Part 47 (1/2)

Never, perhaps, was Rory in better spirits for solo-playing. He appeared to know intuitively the cla.s.s of music the listeners would delight in, and his rendering of some of the old Scottish airs seemed simply to hold them spell-bound. As the wild, weird, plaintive notes of the violin, touched by the master fingers of the young poet, fell on their ears, they were no longer ice-bound in the dreary regions of the pole. It was no longer winter; it was no longer night. They were home once more in their native land; home in dear auld Scotland. The sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly in the summer sky, the purple of the heather was on the moorland, the glens and valleys were green, and the music of merle and mavis, mingling with the soft croodle of the amorous cushat, resounded from the groves. No wonder that a few sighs were heard when Rory ceased to play; he had touched a chord in their inmost hearts, and for the time being had rendered them inexpressibly happy.

It is well to let the curtain fall here for a short time; it rises again on the first scene of the last act of this Arctic drama of ours.

Three months have elapsed since that Christmas evening in the cave when we beheld the crew of the _Arrandoon_ listening with happy, hopeful, upturned faces to the sweet music that Rory discoursed from his darling instrument. Only three months, but what a change has come over the prospects of sill on board that seemingly doomed s.h.i.+p! Often and often had our heroes been face to face with death in storms and tempests at sea, in fighting with wild beasts, and even with wild men, but never before had they met the grim king of terrors in the form he now a.s.sumed.

For several weeks the men had been falling ill, and dying one by one, and already no less than nine graves had been dug and filled under the snow on the mountain's side.

The disease, whatever it was, resisted all kinds of treatment, and, indeed, though the symptoms in every case were similar at the commencement, no two men died in precisely the same way. At first there was an intense longing for home; this would be succeeded in a few days by loss of all appet.i.te, by distaste for food or exertion of any kind, and by fits of extreme melancholy and depression. The doctor did his best. Alas! there are diseases against which all the might of medical skill is unavailing.

Brandy and other stimulants were tried; but these only kept the deadly ailment at bay for a very short time; it returned with double force, and poor sufferers were doubly prostrated in consequence.

There was no bodily pain, except from a strange hollow cough that in all cases accompanied the complaint, but there was rapid emaciation, hot, burning brow, and hands and feet that scorched like fire, and while some fell into a kind of gentle slumber from which they awoke no more in this world, others died from sheer debility, the mind being clear to the last--nay, even brighter as they neared the bourne from which no traveller ever returns.

As the time went on--the days were now getting long again, for spring had returned--matters got even worse. It was strange, too, that the very best and brightest of the crew were the first to be attacked and to die. I do not think there was a dry eye in the s.h.i.+p when the little procession wound its way round the hillside bearing in its unpretending coffin the mortal remains of poor Ted Wilson. All this long cruise he had been the life and soul of the whole crew. No wonder that the words of the beautiful old song _Tom Bowling_ rose to the mind of more than one of the crew of the _Arrandoon_ when Ted was laid to rest:

”His form was of the manliest beauty, His heart was warm and soft, Faithful below he did his duty, And now he's gone aloft.”

Just one week after the burial of Ted Wilson, De Vere, the French aeronaut, was attacked, and in three days' time he was dead. He had never been really well since the journey to the vicinity of the Pole, and the loss of his great balloon was one which he never seemed to be able to get over. He was quite an enthusiast in his profession, and, as he remarked to McBain one day, ”I have mooch grief for de loss of my balloon. I had give myself over to de thoughts of mooch pleasant voyaging away up in de regions of de upper air. I s'all soar not again until I reach England.”

It was sad to hear him, as he lay half delirious on the bed of his last illness, muttering, muttering to himself and constantly talking about the home far away in sunny France that he would never see again. Either the doctor or one or other of our young heroes was constantly in the cabin with him. About an hour before his demise he sent for Ralph.

”I vould not,” he said, ”send for Rory nor for Allan, dey vill both follow me soon. Oh I do not you look sad, Ralph, dere is nothing but joy vere ve are going. Nothing but joy, and suns.h.i.+ne, and happiness.”

He took a locket from his breast. It contained the portrait of a grey-haired mother.

”Bury dis locket in my grave,” he said.

He took two rings from off his thin white fingers.

”For my sister and my mother,” he said.

He never spoke again, but died with those dear names on his lips.

Ralph showed himself a very hero in these sad times of trouble and death. He was here, there, and everywhere, by night and by day; a.s.sisting the surgeon and helping Seth to attend upon the wants of the sick and dying; and many a pillow he soothed, and many a word of comfort he gave to those who needed it. The true Saxon character was now beautifully exemplified in our English hero. He possessed that n.o.ble courage which never makes itself uselessly obtrusive, which fritters not itself away on trifles, and which seems at most times to lie dormant or latent, but is ever ready to show forth and burn most brightly in the hour of direst need.

Sorrows seldom come singly, and one day Stevenson, in making his usual morning report, had the sad tidings to add that cask after cask of provisions had been opened and found bad, utterly useless for human food.

McBain got up from his chair and accompanied the mate on deck.

”I would not,” he said, ”express, in words what I feel, Mr Stevenson, before our boys; but this, indeed, is terrible tidings.”

”It can only hasten the end,” said Stevenson.

”You think, then, that that end is inevitable?”

”Inevitable,” said Stevenson, solemnly but emphatically. ”We are doomed to perish here among this ice. There can be no rescue for us but through the grave.”

”We are in the hands of a merciful and an all-powerful Providence, Mr Stevenson,” said McBain; ”we must trust, and wait, and hope, and do our duty.”

”That we will, sir, at all events,” said the mate; ”but see, sir, what is that yonder?”