never saw--only a grave with the
name Anne above it. My father sleeps beside that grave, and above him
is the name Stephen."
Zenas Wright started visibly and seemed about to interrupt the tale,
but did not, and Polaris continued:
"Other names than those I know not that they had. My father reared me,
and I never saw another human being until I met those of the party of
Captain Scoland. My father died. He gave me a message to bring to the
north--a message addressed to the National Geographic Society of the
United States. In that message, he told me, was the story of a great
discovery he had made--that would ring around the world--and in it also
was the history of myself, which he never told me. We lived far to the
south for many years, for my father hurt himself in a fall and could
not travel.
"When he died and I came north, I passed and burned the ship in which
he went to the south. Its name was the Yedda.
"This man has reached the pole. I do not wish to make his glory dim,
but--he is not the first to stand at the pole. I have come here--"
He hesitated and glanced around the circuit of the big table. Every man
there was leaning forward in strained attention.
"The message--the message your father sent?" queried President Dean,
and held out a shaking hand. "Give us that message."
"I have lost that message," said Polaris quietly.
Scoland burst into a peal of derisive laughter. "A joke, gentlemen--a
joke!" he cried. "I don't know who and what this young man is, but he
has a rare sense of humor."
"Young man," continued the president severely, "this is a strange
tale you have told--an almost unbelievable tale. Yet this society has
listened to many strange tales. All that is lacking to make history of
the strangest of tales is proof. You say you have lost your message.
Without proof, no claim can stand before this society. I advise you
most strongly to find that message, if such a message you have, and
bring it before us. Until you do, the society cannot listen to you
further."
He inclined his head and beckoned to the clerk at the door to show
Polaris from the room. Polaris hesitated. There apparently was nothing
more to be said. Still he hesitated. Then he heard two sounds behind
him that caused him to turn like lightning. They were a quick little
gasp and an astounded whine.
Framed in the doorway stood a girl and a great gray dog!