Munroe Kirk
Under the Great Bear
CHAPTER XXV.
LOST IN A BLIZZARD
So numbed was our poor lad by the shock of his discovery that, for a few moments, he stood motionless. Of course it would be of no use to continue his hopeless struggle. Even if he had come in the right direction he must ere this have passed the place where his companions were encamped. If he could only regain the timber there might be a slight chance of surviving the night; but even its location was lost to him, and a certain death stared him in the face. At any rate it would be a painless ending, for he had only to lie down to be quickly covered by a soft blanket of snow. Then he could go to sleep never again to waken. He was very weary, and already so drowsy that the thought of sleep was pleasant to him. Such a death would certainly not be so terrible as drowning after a hopeless struggle with black waters.
With this thought every incident of that awful night after the loss of the "Lavinia" flashed into his mind. How utterly hopeless had seemed his situation then and how desperately he had fought for his life. But he had fought, and had won the fight. What was the use of learning a lesson of that kind if he could not profit by it? Was not his life as well worth fighting for now as then? Of course it was; nor was his present position any more hopeless than that one had been. Then he had drifted with the wind, and now he would do the same thing. If he could hold out long enough he would fetch up somewhere sometime. It was merely a question of endurance. Even in that howling wilderness, with death on all sides, there were still three chances for life. The drift with the wind might take him to the igloo that Yim must have built ere this. How bright, and warm, and cosey its lamplighted interior would be. How glad they would be to see him, and how he would laugh at all his recent fears. But of course there was not one chance in a million of his finding the igloo. It was not at all unlikely, though, that the drift might take him to a belt of timber, into which the bitter wind could not penetrate; and where he could crawl under the thick, low-hanging branches of some tent-like spruce. Even such a shelter now seemed very desirable, and would be accepted with thankfulness. If he failed to reach timber, the wind might blow him to some region of cliffs and rocks that would shelter him from its cutting blasts. If he missed all these chances, and if worse came to worst, he could always go to sleep beneath the snow blanket, and it would be better to do that with the consciousness of having made a good fight than to yield now like a coward.
All these thoughts flashed through Cabot's mind within the space of a minute, and, having determined to fight until the battle was either won or lost, he flung away his now useless burden of firewood and started off down the wind. Tramping through that newly fallen snow, even with the support of racquets, was exhausting work, but the effort at least kept him warm, and, before he came to the end of his strength, some hours later, he had covered a number of miles. He had also come to the least promising of the three places he had hoped for, and found himself in a region of cliffs, precipices, and huge rocks, among which he could no longer make headway, even though he had not reached the limit of endurance.
But he had reached that limit, and now only sought a spot in which he might lie down and go to sleep. Of course the snow would quickly cover him, and doubtless he would be buried deep ere the fury of the storm was past. But he had a vague plan for putting his snowshoes over his head like an inverted V, and hoped in that way to be kept from smothering. At the same time he had little thought that he should ever see the light of another day.
"Only a bit further and then I can rest," he muttered, as he pushed into the blackness of a rift between two tall cliffs, and experienced a partial relief from the furious wind. It seemed as though he ought to penetrate this as far as possible, and so he struggled weakly forward. Then he stumbled over something that lay across his path and fell heavily. As he lay wondering whether an attempt to regain his feet would be worth while, he seemed to hear the distant but strenuous ringing of an electric bell, and almost smiled at the absurdity of such a fancy in such a place. The thought carried him back to the electrical laboratory of the Institute, and he began to dream that he was still a student of ohms, volts, and amperes.
In another moment his consciousness would have been wholly merged in dreams, but suddenly the place where he lay was filled with a blaze of light that apparently streamed from the solid rock on either side. So intense was this light that it penetrated even Cabot's closed eyes, and aroused him from the stupor into which he had fallen. He lifted his head, and, still bewildered, wondered why the laboratory was so brilliantly illuminated.
Then, through the glare, he saw the driving snow-flakes with their dancing shadows magnified a hundred fold, and, all at once, he remembered. Staggering to his feet, and groping with outstretched arms, he pushed forward along the narrow pathway outlined by the mysterious light. He no longer heard the sound of bells, but in its place came strains of music that blended weirdly with the shrieking wind, and irresistibly compelled him forward. The pathway sloped downward and then took a sharp turn. As Cabot passed this the light behind him was extinguished as suddenly as it had appeared, the wild music sounded louder than ever, and directly in front of him gleamed two squares of light like windows. Between them was a dark space, towards which he instinctively stumbled. It proved to be as he had hoped, a door massive and without any means of unclosing that his blind fumblings could discover. So he beat against it feebly and uttered a hoarse cry for help. In another moment it was opened, and Cabot, leaning heavily against it, fell into a room, small, warm, and brightly lighted.
For a few minutes he lay with closed eyes, barely conscious that his struggle for life had been successful, and that in some mysterious manner he had gained a place of safety. Gradually he became aware that some one was bending over him, and opening his eyes he gazed full into a face that he instantly recognised, though it had sadly changed since he last saw it. At that time it had expressed strength in every line, but now it was haggard and worn by suffering.
"The Man-wolf!" gasped Cabot, in a voice hardly above a whisper.
A slight smile flitted across the man's face, and then, without warning, he sank to the floor in a dead faint. His mighty strength had been turned to the weakness of water, and the iron will had at length relaxed its hold upon the enfeebled body. As the man-wolf fell, a stream of blood trickled from his mouth, and he choked for breath as though strangling.
There is nothing so effective in restoring spent strength as a demand upon it from one who is weaker, and at sight of the big man's helplessness Cabot was instantly nerved to renewed effort. He sat up, cut loose his snowshoes, closed the open door, and rid himself of his snow-laden outer garments. Then, by a supreme effort, he managed to drag the unconscious man to a bed that was piled with robes and lean him against it. His eyes had already lighted on a jug of water, and fetching this he bathed the sufferer's face, washed the blood from his mouth, and finally had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes unclose. Then he helped him on to the bed, and though during the operation the man's face expressed the most intense pain, he uttered no sound. But the movement was accompanied by another hemorrhage, so severe that it seemed to our distressed lad as though the man must surely bleed to death before it was checked. When it finally ceased the exhausted sufferer dropped asleep, and, for the first time since entering that place of mysteries, Cabot found an opportunity for looking about him.
Although the room was small it was comfortably furnished with a table, chairs—one of which was a rocker—a lounge, and the bed on which the man-wolf lay. There were no windows nor doors except those in front. The ceiling was of heavy canvas tightly stretched, while the walls were hung with the skins of fur-bearing animals, and the floor was covered with rugs of the same material. At first Cabot paid no attention to these details, for his eyes were fixed upon the most astonishing thing he had seen in all Labrador. It was a lamp that, depending from the ceiling, gave to the room an illumination as brilliant as daylight.
"Electric, as I live!" gasped the young engineer. "A regular incandescent, and those lights out on the trail must have been the same. That was an electric bell too. I know it now, though I couldn't believe my ears at the time. The light he scared the Indians with must have been an electric flash, worked by a storage battery. But it is all so incredible! I wonder if I am really awake or still dreaming?"
To assure himself on this point Cabot went to the light, and, as he did so, came upon another surprise greater than any that had preceded it. He had wondered at the comfortable temperature of the room, for there was nowhere a fire to be seen, and the blizzard still howled outside with unabated fury. Now, on drawing near to the lamp, he found himself also approaching some heretofore unobserved source of heat, which he discovered to be a drum of sheet iron. It stood by itself, unconnected with any chimney, and apparently had no receptacle for any form of fuel, solid, liquid, or gaseous.
"A Balfour electric heater," murmured Cabot, in an awe-stricken tone, "and I didn't even know they had been perfected. I don't suppose there are half-a-dozen in use in all the world, and yet here is one of them doing its full duty up here in the Labrador wilderness, a thousand miles from anywhere. It is fully equal to any tale of the Arabian Nights, and Mr. Homolupus must, as the natives say, be either a god or a devil. I do wonder who he is, where he came from, what has happened to him, where he gets his electricity, and a thousand other things. I wish he would wake up, and I wish he could talk."
Cabot's curiosity concerning the weird music that had drawn him to that place had been partially satisfied by the discovery of a violin on the floor beside the sick man's bed. Now, as he flung himself wearily down on the lounge for a bit of rest, he became conscious of the muffled b-r-r-r of a dynamo. That accounted in a measure for the electric lights, but still left our lad in a daze of wonder at the nature of his surroundings.
CHAPTER XXVI.
AN ELECTRICIAN IN THE WILDERNESS
When Cabot threw himself down on that lounge he fully intended to remain awake, or at most to take only a series of short naps, always holding himself in readiness to assist the sufferer on the opposite side of the room. But exhausted nature proved too much for his good intentions, and he had hardly lain down before he fell into a dead, dreamless sleep that lasted for many hours. When he next awoke it was with a start, and he sat up bewildered by the strangeness of his environment. Daylight was streaming in at the frost-covered windows and the storm of the night before had evidently spent its fury.
Almost the first thing he saw was the tall form of his host bending feebly over the electric stove. His face was drawn with pain, and he was so weak that he was compelled to support himself by grasping the table with one hand while with the other he stirred the contents of a simmering kettle.
"Let me do that, sir!" cried Cabot, springing to his feet. "You are not fit to be out of your bed, and I am perfectly familiar with the management of electrical cooking apparatus, though I don't know much about cooking itself."
The man hesitated a moment, and then permitted the other to lead him back to his bed, on which he sank with a groan. Here Cabot made him as comfortable as possible before turning his attention to the stove. On it he found two kettles, each having its own wire connections, in one of which was boiling water while the other contained a meat stew. On the table was a box of tea, a bowl of sugar, and a plate heaped with hard bread. Finding other dishes in a cupboard, Cabot made a pot of tea, turned off the electric current, and served breakfast. Before eating a mouthful himself he prepared a bowl of broth for his patient, which the latter managed to swallow after many attempts and painful effort.
Cabot ate ravenously, and, after his meal, felt once more ready to face any number of difficulties. First he went to the bedside of his host and said:
"Now, Mr. Homolupus, I want to find out what is the trouble and what I can do for you. Are you wounded, or just naturally ill?"
The man looked at his questioner for a moment, as though he were on the point of speaking. Then he seemed to change his mind, and, reaching for a pencil and pad that lay close at hand, he wrote:
"I am shot in the chest."
"Who—I mean how–" began Cabot, and then, realising that his curiosity could well wait, he added: "But, with your permission, I will examine the wound and see if there is anything I can do."
With this he sought and gently removed a blood-soaked bandage, thereby disclosing a sight so ghastly that it almost unnerved him. The wound was so terrible, and the loss of blood from it had evidently been so great, that how even the giant frame of the man-wolf could have survived it was amazing. Having no knowledge of surgery, Cabot could only bathe and rebandage it. Then he said:
"Now, I am going to be your nurse, and you must lie perfectly still without attempting to get up again until I give you leave."
Seeing an expression of dissent in the man's face, he continued:
"It's all right. I am under the greatest of obligations to you, and am only too glad of a chance to pay some of it back. So I shall stay right here just as long as you need me. Fortunately I know something about both electricity and machinery, having been educated at a technical institute, so that I shall be able to manage very well with your plant. But I do wish you could explain a few things to me. Is your name really 'Homolupus'?"
The sufferer smiled and wrote on his pad:
"My name is Watson Balfour."
"Of London?" queried Cabot.
The man nodded.
"Is it possible that you can be Watson Balfour, the celebrated English electrician, who is supposed to have been lost at sea some years ago?"
Again the man smiled and made a sign of assent.
For a moment Cabot stared, well nigh speechless with the wonder and excitement of this discovery. Then he broke into a torrent of exclamations and questions.
"Why, Mr. Balfour, I know you so well by reputation that you seem like an old friend. Your 'Handbook of Electricity' and your 'Comparative Voltage' are text books at the Institute. The whole scientific world mourned your supposed death. But how do you happen to be up here, and how have you managed to establish an electric plant in this wilderness? Why are you masquerading as a man-wolf? How did you lose the power of speech? How did you become so severely wounded? Can't you tell me some of these things?"
For answer Mr. Balfour wrote: "Perhaps, some time. Tell first how you came here."
So Cabot, forced to curb for the present his own overpowering curiosity, sat down and told of all that had happened since the departure of the man-wolf from Locked Harbour. When he had finished he said:
"And now, I ought to go outside and see if I can discover any trace of my companions, who must be awfully cut up over my disappearance. But don't be uneasy, Mr. Balfour, I shan't go far, and whether I find them or not I shall certainly come back to stay just as long as you need me. I hope you will sleep while I am gone, and I wish you would promise not to leave your bed, or move more than is absolutely necessary, before my return."
When Cabot first stepped outside the shelter that had proved such a haven of safety to him, he was dazzled by the brilliancy of the day. After becoming somewhat accustomed to the glare of sunlight on new-fallen snow, he turned to see what sort of a house he had just left. To his surprise there was no house; the only suggestion of one being two windows and a door set in a wall of rock that was built at the base of a cliff.
"It is a cavern," thought Cabot, "and that is the reason the room is so easily kept warm. Mighty good thing to have in this country, especially when it is lined with furs."
The snow lay unbroken, and there was no sign of the trail he had made the night before. For a short distance, however, he could go in but one direction, for the only way out was through the narrow defile by which he had entered. At its mouth he found the wire over which he had fallen, and thereby given notice of his approach by causing the ringing of an electric bell.
"When he heard it he turned on the lights," said Cabot to himself. "It's a great scheme for scaring off Indians and attracting white men. I wonder if any other person ever found the place? What a marvellous thing my stumbling on it was, anyhow. Now, which way did I come?"
Gazing blankly at the surrounding chaos of snow-covered rocks, our lad could form no idea of the route by which he had been led to that place, through the storm and darkness of the preceding night, nor of how he might leave it.
"There is no use wandering aimlessly," he decided at length, "and I'll either have to gain a bird's-eye view of the country or get Mr. Balfour to make me a map. To think that I should have discovered him, and here of all places in the world. What a sensation it will make when I tell of it. Of course I shall do so, for I'll get out of this fix all right somehow. What a state of mind poor White must be in this morning. I know I should be in his place. He's all right, though, with Yim to pull him through, and they'll make Indian Harbour easy enough. Then I shall be reported lost, and after a while Mr. Hepburn will hear the news. Wonder what he thinks has become of me anyhow? I am following out instructions, and wintering in Labrador fast enough. Only I don't seem to have much time to investigate mining properties, and of course it's no use trying to find 'em buried under feet of snow. Perhaps Mr. Balfour has discovered some while roaming around the country as a man-wolf. How absurd to think of 'Voltage' Balfour as a man-wolf! Wonder why he did it? How I wish he could talk! Wonder why he can't?"
While thus cogitating, Cabot had also been climbing a nearby eminence that promised a view of the outlying country, but from it he could see nothing save other hills rising still higher and an unbroken waste of snow.
"It's no use," he sighed. "I don't believe I could find them, even if I had plenty of time. As it is, I don't dare stay away from Mr. Balfour any longer. I'm afraid he's a very sick man, with a slim chance of ever pulling through."
So Cabot, after an absence of several hours, turned back towards the snug shelter so providentially provided for him, and for which he was just then more grateful than he could express. He was thinking of the many wonders of the place when he reached its door; but, as he opened it and stepped inside the room, he was greeted by a greater surprise than he had yet encountered. Nothing was changed about the interior, and the wounded man lay as Cabot had left him, but with the appearance of the latter he exclaimed:
"Thank God, dear lad, that you have come back to me! It seemed as though I should go crazy if left alone a minute longer."
Cabot stared in amazement. "Is it a miracle?" he finally asked, "and has your speech been restored to you, or have you been able to speak all the time?"
"I have been able, but not willing," was the reply. "I had thought to die without speaking to a human being. I even avoided my fellows, believing myself sufficient unto myself. But God has punished my arrogance and shown me my weakness. Until you came no stranger has ever set foot within this dwelling, to none have I spoken, and not even to you did I intend to speak, but with your going my folly became plain. I feared you might never return; the horror of living alone, and the greater horror of dying alone, swept over me. Then I prayed for you to come. I promised to speak as soon as you were within hearing. Every moment since then I have watched for you and longed for your coming as a dying man longs for the breath of life. Promise that you will not leave me again."
"I have already promised, and now I repeat, that I will not leave you so long as you have need of me," replied Cabot. "But tell me–"
"I will tell you everything," interrupted the wounded man, "but first you must look after the dynamo. It has stopped, and if you cannot set it going again we must both perish."
