CAST AWAY.
Tom Lewson had been an hour in camp before he commenced the story of
his wanderings, and at first he spoke slowly and falteringly, lying
propped up on one elbow, with the lamplight on his worn face.
"We broke an oar coming off the beach that night, and it kind of
crippled us," he said. "Twice she nearly went back again in the surf,
and I don't quite know how we pulled her off. Anyway, one of us was
busy heaving out the water that broke into her. It was Jake, I think,
and he seemed kind of silly. Once we saw a boat hove up on a sea, but
we lost her in the spray, and a long while after we saw the schooner.
Just then a comber that broke on board most hove us over, and when we
had dodged the next two there wasn't a sign of her. After that we knew
that we were done, and we just tried to keep her head-to and ease her
to the seas."
He stopped a moment, and looked round at the others with troubled eyes,
as though trying to marshal uncertain memories, for this was a simple
sailorman, who contented himself with the baldest narrative. Still,
two of those who heard him could fill in the things he had not
mentioned--the mad lurching of the half-swamped boat, the tense
struggle with the oars each time a big frothing comber forged out of
the darkness, and the savage desperation of the drenched and
half-frozen men cast away with the roaring surf to lee of them and
their enemies watching upon the hammered beach.
"It blew hard that night," he added. "Somehow she lived through it,
but there wasn't a sign of the island when morning came. Nothing but
the combers and the flying haze. Guess the wind must have shifted a
few points and drove us by the end of it. Then we found Jake had his
head laid open by a sealing club. The sea was getting longer, and as
we were too played out to hold her to it we got her away before it, and
somehow she didn't roll over. I think it was next day, though it might
have been longer, when we fetched another island. She just washed up
on it, and one of the others pulled me out. There wasn't a sign of
anybody on the beach, but there were plenty of skinned holluschackie
seals on the slope behind it, and that was fortunate for us."
"You struck nobody on the island?" enquired Wyllard.
"We didn't," said Lewson simply. "The Russians must have sent a vessel
to take off the killers after the last drive of the season a day or two
before, for the holluschackie were quite fresh, and perhaps it was
blowing hard and the surf getting steep, for they'd left quite a few of
their things behind them. Anyway, that was how we figured it. We
found the shacks the killers lived in, and we made out that winter in
one of them."
It occurred to Wyllard that this was a thing very few men except
sealers could have done had they been cast ashore without stores or
tools to face the awful winter of the north.
"How did you get through?" he asked.
"Well," said Lewson, "we had a rifle, and the ca'tridges weren't
spoilt. The killers hadn't taken their cooking outfit, and by and bye
we got a walrus in an open lane among the ice. They'd left some gear
behind them, but we were most of two days cutting and heaving the beast
out with a parbuckle under him. There was no trouble about things
keeping in that frost. Besides, we'd the holluschackie blubber to
burn, and there was a half-empty bag or two of stores in one of the
shacks. No, we hadn't any great trouble in making out."
"You had to stay there until the ice broke up?" said Charly.
"And after. The boat was gone, and we couldn't get away. She broke up
in the surf, and we burned what we saved of her. At last a schooner
came along, and we hid out across the island until she'd gone away. It
was blowing fresh, and hazy, and she just shoved a new gang of killers
ashore. There was an Okotsk Russian with them, but he made no trouble
for us. He was white, anyway, and it kind of seemed to me he didn't
like one of the other men who got hurt that night on the beach."
"Then some of them did get badly hurt?" Wyllard broke in.
Lewson laughed, a little, almost silent laugh, which nevertheless
sounded strangely grim.
"Well," he said, "from what that Russian told us--and we got to
understand each other by and bye--one of the killers had his ribs
broke, and it seems that another would go lame for life. Besides,
among other things, there was a white man got his face quite smashed.
I saw him after with his nose flattened way out to starboard, and one
eye canted. He was a boss of some kind. They called him Smirnoff."
Overweg looked up sharply. "Ah," he said, "Smirnoff. A man with an
unsavoury name. I have heard of him."
"Anyway," Lewson went on, "we killed seals all the open season with
that Russian, and I've no fault to find with him. In fact, I figure if
he could have fixed it he'd have left us on the island that winter, but
when a schooner came to take the killers off and collect the skins
Smirnoff was on board of her. That"--and an ominous gleam crept into
Lewson's eyes--"was the real beginning of the trouble."
"He had us hauled up before him--guess the other man had to tell him
who we were--and when I wouldn't answer he slashed me with a
sled-dog-whip across the face."
Lewson clenched a lean brown fist. "Yes," he added, hoarsely, "I was
whipped--but they should have tied my hands first. It was not my fault
I didn't have that man's life. It was most a minute before three of
them pulled me off him, and he was considerably worse to look at then."
There was silence for a minute or two, and Wyllard, who felt his own
face grow a trifle warm, saw the suggestive hardness in Charly's eyes.
Lewson was gazing out into the darkness, but the veins were swollen on
his forehead and his whole body had stiffened. Then he spread his
hands out.
"We'll let that go. I can't think of it. They put us on board the
schooner, and by and bye she ran into a creek on the coast. We were to
be sent somewhere to be dealt with, and we knew what that meant, with
what they had against us. Well, they went ashore to collect some skins
from the Kamtchadales, and at night we cut the boat adrift. We got off
in the darkness, and if they followed they never trailed us. Guess
they figured we couldn't make out through the winter that was coming
on."
So far the story had been more or less connected and comprehensible.
It laid no great tax on Wyllard's credulity, and, indeed, all that
Lewson described had come about very much as Dampier had once or twice
suggested; but it seemed an almost impossible thing that the three men
should have survived during the years that followed. Lewson, as it
happened, never made that matter very clear. He sat silent for almost
a minute before he went on again.
"We hauled the boat out, and hid her among the rocks, and after that we
fell in with some Kamtchadales going north," he said. "They took us
along, I don't know how far, but they were trapping for furs, and by
and bye--I think it was months after--we got away from them. Then we
fell in with another crowd, and went on further north with them. They
were Koriaks, and we lived with them a long while--a winter and a
summer anyway. It was more, perhaps--I can't remember."
He broke off with a vague gesture, and sat looking at the others
vacantly with his lean face furrowed.
"We must have been with them two years--but I don't quite know. It was
all the same up yonder--ever so far to the north."
It seemed to Wyllard that he had seldom heard anything more expressive
in its way than this sailorman's brief and fragmentary description of
his life in the wilderness. He had heard from steam whaler skippers a
little about the tundra that fringes the Polar Sea, the vast desolation
frozen hard in summer a few inches below the surface, on which nothing
beyond the mosses ever grew. It was easy to understand the
brain-crushing sameness and monotony of an existence chequered only by
times of dire scarcity on those lonely shores.
"How did you live?" he asked.
"There were the birds in summer, and fish in the rivers. In winter we
killed things in the lanes in the ice, though there were weeks when we
lay about the blubber lamp in the pits. They made pits and put a roof
on them. I don't know why we stayed there, but Jake had always a
notion that we might get across to Alaska--somehow. We were way out on
the ice one day when Jim fell into a crevice, and we couldn't get him
out."
He broke off, and sat still awhile as one dreaming. "I can't put
things together, but at last we came south, Jake and I, and struck the
Kamtchadales again. We could talk to them, and one of them told us
about a schooner lying in an inlet by a settlement. The Russians had
brought her there from the islands, and she must have been a sealer.
Jake figured it was just possible we might run away with her and push
across for the Aleutians or Alaska."
Charly looked up suddenly. "She--was--a sealer--Hayson's _Seminole_.
I was in Victoria when we heard that the Russians had seized her."
Wyllard turned to Overweg, who nodded when he asked a question in
French.
"Yes," he said, "I believe the vessel lies in the inlet still. They
have used her now and then. It is understood that they were warranted
in seizing her, but I think there was some diplomatic pressure brought
to bear on them, for they sent her crew home."
Then Lewson went on again. "Food was scarce that season, and we got
most nothing in the traps," he said. "Besides, there were Russians out
prospecting, and that headed us off. We figured that some of the
Kamtchadales who traded skins to the settlements would put them on our
trail. When we went to look for the boat she'd gone, but we hadn't
much notion of getting off in her, though another time--I don't
remember when--we gave two Kamtchadales messages we'd cut on slips of
wood. Sometimes the schooners stood in along the coast."
Wyllard nodded. "Dunton of the _Cypress_ got your message," he said.
"He was in difficulties then, but he afterwards sent it me."
"Well," said Lewson, "there isn't much more to it. We hung about the
beach awhile, and then went north before the winter. Jake played out
on the trail. By and bye he had to let up, and in a day or two I
buried him."
He spread his hands out, and his voice grew hoarse. "After that it
didn't seem to matter what became of me, but I kept the trail somehow,
and found I couldn't stay up yonder. That's why I started south with
some of them before the summer came. Now I'm here--talking
English--talking with white men--but it doesn't seem the same as it
should have been--without the others."
He broke off, and said no more that night, but Wyllard translated part
of his story for the benefit of Overweg. The latter made a little
expressive gesture.
"The thing, it seems incredible," he commented. "This man, who has so
little to tell, knows things which would make a trained explorer
famous."
"It generally happens that way," said Wyllard with a dry smile. "The
men who know can't tell."
Overweg made a sign of assent, and then changed the subject.
"What will you do now?"
"Start for the inlet where we expect to find the schooner at sunrise.
I want to say"--and Wyllard hesitated--"that you have laid an
obligation on me which I can never repay; but I can, at least, replace
the provisions you have supplied me with."
"That goes for nothing," said the other with a smile. "I have,
however, drawn upon my base camp rather heavily, and should be glad of
any stores from the schooner that you could let me have. The
difficulty is that I do not wish to go too far towards the beach."
They arranged a rendezvous a day or two's march from the inlet, and in
another half-hour all of them were fast asleep.
When the first of the daylight came Wyllard set off with his two
companions, and since it was evident that Dampier must have now lain in
the inlet awaiting them a considerable time, they marched fast for
several days. Then to their consternation they came upon the Siwash
lying beside a river badly lame. It appeared that in climbing a
slippery ridge of rock the knee he had injured had given way, and he
had fallen some distance heavily, after which the Kamtchadale finding
him helpless had disappeared with most of the provisions. None of the
party ever learned what had become of him, but they realised in the
meanwhile that the situation was now a rather serious one. Charly, who
looked at Wyllard when he had heard the Indian's story, explained it
concisely.
"I'm worrying about the boat we left on the edge of the ice," he said.
"I've had a notion all along it was going to make trouble. Dampier
would see the wreckage when he ran in, and I guess it would only mean
one thing to him. He'd make quite certain he was right when he didn't
find us at the inlet." He paused and pointed towards the distant sea.
"You have got to push right on with Lewson as fast as you can while I
try to bring the Siwash along."
Wyllard started in the next few minutes, and afterwards never quite
forgot the strain and stress of that arduous march. The journey he had
made with Overweg had been difficult enough, but they had then, at
least, traversed rising ground from which most of the melting snow had
drained away. Now, however, as they approached the more level littoral
there were wide tracts of mire and swamp to be painfully floundered
through, while every ravine and hollow was swept by a frothing torrent,
and they had often to search for hours for a place where it was
possible to cross. To make things worse, they were drenched with
bitter rain half the time, and trails of dingy mist obscured their
path, but they toiled on stubbornly through every obstacle, though it
was only by the tensest effort that Wyllard kept pace with his
companion. The gaunt, long-haired Lewson seemed proof against physical
weariness, and there was seldom any change in the expression of his
grim, lined face. Now and then Wyllard felt a curious shrinking as he
glanced at it, for its fixed look suggested what this man had borne in
the awful solitudes of the frozen north.
Slowly, with infinite toil, they crossed the weary leagues, lying at
night with a single skin between them and the soil, for they travelled
light; and Wyllard was limping painfully with his boots worn off his
feet, when at length one morning they came into sight of a low
promontory which rose against a stretch of grey, lifeless sea. His
heart throbbed fast as he realised that behind it lay the inlet into
which Dampier had arranged to bring the _Selache_. He glanced at
Lewson, who said nothing, and they plodded forward faster than before.
The misty sun was high in the heavens when at length they reached the
foot of the steep rise, and Wyllard gasped heavily as they crept up the
ascent. He was making a severe muscular effort; but it was the nervous
tension that troubled him most, for he knew that he would look down
upon the inlet from the summit. He blamed himself bitterly for not
sending on a messenger to Dampier when he fell in with Overweg, which,
in his eagerness to follow up the clue the latter had given him, he had
at first omitted to do. There had certainly been difficulties in the
way, for the increase in the scientist's party had made additional
packers necessary, and Wyllard felt that he could not reasonably compel
him to leave the camp comforts he had evidently been accustomed to
behind. In spite of that, he had been at fault in not disregarding
every objection, and he realised it now.
Somehow he kept pace with Lewson, but he closed one hand tight as he
neared the top. When he reached it he stopped suddenly, and his face
set hard as he looked down, standing very still. Beneath him lay a
strip of dim, green water, with a fringe of soft, white surf at the
foot of the promontory, while beyond the latter there stretched away an
empty expanse of slowly heaving sea. There was nothing else, however;
no schooner in the inlet, no boat upon the beach.
In another moment or two they went down the slope savagely at a
stumbling run, and then stopped, gasping by the water's edge, and
looked at one another. There were marks in the sand which showed them
where a boat had been drawn up not very long ago. The _Selache_ had
evidently been there, and had sailed away again.
Then Wyllard sat down limply upon the shingle, for all the strength
seemed to suddenly melt out of him, and it was several minutes before
he looked up. Lewson was still standing, a shapeless, barbaric figure
in his garments of skins, with a dark lined face that had scarcely
changed, gazing out to sea. The hide moccasins he wore had chafed
through, and Wyllard noticed that the blood was trickling from one of
his feet.
"Well?" he said, harshly.
Wyllard laid a stern restraint upon himself. Their case looked
desperate, but it must, at least, be grappled with.
"We must go back and meet the rest," he said. "That first--what is to
come afterwards I don't quite know." Then a faint gleam of resolution
crept into his eyes. "The schooner the Russians seized lies in an
inlet down the coast."
Lewson made a sign of comprehension. "There are four of us. There
will be birds by and bye. I can trap things."
Then he flung himself down near his comrade, and for an hour neither of
them said anything. Wyllard, at least, was worn-out physically, and
limp from the last few hours' mental strain, while Lewson very seldom
said more than was absolutely necessary. Then they made a very frugal
meal, and long afterwards Wyllard was haunted by the memory of that
dreary afternoon during which he lay upon the shingle watching the slow
pulsations of the dim, lifeless sea.
They set out again early next morning, and, as it happened, found a
little depôt of provisions that Dampier had made, but it was several
days before they met Charly and the Indian, and another week had passed
before Overweg reached the place appointed. He listened to Wyllard's
story gravely, and then appeared to consider.
"You have some plans?" he asked.
Wyllard admitted that this was the case, and Overweg smiled behind his
spectacles.
"It is, perhaps, better that you do not tell me what they are," he
said. "There is, however, one thing I can do. You say you left some
stores you could not carry at the depôt, which I will take, for
provisions are now not plentiful with me, but there are still a few
things you have not which are almost necessary at my base camp,
and"--he spread his hands out--"after all, if I have to go south a
little earlier than I intended it is not a great matter."
He wrote on a strip of paper which he handed to Wyllard. "You will
take these, and nothing else. I may add that Smirnoff is stationed at
the inlet where the schooner lies."
Wyllard thanked him, and then looked him in the eyes. "There is a long
journey before us, and you have only my word that I will take nothing
but these things."
Overweg nodded quietly. "Yes," he said, "it is, however, perhaps
permissible to assure you that it is sufficient for me."
Very little more was said, and in another half-hour Wyllard and his
companions were ready to set out. He and the little spectacled
scientist grasped each other's hands, and then Wyllard abruptly turned
away. A few minutes later he turned again, and looking back saw
Overweg standing upon the ridge where he had left him silhouetted
against a low, grey sky. He raised his cap once, and Wyllard, who
answered him, swung round once more, and strode on faster towards the
south. He knew that his regard for this stranger who had fallen across
his path would remain unchanged while his life should last.