_THE SEARCH PARTY'S FIND._
I can stand it no longer. I must put down my confession on paper, sincethere is no living creature left to whom I can confess it.
The snow is drifting fiercer than ever to-day against the cabin; thelast biscuit is almost finished; my fingers are so pinched with cold Ican hardly grasp the pen to write with. But I _will_ write, I mustwrite, and I am writing. I cannot die with the dreadful storyunconfessed upon my conscience.
It was only an accident, most of you who read this confession perhapswill say; but in my own heart I know better than that--I know it was amurder, a wicked murder.
Still, though my hands are very numb, and my head swimming wildly withdelirium, I will try to be coherent, and to tell my story clearly andcollectedly.
* * * * *
I was appointed surgeon of the _Cotopaxi_ in June, 1880. I had reasonsof my own--sad reasons--for wishing to join an Arctic expedition. Ididn't join it, as most of the other men did, from pure love of dangerand adventure. I am not a man to care for that sort of thing on its ownaccount. I joined it because of a terrible disappointment.
For two years I had been engaged to Dora--I needn't call her anythingbut Dora; my brother, to whom I wish this paper sent, but whom Idaren't address as "Dear Arthur"--how could I, a murderer?--will knowwell enough who I mean; and as to other people, it isn't needful theyshould know anything about it. But whoever you are, whoever finds thispaper, I beg of you, I implore you, I adjure you, do not tell a word ofit to Dora. I cannot die unconfessed, but I cannot let the confessionreach _her_; if it does, I know the double shock will kill her. Keep itfrom her. Tell her only he is dead--dead at his post, like a brave man,on the _Cotopaxi_ exploring expedition. For mercy's sake don't tell herthat he was murdered, and that I murdered him.
I had been engaged, I said, two years to Dora. She lived in Arthur'sparish, and I loved her--yes, in those days I loved her purely,devotedly, innocently. I was innocent then myself, and I really believegood and well-meaning. I should have been genuinely horrified andindignant if anybody had ventured to say that I should end by committinga murder.
It was a great grief to me when I had to leave Arthur's parish, and myfather's parish before him, to go up to London and take a post assurgeon to a small hospital. I couldn't bear being so far away fromDora. And at first Dora wrote to me almost every day with the greatestaffection. (Heaven forgive me, if I still venture to call her Dora! her,so good and pure and beautiful, and I, a murderer.) But, after a while,I noticed slowly that Dora's tone seemed to grow colder and colder, andher letters less and less frequent. Why she should have begun to ceaseloving me, I cannot imagine; perhaps she had a premonition of whatpossibility of wickedness was really in me. At any rate, her coldnessgrew at last so marked that I wrote and asked Arthur whether he couldexplain it. Arthur answered me, a little regretfully, and with brotherlyaffection (he is a good fellow, Arthur), that he thought he could. Hefeared--it was painful to say so--but he feared Dora was beginning tolove a newer lover. A young man had lately come to the village of whomshe had seen a great deal, and who was very handsome and brave andfascinating. Arthur was afraid he could not conceal from me hisimpression that Dora and the stranger were very much taken with oneanother.
At last, one morning, a letter came to me from Dora. I can put it inhere, because I carried it away with me when I went to Hammerfest tojoin the _Cotopaxi_, and ever since I have kept it sadly in my privatepocket-book.
"Dear Ernest" (she had always called me Ernest since we had been children together, and she couldn't leave it off even now when she was writing to let me know she no longer loved me), "Can you forgive me for what I am going to tell you? I thought I loved you till lately; but then I had never discovered what love really meant. I have discovered it now, and I find that, after all, I only liked you very sincerely. You will have guessed before this that I love somebody else, who loves me in return with all the strength of his whole nature. I have made a grievous mistake, which I know will render you terribly unhappy. But it is better so than to marry a man whom I do not really love with all my heart and soul and affection; better in the end, I am sure, for both of us. I am too much ashamed of myself to write more to you. Can you forgive me?
"Yours, "DORA."
I could not forgive her then, though I loved her too much to be angry; Iwas only broken-hearted--thoroughly stunned and broken-hearted. I canforgive her now, but she can never forgive me, Heaven help me!
I only wanted to get away, anywhere, anywhere, and forget all about itin a life of danger. So I asked for the post of surgeon to Sir PaxtonBateman's _Cotopaxi_ expedition a few weeks afterwards. They wanted aman who knew something about natural history and deep-sea dredging, andthey took me on at once, on the recommendation of a well-known man ofscience!
The very day I joined the ship at Hammerfest, in August, I noticedimmediately there was one man on board whose mere face and bearing andmanner were at first sight excessively objectionable to me. He was ahandsome young fellow enough--one Harry Lemarchant, who had been aplanter in Queensland, and who, after being burned up with three yearsof tropical sunshine was anxious to cool himself apparently by a longwinter of Arctic gloom. Handsome as he was, with his black moustache andbig dark eyes rolling restlessly, I took an instantaneous dislike to hiscruel thin lip and cold proud mouth the moment I looked upon him. If Ihad been wise, I would have drawn back from the expedition at once. Itis a foolish thing to bind one's self down to a voyage of that sortunless you are perfectly sure beforehand that you have at least noinstinctive hatred of any one among your messmates in that long forcedcompanionship. But I wasn't wise, and I went on with him.
From the first moment, even before I had spoken to him, I dislikedLemarchant; very soon I grew to hate him. He seemed to me the mostrecklessly cruel and devilish creature (God forgive me that I should sayit!) I had ever met with in my whole lifetime. On an Arctic expedition,a man's true nature soon comes out--mine did certainly--and he lets hiscompanions know more about his inner self in six weeks than they couldpossibly learn about him in years of intercourse under othercircumstances. And the second night I was on board the _Cotopaxi_ Ilearnt enough to make my blood run cold about Harry Lemarchant's ideasand feelings.
We were all sitting on deck together, those of us who were not on duty,and listening to yarns from one another, as idle men will, when theconversation happened accidentally to turn on Queensland, and Lemarchantbegan to enlighten us about his own doings when he was in the colony. Heboasted a great deal about his prowess as a disperser of the blackfellows, which he seemed to consider a very noble sort of occupation.There was nobody in the colony, he said, who had ever dispersed so manyblacks as he had; and he'd like to be back there, dispersing again, for,in the matter of sport, it beat kangaroo-hunting, or any other kind ofshooting he had ever yet tried his hand at, all to pieces.
The second-lieutenant, Hepworth Paterson, a nice kind-hearted youngScotchman, looked up at him a little curiously, and said, "Why, what doyou mean by dispersing, Lemarchant? Driving them off into the bush, Isuppose: isn't that it? Not much fun in that, that I can see, scatteringa lot of poor helpless black naked savages."
Lemarchant curled his lip contemptuously (he didn't think much ofPaterson, because his father was said to be a Glasgow grocer), andanswered in his rapid, dare-devil fashion: "No fun! Isn't there, just!that's all you know about it, my good fellow. Now I'll give you oneexample. One day, the inspector came in and told us there were a lot ofblacks camping out on our estate down by the Warramidgee river. So wejumped on our horses like a shot, went down there immediately, and begandispersing them. We didn't fire at them, because the grass and ferns andthings were very high, and we might have wasted our ammunition; but wewent at them with native spears, just for all the world likepig-sticking. You should have seen those black fellows run for theirlives through the long grass--men, women, and little ones together. Werode after them, full
pelt; and as we came up with them, one by one, wejust rolled them over, helter-skelter, as if they'd been antelopes orbears or something. By-and-by, after a good long charge or two, we'dcleared the place of the big blacks altogether; but the gins and thechildren, some of them, lay lurking in among the grass, you know, andwouldn't come out and give us fair sport, as they ought to have done,out in the open: children will pack, you see, whenever they're harddriven, exactly like grouse, after a month or two's steady shooting.Well, to make them start and show game, of course we just put a match tothe grass; and in a minute the whole thing was in a blaze, right downthe corner to the two rivers. So we turned our horses into the stream,and rode alongside, half a dozen of us on each river; and every now andthen, one of the young ones would break cover, and slide out quietlyinto the stream, and try to swim across without being perceived, and getclean away into the back country. Then we just made a dash at them withthe pig-spears; and sometimes they'd dive--and precious good divers theyare, too, those Queenslanders, I can tell you; but we waited around tillthey came up again, and then we stuck them as sure as houses. That'swhat we call dispersing the natives over in Queensland: extending theblessings of civilization to the unsettled parts of the back country."
He laughed a pleasant laugh to himself quietly as he finished thisatrocious, devilish story, and showed his white teeth all in a row, asif he thought the whole reminiscence exceedingly amusing.
Of course, we were all simply speechless with horror and astonishment.Such deliberate brutal murderousness--gracious heavens! what am Isaying? I had half forgotten for the moment that I, too, am a murderer.
"But what had the black fellows done to you?" Paterson asked with a toneof natural loathing, after we had all sat silent and horror-stricken ina circle for a moment. "I suppose they'd been behaving awfully badly tosome white people somewhere--massacring women or something--to get yourblood up to such a horrid piece of butchery."
Lemarchant laughed again, a quiet chuckle of conscious superiority, andonly answered: "Behaving badly! Massacring white women! Lord bless yourheart, I'd like to see them! Why, the wretched creatures wouldn't everdare to do it. Oh, no, nothing of that sort, I can tell you. And ourblood wasn't up either. We went in for it just by way of something todo, and to keep our hands in. Of course you can't allow a lot of lazyhulking blacks to go knocking around in the neighbourhood of an estate,stealing your fowls and fruit and so forth, without let or hindrance.It's the custom in Queensland to disperse the black fellows. I've oftenbeen out riding with a friend, and I've seen a nigger skulking aboutsomewhere down in a hollow among the tree-ferns; and I've just drawn mysix-shooter, and said to my friend, 'You see me disperse that confoundednigger!' and I've dispersed him right off--into little pieces, too, youmay take your oath upon it."
"But do you mean to tell me, Mr. Lemarchant," Paterson said, looking adeal more puzzled and shocked, "that these poor creatures had been doingabsolutely nothing?"
"Well, now, that's the way of all you home-sticking sentimentalists,"Lemarchant went on, with an ugly simper. "You want to push on theoutskirts of civilization and to see the world colonized, but you're toosqueamish to listen to anything about the only practicable civilizingand colonizing agencies. It's the struggle for existence, don't you see:the plain outcome of all the best modern scientific theories. The blackman has got to go to the wall; the white man, with his superior moraland intellectual nature, has got to push him there. At bottom, it'snothing more than civilization. Shoot 'em off at once, I say, and getrid of 'em forthwith and for ever."
"Why," I said, looking at him, with my disgust speaking in my face(Heaven forgive me!), "I call it nothing less than murder."
Lemarchant laughed, and lit his cigar; but after that, somehow, theother men didn't much care to talk to him in an ordinary way more thanwas necessary for the carrying out of the ship's business.
And yet he was a very gentlemanly fellow, I must admit, and well readand decently educated. Only there seemed to be a certain naturalbrutality about him, under a thin veneer of culture and good breeding,that repelled us all dreadfully from the moment we saw him. I dare saywe shouldn't have noticed it so much if we hadn't been thrown togetherso closely as men are on an Arctic voyage, but then and there it waspositively unendurable. We none of us held any communications with himwhenever we could help it; and he soon saw that we all of us thoroughlydisliked and distrusted him.
That only made him reckless and defiant. He knew he was bound to go thejourney through with us now, and he set to work deliberately to shockand horrify us. Whether all the stories he told us by the ward-room firein the evenings were true or not, I can't tell you--I don't believe theyall were; but at any rate he made them seem as brutal and disgusting asthe most loathsome details could possibly make them. He was alwaysapologizing--nay, glorying--in bloodshed and slaughter, which he used todefend with a show of cultivated reasoning that made the naked brutalityof his stories seem all the more awful and unpardonable at bottom. Andyet one couldn't deny, all the time, that there was a grace of mannerand a show of polite feeling about him which gave him a certain externalpleasantness, in spite of everything. He was always boasting that womenliked him; and I could easily understand how a great many women who sawhim only with his company manners might even think him brave andhandsome and very chivalrous.
I won't go into the details of the expedition. They will be found fullyand officially narrated in the log, which I have hidden in the captain'sbox in the hut beside the captain's body. I need only mention here thecircumstances immediately connected with the main matter of thisconfession.
* * * * *
One day, a little while before we got jammed into the ice off the LiakovIslands, Lemarchant was up on deck with me, helping me to remove fromthe net the creatures that we had dredged up in our shallow soundings.As he stooped to pick out a _Leptocardium boreale_, I happened toobserve that a gold locket had fallen out of the front of his waistcoat,and showed a lock of hair on its exposed surface. Lemarchant noticed ittoo, and with an awkward laugh put it back hurriedly. "My little girl'skeepsake!" he said in a tone that seemed to me disagreeably flippantabout such a subject. "She gave it to me just before I set off on my wayto Hammerfest."
I started in some astonishment. He had a little girl then--a sweethearthe meant, obviously. If so, Heaven help her! poor soul, Heaven help her!For any woman to be tied for life to such a creature as that was reallyquite too horrible. I didn't even like to think upon it.
I don't know what devil prompted me, for I seldom spoke to him, evenwhen we were told off on duty together; but I said at last, after amoment's pause, "If you are engaged to be married, as I suppose you arefrom what you say, I wonder you could bear to come away on such a longbusiness as this, when you couldn't get a word or a letter from the ladyyou're engaged to for a whole winter."
He went on picking out the shells and weeds as he answered in acareless, jaunty tone, "Why, to tell you the truth, Doctor, that wasjust about the very meaning of it. We're going to be married nextsummer, you see, and for reasons of her papa's--the deuce knowswhat!--my little girl couldn't possibly be allowed to marry one weeksooner. There I'd been, knocking about and spooning with her violentlyfor three months nearly; and the more I spooned, and the more tired Igot of it, the more she expected me to go on spooning. Well, I'm not thesort of man to stand billing and cooing for a whole year together. Atlast the thing grew monotonous. I wanted to get an excuse to go offsomewhere, where there was some sort of fun going on, till summer came,and we could get spliced properly (for she's got some tin, too, and Ididn't want to throw her over); but I felt that if I'd got to keep onspooning and spooning for a whole winter, without intermission, thething would really be one too many for me, and I should have to give itup from sheer weariness. So I heard of this precious expedition, whichis just the sort of adventure I like; I wrote and volunteered for it;and then I managed to make my little girl and her dear papa believe thatas I was an officer in the naval reserve I was c
ompelled to go whenasked, willy-nilly. 'It's only for half a year, you know, darling,' andall that sort of thing--you understand the line of country; andmeanwhile I'm saved the bother of ever writing to her, or getting anyletters from her either, which is almost in its way an equal nuisance."
"I see," said I shortly. "Not to put too fine a point upon it, yousimply lied to her."
"Upon my soul," he answered, showing his teeth again, but this time byno means pleasantly, "you fellows on the _Cotopaxi_ are really thesternest set of moralists I ever met with outside a book of sermons or aSurrey melodrama. You ought all to have been parsons, every man Jack ofyou; that's just about what you're fit for."
* * * * *
On the fourteenth of September we got jammed in the ice, and the_Cotopaxi_ went to pieces. You will find in the captain's log how partof us walked across the pack to the Liakov Islands, and settledourselves here on Point Sibiriakoff in winter quarters. As to whatbecame of the other party, which went southwards to the mouth of theLena, I know nothing.
It was a hard winter, but by the aid of our stores and an occasionalwalrus shot by one of the blue-jackets, we managed to get along tillMarch without serious illness. Then, one day, after a spell of terriblefrost and snow, the Captain came to me, and said, "Doctor, I wish you'dcome and see Lemarchant, in the other hut here. I'm afraid he's got abad fever."
I went to see him. So he had. A raging fever.
Fumbling about among his clothes to lay him down comfortably on thebearskin (for of course we had saved no bedding from the wreck), Ihappened to knock out once more the same locket that I had seen when hewas emptying the drag-net. There was a photograph in it of a young lady.The seal-oil lamp didn't give very much light in the dark hut (it wasstill the long winter night on the Liakov Islands), but even so Icouldn't help seeing and recognizing the young lady's features. GreatHeaven support me! uphold me! I reeled with horror and amazement. It wasDora.
Yes; his little girl, that he spoke of so carelessly, that he lied to soeasily, that he meant to marry so cruelly, was my Dora.
I had pitied the woman who was to be Harry Lemarchant's wife even when Ididn't know who she was in any way; I pitied her terribly, with all myheart, when I knew that she was Dora--my own Dora. If I have become amurderer, after all, it was to save Dora--to save Dora from thatunutterable, abominable ruffian.
I clutched the photograph in the locket eagerly, and held it up to theman's eyes. He opened them dreamily. "Is that the lady you are going tomarry?" I asked him, with all the boiling indignation of that terriblediscovery seething and burning in my very face.
He smiled, and took it all in in half a minute. "It is," he answered, inspite of the fever, with all his old dare-devil carelessness. "And now Irecollect they told me the fellow she was engaged to was a doctor inLondon, and a brother of the parson. By Jove, I never thought of itbefore that your name, too, was actually Robinson. That's the worst ofhaving such a deuced common name as yours; no one ever dreams ofrecognizing your relations. Hang it all, if you're the man, I supposenow, out of revenge, you'll be wanting next to go and poison me."
"You judge others by yourself, I'm afraid," I answered sternly. Oh, howthe words seem to rise up in judgment against me at last, now thedreadful thing is all over!
I doctored him as well as I was able, hoping all the time in my inmostsoul (for I will confess all now) that he would never recover. Alreadyin wish I had become a murderer. It was too horrible to think that sucha man as that should marry Dora. I had loved her once and I loved herstill; I love her now; I shall always love her. Murderer as I am, I sayit nevertheless, I shall always love her.
But at last, to my grief and disappointment, the man began to mend andget better. My doctoring had done him good; and the sailors, though eventhey did not love him, had shot him once or twice a small bird, of whichwe made fresh soup that seemed to revive him. Yes, yes, he was cominground; and my cursed medicines had done it all. He was getting well, andhe would still go back to marry Dora.
The very idea put me into such a fever of terror and excitement that atlast I began to exhibit the same symptoms as Lemarchant himself haddone. The Captain saw I was sickening, and feared the fever might provean epidemic. It wasn't: I knew that. Mine was brain, Lemarchant's wasintermittent; but the Captain insisted upon disbelieving me. So he putme and Lemarchant into the same hut, and made all the others clear out,so as to turn it into a sort of temporary hospital.
Every night I put out from the medicine-chest two quinine powdersapiece, for myself and Lemarchant.
One night, it was the 7th of April (I can't forget it), I woke feeblyfrom my feverish sleep, and noticed in a faint sort of fashion thatLemarchant was moving about restlessly in the cabin.
"Lemarchant," I cried authoritatively (for as surgeon I was, of course,responsible for the health of the expedition), "go back and lie downupon your bearskin this minute! You're a great deal too weak to gogetting anything for yourself as yet. Go back this minute, sir, and ifyou want anything, I'll pull the string, and Paterson'll come and seewhat you're after." For we had fixed up a string between the two huts,tied to a box at the end, as a rough means of communication.
"All right, old fellow," he answered, more cordially than I had ever yetheard him speak to me. "It's all square, I assure you. I was only seeingwhether you were quite warm and comfortable on your rug there."
"Perhaps," I thought, "the care I've taken of him has made him reallyfeel a little grateful to me." So I dozed off and thought nothing moreat the moment about it.
Presently, I heard a noise again, and woke up quietly, without starting,but just opened my eyes and peered about as well as the dim light of thelittle oil-lamp would allow me.
To my great surprise, I could make out somehow that Lemarchant wasmeddling with the bottles in the medicine-chest.
"Perhaps," thought I again, "he wants another dose of quinine. Anyhow,I'm too tired and sleepy to ask him anything just now about it."
I knew he hated me, and I knew he was unscrupulous, but it didn't occurto me to think he would poison the man who had just helped him through adangerous fever.
At four I woke, as I always did, and proceeded to take one of mypowders. Curiously enough, before I tasted it, the grain appeared to meto be rather coarser and more granular than the quinine I had originallyput there. I took a pinch between my finger and thumb, and placed it onmy tongue by way of testing it. Instead of being bitter, the powder, Ifound, was insipid and almost tasteless.
Could I possibly in my fever and delirium (though I had not consciouslybeen delirious) have put some other powder instead of the quinine intothe two papers? The bare idea made me tremble with horror. If so, Imight have poisoned Lemarchant, who had taken one of his powdersalready, and was now sleeping quietly upon his bearskin. At least, Ithought so.
Glancing accidentally to his place that moment, I was vaguely consciousthat he was not really sleeping, but lying with his eyes held half open,gazing at me cautiously and furtively through his closed eyelids.
Then the horrid truth flashed suddenly across me. Lemarchant was tryingto poison me.
Yes, he had always hated me; and now that he knew I was Dora's discardedlover, he hated me worse than ever. He had got up and taken a bottlefrom the medicine-chest, I felt certain, and put something else insteadof my quinine inside my paper.
I knew his eyes were fixed upon me then, and for the moment Idissembled. I turned round and pretended to swallow the contents of thepacket, and then lay down upon my rug as if nothing unusual hadhappened. The fever was burning me fiercely, but I lay awake, kept upby the excitement, till I saw that he was really asleep, and then I oncemore undid the paper.
Looking at it closely by the light of the lamp, I saw a finer powdersticking closely to the folded edges. I wetted my finger, put it downand tasted it. Yes, that was quite bitter. That was quinine, not a doubtabout it.
I saw at once what Lemarchant had done. He had emptied out the quinineand replaced it by som
e other white powder, probably arsenic. But alittle of the quinine still adhered to the folds in the paper, becausehe had been obliged to substitute it hurriedly; and that at once provedthat it was no mistake of my own, but that Lemarchant had really madethe deliberate attempt to poison me.
This is a confession, and a confession only, so I shall make no effortin any way to exculpate myself for the horrid crime I committed the nextmoment. True, I was wild with fever and delirium; I was maddened withthe thought that this wretched man would marry Dora; I was horrified atthe idea of sleeping in the same room with him any longer. But still, Iacknowledge it now, face to face with a lonely death upon this frozenisland, it was murder--wilful murder. I meant to poison him, and I didit.
"He has set this powder for me, the villain," I said to myself, "and nowI shall make him take it without knowing it. How do I know that it'sarsenic or anything else to do him any harm? His blood be upon his ownhead, for aught I know about it. What I put there was simply quinine. Ifanybody has changed it, he has changed it himself. The pit that he dugfor another, he himself shall fall therein."
I wouldn't even test it, for fear I should find it was arsenic, and beunable to give it to him innocently and harmlessly.
I rose up and went over to Lemarchant's side. Horror of horrors, he wassleeping soundly! Yes, the man had tried to poison me; and when hethought he had seen me swallow his poisonous powder, so callous andhardened was his nature that he didn't even lie awake to watch theeffect of it. He had dropped off soundly, as if nothing had happened,and was sleeping now, to all appearance, the sleep of innocence. Beingconvalescent, in fact, and therefore in need of rest, he slept withunusual soundness.
I laid the altered powder quietly by his pillow, took away his that Ihad laid out in readiness for him, and crept back to my own placenoiselessly. There I lay awake, hot and feverish, wondering to myselfhour after hour when he would ever wake and take it.
At last he woke, and looked over towards me with unusual interest."Hullo, Doctor," he said quite genially, "how are you this morning, eh?getting on well, I hope." It was the first time during all my illnessthat he had ever inquired after me.
I lied to him deliberately to keep the delusion up. "I have a terriblegrinding pain in my chest," I said, pretending to writhe. I had sunk tohis level, it seems. I was a liar and a murderer.
He looked quite gay over it, and laughed. "It's nothing," he said,grinning horribly. "It's a good symptom. I felt just like that myself,my dear fellow, when I was beginning to recover."
Then I knew he had tried to poison me, and I felt no remorse for myterrible action. It was a good deed to prevent such a man as that fromever carrying away Dora--my Dora--into a horrid slavery. Sooner thanthat he should marry Dora, I would poison him--I would poison him athousand times over.
He sat up, took the spoon full of treacle, and poured the powder asusual into the very middle of it. I watched him take it off at a singlegulp without perceiving the difference, and then I sank back exhaustedupon my roll of sealskins.
* * * * *
All that day I was very ill; and Lemarchant, lying tossing beside me,groaned and moaned in a fearful fashion. At last the truth seemed todawn upon him gradually, and he cried aloud to me: "Doctor, Doctor,quick, for Heaven's sake! you must get me out an antidote. The powdersmust have got mixed up somehow, and you've given me arsenic instead ofquinine, I'm certain."
"Not a bit of it, Lemarchant," I said, with some devilish malice; "I'vegiven you one of my own packets, that was lying here beside my pillow."
He turned as white as a sheet the moment he heard that, and gasped outhorribly, "That--that--why, that was arsenic!" But he never explained ina single word how he knew it, or where it came from. I knew. I needed noexplanation, and I wanted no lies, so I didn't question him.
I treated him as well as I could for arsenic poisoning, without saying aword to the captain and the other men about it; for if he died, I said,it would be by his own act, and if my skill could still avail, he shouldhave the benefit of it; but the poison had had full time to work beforeI gave him the antidote, and he died by seven o'clock that night infearful agonies.
Then I knew that I was really a murderer.
My fingers are beginning to get horribly numb, and I'm afraid I shan'tbe able to write much longer. I must be quick about it, if I want tofinish this confession.
* * * * *
After that came my retribution. I have been punished for it, andpunished terribly.
As soon as they all heard Lemarchant was dead--a severe relapse, Icalled it--they set to work to carry him out and lay him somewhere. Thenfor the first time the idea flashed across my mind that they couldn'tpossibly bury him. The ice was too deep everywhere, and underneath itlay the solid rock of the bare granite islands. There was no snow even,for the wind swept it away as it fell, and we couldn't so much asdecently cover him. There was nothing for it but to lay him out upon theicy surface.
So we carried the stark frozen body, with its hideous staring eyes wideopen, out by the jutting point of rock behind the hut, and there weplaced it, dressed and upright. We stood it up against the point exactlyas if it were alive, and by-and-by the snow came and froze it to therock; and there it stands to this moment, glaring for ever fiercely uponme.
Whenever I went in or out of the hut, for three long months, thathideous thing stood there staring me in the face with mute indignation.At night, when I tried to sleep, the murdered man stood there still inthe darkness beside me. O God! I dared not say a word to anybody: but Itrembled every time I passed it, and I knew what it was to be amurderer.
In May, the sun came back again, but still no open water for our oneboat. In June, we had the long day, but no open water. The captain beganto get impatient and despondent, as you will read in the log: he wasafraid now we might never get a chance of making the mouth of the Lena.
By-and-by, the scurvy came (I have no time now for details, my hands areso cramped with cold), and then we began to run short of provisions.Soon I had them all down upon my hands, and presently we had to placePaterson's corpse beside Lemarchant's on the little headland. Then theysank, one after another--sank of cold and hunger, as you will read inthe log--till I alone, who wanted least to live, was the last leftliving.
I was left alone with those nine corpses propped up awfully against thenaked rock, and one of the nine the man I had murdered.
May Heaven forgive me for that terrible crime; and for pity's sake,whoever you may be, keep it from Dora--keep it from Dora!
My brother's address is in my pocket-book.
The fever and remorse alone have given me strength to hold the pen. Myhands are quite numbed now. I can write no longer.
* * * * *
There the manuscript ended. Heaven knows what effect it may have uponall of you, who read it quietly at home in your own easy-chairs inEngland; but we of the search party, who took those almost illegiblesheets of shaky writing from the cold fingers of the one solitary corpsewithin the frozen cabin on the Liakov Islands--we read them through withsuch a mingled thrill of awe and horror and sympathy and pity as no onecan fully understand who has not been upon an Arctic expedition. Andwhen we gathered our sad burdens up to take them off for burial at home,the corpse to which we gave the most reverent attention was certainlythat of the self-accused murderer.