2. THE FIRST WOMAN
Probably in all the world there was not the equal of the team of dogswhich Polaris had selected for his journey. Their ancestors in the longago had been the fierce, gray timberwolves of the north. Carefullycross-bred, the strains in their blood were of the wolf, the great Dane,and the mastiff; but the wolf strain held dominant. They had theloyalty of the mastiff, the strength of the great Dane, and thetireless sinews of the wolf. From the environment of their rearing theywere well furred and inured to the cold and hardships of the Antarctic.They would travel far.
Polaris did not ride on the sledge. He ran with the dogs, as swift andtireless as they. A wonderful example of the adaptability to conditionsof the human race, his upbringing had given him the strength andendurance of an animal. He had never seen the dog that he could not rundown.
He, too, would travel fast and far.
In the nature of the land through which they journeyed on their firstdash to the northward, there were few obstacles to quick progress. Itwas a prairie of snow, wind-swept, and stretching like a desert as faras eye could discern. Occasionally were upcroppings of coal cliffssimilar to the one where had been Polaris's home. On the first drivethey made a good fifty miles.
Need of sleep, more than fatigue, warned both man and beasts ofcamping-time. Polaris, who seemed to have a definite point in view,urged on the dogs for an hour longer than was usual on an ordinary trip,and they came to the border of the immense snow-plain.
To the northeast lay a ridge of what appeared to be snow-covered hills.Beyond the edge of the white prairie was a forest of ice. Millions ofjagged monoliths stood and lay, jammed closely together, in everyconceivable shape and angle.
At some time a giant ice-flow had crashed down upon the land. It hadfretted and torn at the shore, had heaved itself up, with its myriadgleaming tusks bared for destruction. Then nature had laid upon it acalm, white hand, and had frozen it quiet and still and changeless.
Away to the east a path was open, which skirted the field of broken iceand led in toward the base of the hills.
Polaris did not take that path. He turned west, following the line ofthe ice-belt. Presently he found what he sought. A narrow lane led intothe heart of the iceberg.
At the end of it, caught in the jaws of two giant bergs, hung fast, asit had hung for years, the sorry wreck of a stout ship. Scarred and rentby the grinding of its prison-ice, and weather-beaten by the rasping ofwind-driven snow in a land where the snow never melts, still on thesquare stern of the vessel could be read the dimming letters whichspelled "Yedda."
Polaris unharnessed the pack, and man and dogs crept on board the hulk.It was but a timber shell. Much of the decking had been cut away, andeverything movable had been taken from it for the building of the cabinand the shed, now in black ruins fifty miles to the south.
In an angle of the ice-wall, a few yards from the ship, Polaris pitchedhis camp and built a fire with timbers from the wreck. He struck hisflame with a rudely fashioned tinder-box, catching the spark in finescrapings of wood and nursing it with his breath. He fed the dogs andtoasted meat for his own meal at the fire. With a large robe from thesledge he bedded the team snugly beside the fire.
With his own parka of furs he clambered aboard the ship, found a bunk inthe forecastle, and curled up for the night.
Several hours later hideous clamor broke his dreamless slumber. Hestarted from the bunk and leaped from the ship's side into the ice-lane.Every dog of the pack was bristling and snarling with rage. Mixed withtheir uproar was a deeper, hoarser note of anger that came from thethroat of no dog--a note which the man knew well.
The team was bunched a few feet ahead of the fire as Polaris came overthe rail of the ship. Almost shoulder to shoulder the seven crouched,every head pointed up the path. They were quivering from head to tailwith anger, and seemed to be about to charge.
Whipping the dogs back, the son of the snows ran forward to meet thedanger alone. He could afford to lose no dogs. He had forgotten theguns, but he bore weapons with which he was better acquainted.
With a long-hafted spear in his hand and the knife loosened in his belthe bounded up the pathway and stood, wary but unafraid, fronting animmense white bear.
He was not a moment too soon. The huge animal had set himself for thecharge, and in another instant would have hurled its enormous weightdown on the dogs. The beast hesitated, confronted by this new enemy, andsat back on its haunches to consider.
Knowing his foe aforetime, Polaris took that opportunity to deliver hisown charge. He bounded forward and drove his tough spear with all hisstrength into the white chest below the throat. Balanced as it was onits haunches, the shock of the man's onset upset the bear, and it rolledbackward, a jet of blood spurting over its shaggy coat and, dyeing thesnow.
Like a flash the man followed his advantage. Before the brute could turnor recover Polaris reached its back and drove his long-bladed knifeunder the left shoulder. Twice he struck deep, and sprang aside. Thebattle was finished.
The beast made a last mighty effort to rear erect, tearing at thespear-shaft, and went down under an avalanche of snarling, ferociousdogs. For the team could refrain from conflict no longer, and chargedlike a flying wedge to worry the dying foe.
Replenishing his store of meat with strips from the newly slain bear,Polaris allowed the pack to make a famous meal on the carcass. When theywere ready to take the trail again, he fired the ship with a blazingbrand, and they trotted forth along the snow-path to the east with theskeleton of the stout old _Yedda_ roaring and flaming behind them.
* * * * *
For days Polaris pressed northward. To his right extended the range ofthe white hills. To the left was the seemingly endless ice-field thatlooked like the angry billows of a storm-tossed sea which had beenarrested at the height of tempest, its white-capped, upthrown wavesparalyzed cold and dead.
Down the shore-line, where his path lay, a fierce wind blew continuouslyand with increasing rigor. He was puzzled to find that instead ofbecoming warmer as he progressed to the north and away from the pole,the air was more frigid than it had been in his homeland. Hardy as hewas, there were times when the furious blasts chilled him to the boneand when his magnificent dogs flinched and whimpered.
Still he pushed on. The sledge grew lighter as the provisions wereconsumed, and there were few marches that did not cover forty miles.Polaris slept with the dogs, huddled in robes. The very food they atethey must warm with the heat of their bodies before it could bedevoured. There was no vestige of anything to make fuel for a camp-fire.
He had covered some hundreds of miles when he found the contour of thecountry was changing. The chain of the hills swung sharply away to theeast, and the path broadened, fanwise, east and west. An undulatingplain of snow and ice-caps, rent by many fissures, lay ahead.
This was the most difficult traveling of all.
In the middle of their second march across the plain, the man noticedthat his gray snow-coursers were uneasy. They threw their snouts up tothe wind and growled angrily, scenting some unseen danger. Although hehad seen nothing larger than a fox since he entered the plain, bearsigns had been frequent, and Polaris welcomed a hunt to replenish hislarder.
He halted the team and outspanned the dogs so they would be unhamperedby the sledge in case of attack. Bidding them remain behind, he went toreconnoiter.
He clambered to the summit of a snow-covered ice-crest and gazed ahead.A great joy welled into his heart, a thanksgiving so keen that itbrought a mist to the eyes.
He had found man!
Not a quarter of a mile ahead of him, standing in the lee of a lowridge, were two figures unmistakably human. At the instant he saw themthe wind brought to his nostrils, sensitive as those of an animal, astrange scent that set his pulses bounding. He _smelled_ man and man'sfire! A thin spiral of smoke was curling over the back of the ridge. Hehurried forward.
Hidden by the undulations of slopes and drifts he approached within a
few feet of them without being discovered. On the point of crying aloudto them he stopped, paralyzed, and crouched behind a drift. For thesemen to whom his heart called madly--the first of his own kind but onewhom he had ever seen--were tearing at each other's throats likemaddened beasts in an effort to take life!
Like a man in a dream, Polaris heard their voices raised in curses. Theystruggled fiercely but weakly. They were on the brink of one of the deepfissures, or crevasses, which seamed this strange, forgotten land. Eachwas striving to push the other into the chasm.
Then one who seemed the stronger wrenched himself free and struck theother in the face. The stricken man staggered, threw his arms above hishead, toppled, and crashed down the precipice.
Polaris's first introduction to the civilization which he sought wasmurder! For those were civilized white men who had fought. They woregarments of cloth. Revolvers hung from their belts. Their speech, ofwhich he had heard little but cursing, was civilized English.
Pale to the lips, the son of the wilderness leaped over the snow-driftand strode toward the survivor. In the teachings of his father, murderwas the greatest of all crimes; its punishment was swift death. This manwho stood on the brink of the chasm which had swallowed his companionhad been the aggressor in the fight. He had struck first. He had killed.In the heart of Polaris arose a terrible sense of outraged justice. Thiswaif of the eternal snows became the law.
The stranger turned and saw him. He started violently, paled, and thenan angry flush mounted to his temples and an angry glint came into hiseyes. His crime had been witnessed, and by a strange white man.
His hand flew to his hip, and he swung a heavy revolver up and fired,speeding the bullet with a curse. He missed and would have fired again,but his hour had struck. With the precision of an automaton Polarissnatched one of his own pistols from the holster. He raised it above thelevel of his shoulder, and fired on the drop.
Not for nothing had he spent long hours practicing with his father'sguns, sighting and pulling the trigger countless times, although theywere empty. The man in front of him staggered, dropped his pistol, andreeled dizzily. A stream of blood gushed from his lips. He choked,clawed at the air, and pitched backward.
The chasm which had received his victim, received the murderer also.
Polaris heard a shrill scream to his right, and turned swiftly on hisheel, automatically swinging up his revolver to meet a new peril.
Another being stood on the brow of the ridge--stood with clasped handsand horror-stricken eyes. Clad almost the same as the others, there wasyet a subtle difference which garments could not disguise.
Polaris leaned forward with his whole soul in his eyes. His hand fell tohis side. He had made his second discovery. He had discovered woman!