Part 47 (1/2)

”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 that 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”--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 across the face with a dog whip.”

Lewson clenched a lean brown fist. ”Yes” he added, hoa.r.s.ely, ”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 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.

”We'll let that go. I can't think of it,” he said, recovering his composure. ”They put us on board the schooner, and by and by 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 ash.o.r.e 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 after a time--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 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-crus.h.i.+ng sameness and monotony of an existence checkered only by times of dire scarcity on those lonely sh.o.r.es.

”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 staked 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 stopped, and sat still a while 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.”

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 a while, and then went north before the winter. Jake played out on the trail. By and by he had to let up, and in a day or two I buried him.”

His voice grew hoa.r.s.e. ”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 talked no more that night, but Wyllard translated part of his story for the benefit of Overweg.

”The thing, it seems incredible,” commented the scientist. ”This man, who has so little to tell, knows things which would make a trained explorer famous.”

”It generally happens that way,” said Wyllard. ”The men who know can't tell.”

Overweg made a sign of a.s.sent, and then changed the subject.

”What shall you do now?” he asked.

”Start for the inlet, where we expect to find the schooner, at sunrise.

I want to say”--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 given me.”