The Heart of Unaga Part 51

"No. Maybe you don't," he went on. "You see, I got a--notion. The wind's west--now. It should be a h.e.l.l of a cold wind. It isn't. No. It should be h.e.l.lish cold," he reflected. "Why isn't it? The hills lie west. The big hills. Maybe _the_ big hill. Well? I kind of wonder. Maybe it's that. It's a guess. A h.e.l.l of a guess. Does the west wind hereabouts blow across the big fire hill? And are those fires so almighty hot they set the snow melting where all the world's freezing at 60 below? Is it a sort of chinook in the dead of winter?"

He raised his eyes to the faces of his companions. The dusky figures were half hidden behind the smoke of the fire, which rose between them.

He nodded at the steady gazing black eyes.

"Yes," he said. "Guess that break's come. We'll be out on the trail right away. And we'll beat up against a breeze that's warming. It'll lead us to--the Heart of Unaga."

The splendour of the Arctic night was s.h.i.+ning over the world. There was scarcely a breath of wind. The air currents were still from the west, but the wind had died out. For the moment the amazing warmth which had stirred the imagination of Steve and his companions had pa.s.sed.

A silver sheen played upon the limitless fields of snow. It was like a world of alabaster. The light came from every corner of the heavens. It came from the glory of a full moon, hard-driven to retain supremacy over its satellites. It came from the myriads of burnished stars, gleaming with a clarity, a penetrating sparkle, unknown to their brethren of lower lat.i.tudes. It came from the supreme magnificence of an aurora of moving light, dancing and curtseying with ghostly grace, as though stepping the measure of a heavenly minuet. Its radiance filled half the dome of night. It was a glory of frigid colour to ravish the artist eye.

The men on the trail had lost all sense of degrees of cold. It was simply cold. Always cold. A thermometer would have frozen solid. They knew that. Cold? So long as a strong, warm life burned in their bodies, and their stores of food remained, it was the best they could hope for.

And the dogs. They were bred to the Arctic cold. So is the bear of the Pole. They needed no better than to follow their labours with a couch burrowed beneath the snows, and hours for the dream feast which their ravening appet.i.tes yearned and never tasted.

The outfit had broken trail as Steve had promised, and it was moving through the ghostly world like insects a-crawl over the folds of an ill-spread carpet.

The course had been deflected in response to the change of wind. Steve had left the shelter of the river where it had definitely turned northward. He had left it without regret. He had no regret for anything which did not further his purpose. Adresol! The quest of the Adresol pastures was the whole aim and object of his life. Somewhere out there over the desolate wastes he believed the great secret of it all lay awaiting his discovery. Nothing else, then, was of any significance.

For the moment Nature seemed bent on favouring him. For over two hundred miles she had beaten him well-nigh breathless. She had hurled her storms at him without mercy, and, at the end of her transcendent fury, she had found him undismayed, undefeated. Perhaps his tenacity excited her admiration. Perhaps she was nursing her wrath for a more terrible onslaught. Whatever her mood he was ready to face it.

At the beginning of the third week since leaving the shelter on the river Steve trod the first of the western hills under foot, and awaited the coming of the train upon its summit. His dark, fur-clad figure stood out in relief against the world about him. It looked squat, it was utterly dwarfed in the twilit vastness. But there was something tremendous in the meaning of that living presence in the voiceless solitudes which the ages have failed to stir.

The sleds were still. The dogs lay sprawled for rest awaiting the will of their masters. Julyman stood abreast of Steve, tall, lean, but bulky in his frosted furs. Oolak stood over his dogs, which were his first care.

"You can feel it now," Steve said, thrusting a hand under his fur helmet. A moment later he withdrew fingers that were moist with sweat.

"If the wind came down at us out of the hills now we'd need to quit our furs. Do you get that? Quit our furs here in the dead of winter. It's getting warmer every mile."

"It warm. Much warm. Oh, yes."

Julyman's resources of imagination were being sorely taxed.

Steve nodded.

"Yes," he said. "It isn't wind now. There's no wind. It's the air. It's warm. It's getting warmer. Later it'll get hot as h.e.l.l."

He drew a profound breath. He felt that victory was very near. It only needed----

"We got to beat on all we know," he said, examining the brilliant heavens. "We need to grab every moment of this weather. We don't know.

We can't guess the things waiting on us. Yes. We'll 'mush' on."

His tones were deep. The restraint of years which the Northland had bred into him was giving way before the surge of a hope that was almost certainty. And his order was obeyed by men who knew no law but his will.

But for all the urgency of his mandate, for all his efforts, progress slackened from the moment the first hill was pa.s.sed. From the seemingly limitless plains of snow, rolling maddeningly in a succession of low hills and shallow hollows, now it seemed that Nature spurned the milk and water fas.h.i.+oning of her handiwork, and had hurled the rest of the world into a wreckage of broken, barren hills.

Into the midst of this chaos Steve plunged.

For awhile the confusion robbed him of all certainty. It not infrequently left decision floundering. The mountains leapt at him with a rush from every side, confusing direction and reducing even instinct to something like impotence. With familiarity, however, his trained mind adapted itself. Then the rush went on with the old irresistible confidence.

But human endurance was sorely tested. The tasks often became well-nigh insuperable. There were moments when dogs and Indians lay beaten in the midst of their labours, without will, without energy to stir another yard. It was at such times that despair knocked at the strong heart of the man who had never learned to yield, and who had never quite known defeat.

But even in the worst moments the steadily warming air never failed to lure. It breathed its soft message of promise into Steve's ready ears, supporting a heart powerless to resist the appeal.

The change to warmth, however, had another and less pleasing aspect. The snow lost its icy case-hardening. A rot set in. On the hill-tops the ice was not always reliable. In the valleys men sank up to their knees in slushy depths. Even the broad tread of snow-shoes failed to save them.

Then, too, the dogs floundered belly-deep, and the broad bottoms of the sleds alone saved the outfit from complete disaster. The increasing hards.h.i.+ps left Steve without respite. It was only on the hill-tops, when the veer of the wind carried it to the northward, and, for a brief spell, Arctic conditions returned, that any measure of ease was ironically vouchsafed.

The effort was tremendous. It went on for days whose number it was difficult to estimate in the grope of the unchanging twilight. A day's work might be a single hill conquered. It might be a moist, clammy valley crossed. Perhaps two miles, three, or even five. Distance remained unconsidered. For always was the next effort no less than the last, till mind, and heart, and body were worn well-nigh threadbare.

There was no pause, no hesitation. It must be on, on to the end, or--disaster.

Steve knew. Only the barest necessity of rest could be permitted both for himself, his men, his dogs. The faith of his men still burned strongly in hearts which he had never known to fail, but he dared not risk the chance of a prolonged inactivity with its opportunity for contemplation of the h.e.l.l through which they were all pa.s.sing. He knew.

Oh yes. He knew from his understanding of his own feelings and emotions.

He lived in the daily hope of discovering something with which to dazzle imagination already dulling. His faith was pinned to the summit of a great, grey headland towering amongst its fellows ahead. He had discovered its presence long since, and, from the moment of discovery, he had sought its elusive slopes. Instinct, that had no great reason to support it, warned him that the view from its summit would tell them the things they desired to know. And they were the things they all must learn quickly if failure were not to rob them of the fruits of their great adventure.

Yes. He desired that dull grey summit just now as he desired nothing else in the world.

Every emotion was stirring when, at length, Steve found himself climbing the last of the upward slopes of the "Hill of Promise," as he had named it. He had laughed as he coined the name. But there had been no laughter in his heart. If the promise were not fulfilled----?

But it would be fulfilled. It must be fulfilled. These were the things Steve told himself in that fever of straining which only mental extremity knows.

He topped the last rugged lift to the summit. His men were somewhere below, floundering in his wake. He had no heed for them just now. Hope, a fever of hope alone sustained his weary limbs over the inhospitable ice.

A great shout echoed down the slope. It came with all the power of a strong man's lungs.

"Ho, you! Quick!"

Steve had reached the rugged crest. A second shout came back to the floundering Indians.

"G.o.d! It's a--wonder!"

The moment was profound. Eyes that were prepared for well-nigh anything monstrous gazed out spellbound. Tongues had no words, and hearts were stirred to their depths. The whole world ahead was afire. It was a conflagration of incalculable immensity.

The horizon was one blaze of transcendent light. It was rendered a hundred-fold more amazing by its contrast against the grey of the Arctic night. At a given point, in the centre of all, a well of fire was belching skywards. It was churning the overhanging clouds of smoke, and lighting them with the myriad hues that belong to the tumbled glory of a stormy summer sunset. Then, too, rumblings and dull thunders came up to the watching men like the groanings of a world in travail.

For miles the hill-tops seemed to have been swept clear of ice and snow.

They were shorn of their winter shroud. They stood up like black, unsightly, broken teeth, against a cavernous background of fire burning in the maw of some Moloch colossus. They stood out bared to the bone of the world's foundations.

Julyman shaded his eyes with hands that sought to shut out a vision his savage superst.i.tion could no longer support. Oolak had no such emotion.

He turned from it to something which, to his mind, was of greater interest. Steve alone remained absorbed in that radiant beyond.

The Arctic night no longer reigned supreme. It seemed to have been devoured at a gulp. The heavenly lights had lost all power in face of this earthly glory. A mist of smoke had switched off the gleam of starlight, and the moon and mock-moons wore the tarnished hue of silver that has lost its burnish. The ghosts of the aurora no longer trod their measure of stately minuet. They had pa.s.sed into the world of shadow to which they rightly belonged.

The heart of Unaga was bared for all to see, that fierce heart which drives the bravest Indian tongue to the hush of dread.