CHAPTER XV
THE HEART OF UNAGA
Alone in the great silence. Without even the cry of desolation wrungfrom starving wolf, or the howl of depression which ever seems to hauntthe heart of the coyote world. Alone with groping thought, with burninghope, and the undermining of doubt which the strongest cannot alwaysshake off. Steve had taken the plunge which robbed him of humancompanionship.
It was the prompting of that spirit which borders so closely the linewhere earthly sanity passes. It was the spirit which finds itsinspiration in the Great Purpose which drives on for the achievement ofthe human task on earth. The dreamer of dreams is born to translate hisvisions into reality, or to lie broken before the task. Steve was novisionary. He was something more, something greater. His was the sternheart of purpose selected for the translation of the dream of thedreamer who had fallen by the way.
Steve permitted himself no reflection upon the spiritual appeal of hispurpose. These things might concern those of a wider, deeperintelligence. Or, perhaps, those whose weakness unfitted them for thebattle of the strong. It was for him to claim issue in the battle hesought. And come life and victory, or death and defeat, he was preparedto accept the verdict without complaint.
The twinkling eyes of the heavens searched down upon the infinitesimalmoving figure. Their cold smile was steely, perhaps with the irony thesight inspired. Their world was so coldly indifferent to human survival.
The snowless breasts of the valley rose up miles away to the north andsouth. And between their swelling contours lay a country of lesser hillsand valleys, equally snowless, and whose heart was the flood of a greatriver.
Sterility had passed. Here were no barren hill-crests with a hundredweatherworn facets. Here were no fields of snow, driven by the fiercegales of the polar seas. Here were no glacial fields bound in an irongrip throughout the ages. The fires in the heart of Unaga were burning.Their warming was in the breath of the breeze. It was in the very earth,yielding its fruit with the freedom of the temperate world.
A wood-clad country of almost luxurious vegetation, there was in it asuggestion of the sub-tropical. But under the twilight of Arctic winterit had lost the happy hues of a sunlit season. True, the conifersretained their dull, dark foliage, but, for the rest, the bare brancheswere alive with a new-born cloak that possessed the whiteness offresh-fallen snow. Even the lank grass under foot was similarlyawakening.
The wonder of it all must have been amazing had Steve not been preparedfor some such phenomenon. Was not this crazy valley the reality of thatvision he had set before Marcel? It was the melting spring of temperatelatitudes transposed to the confines of the Arctic Circle. It was a landof still, wonderful, voiceless life, whose air was sweet, and heavyladen with a subtle perfume.
He wondered, as he paced on under the burden of the pack his broadshoulders were supporting. His mind was a riot with questioning. What ofthe rest? Would the whole dream become reality? Why not? What of theday when the sun rose again from its long winter sleep?
For answer he gazed out ahead where a pillar of fire looked to besupporting the clouded heavens. The logic of it all was plain. There wasno real question in his mind. With the returning light of the sun, andthe steadily rising temperature, the ghostly foliage would promptlyassume Nature's happy green and the world would ripen with the rapidityof a forcing house. Then----
Steve's eyes were suddenly raised to the dark vault of the skies. Thelights of the night had been largely obscured. Only the heart of Unagastill remained shining with unabated splendour. It was _raining_!
Rain had ceased. The dripping figure of Steve was at rest on the low,white-clad summit of a hill. He had no care for his condition as hesteamed under the dank heat of the valley. His eyes were steadilyregarding the wonder world of the west.
For a long time he stood almost without movement. He was seeking,seeking in every direction. But the rosy twilight baffled him. Unagaburied her secrets deeply, and only was there the perfume in the airwhich she could not conceal. This was the key with which Steve meant toopen the door of her treasure house.
He raised his face and drew a deep breath through sensitive nostrils.Then he exhaled slowly, deliberately, and his lips moved. Now there wastaste in the air as well as perfume. The change had come with therainfall.
He stooped and deposited his pack on the moist ground. Then heunfastened it. A few moments later he was standing erect again, and hisface was half hidden under a curiously constructed mask. Again he turnedto the west. Again he inhaled deeply. And as he did so satisfaction lithis steady eyes. The scent of the air, its sickly sweetness, hadentirely passed as he breathed under the mask.
He returned to his pack and fastened it up. Then he reslung it upon hisshoulders. When he passed from the summit of the hill the mask that wasto serve him when the danger line was reached had been removed.
* * * * *
Steve laboured on sweatily. He had halved the weight of his pack. He hadeven removed his buckskin shirt. The heat was amazing. It nearly stifledhim.
With each mile gained the spectacle of Unaga's fires grew in intensityand sublime fury. The whole of the western world looked to be engulfedin a caldron of fire; while the belching source of it all flamed at thesummit of its earthly column, amidst a churning, rose-tinted froth ofcloud banks.
Changes came in swift succession. Perhaps the most significant of allwas the complete change in the aspect of the heavens, and in thesulphurous grit with which the air was laden. The stars had vanished.The flood of northern light had lost its clearness; now only a ghostlyshadow of its glory remained. There was only one moon. Its manifoldreflections were lost in the mist, and the shining silver of its ownlight was painfully tarnished.
For all this, however, the light in the valley was no less. Itscharacter had changed. That was all. The rosy twilight was growing to anangry gleaming.
Steve knew his journey's end was near. How near he could not tell. Hereminded himself that there must be a barrier, a dividing line, beyondwhich no life could endure. But he also knew that the field of Adresolmust lie on the hither side of it. If that were not so, what of theIndians to whom it yielded supplies for the pleasant calm of theirwinter's sleep?
Steve knew he was by no means witnessing a simple volcanic eruption. Itwas something far greater. The suggestion of it all was so colossal thathe could find no concrete form in which to express his belief. In hismind there had formed an idea that here was a whole wide territoryforming one great vent to the subterranean fires demanding outlet. Itseemed to him that those fires had been lit just where they now burned.Maybe they had been lit on the day that dry land was first born upon theearth, and throughout the ages had never been permitted to die out.
Fascination held him enthralled as he laboured over the weary miles ofthe valley. Every swamp became a potential objective for examination.Every broken hill might conceal some secret valley where subterraneanheat produced a growth foreign to the more open regions. He could affordto miss no canyon however small, lest the secret he sought lay hiddenthere. And all the time with the hot breath of the westerly breeze inhis nostrils, the lure of the sickly perfume beckoned him on.
* * * * *
It was sheer mental and bodily weariness that brought Steve to aprolonged halt. The heat was overpowering him at last. This strange landwith its ruddy twilight had become a labour beyond endurance. It was asif the waters of the river were being evaporated into a steam which leftthe air unbreathable.
Halfway to the summit of a great wood-clad hill, that jettied acrossfrom the southern slopes of the valley to the northern limits beyond, hehad flung himself to rest in a wide clearing surrounded by the colddelicacy of white-hued foliage. In his moment of helplessness thereseemed to be no end to his journey. He felt that the great summit hewas reaching towards meant only a descent beyond, and then againanother, and still another steep ascent.
Only for a few moments had he sprawled, seeking rest. He was
thinkingand gazing back over his long solitary trail, peering into the reverseof that upon which he had looked so long. It was intensely restful thusto turn his gaze from the belching fires. Once his heavy eyelids closed.But he bestirred himself. Later he would sleep, but not now. His day'swork was--Again his eyes closed heavily, and his hand fell from thesupport of his head.
It was that which wakened him. And in a moment a thrill of panic flashedthrough his nerves. With all his will flung into the effort, he forcedhimself to complete wakefulness. He sat up. He groped in his loosenedpack. He pulled out of it the mask he had tested once before, and, withdesperate haste, adjusted it over mouth and nostrils.
It had been near, so near. He knew now how nearly disaster had clutchedat him. Furthermore he knew that even now the danger was by no meanspassed. The heavy fumes of Adresol were creeping through the woods abouthim. They were stealing their ghostly, paralyzing way low down upon theground, drifting heavily along until the open below brought them to thestronger air currents which would disperse them on their eastwardjourney, robbing them of their deadly toxin, and reducing them to asimple sickly perfume.
He had leapt to his feet. He stood swaying like a drunken man, while astrange bemusing attacked his brain and left a singing in his ears.Staggering under the influence of the deadly drug, he fled from theclearing up towards the hill-top.
* * * * *
It was victory! Complete, overwhelming.
Steve was gazing out upon a wide, seemingly limitless table-land. Inevery direction it spread itself out, far as the eye could see. To thewest it looked to launch itself into the very heart of the land of firewhich was shedding its ruddy light from miles and miles away. To thenorth it went on till it lost itself against the slopes of the lofty,containing hills of the valley. Southward, its spread was swallowed upunder a rolling fog of smoke, which settled upon the world like a pall.It was a great, white, limitless field of dead white lily bloom,unbroken, unsullied, like the perfect damask of napery, purer in tonethan virgin snow.
The great cup-like blooms stood up nearly to the height of hisshoulders. They were superb in their gracious form, and suggestednothing so much as a mask of innocence and purity concealing a heart ofunimaginable evil.
Steve gazed at those nearest him with mixed feelings of repulsion anddelight. Nor could he wholly rid himself of the fear his knowledgeinspired. His mask was closely adjusted over mouth and nostrils, and heknew that it was only that product of the dead chemist's genius thatstood between him and a dreamless sleep from which there would be noawakening.
And as he gazed he became aware of a strange phenomenon. Each lily wasslightly inclining its gaping mouth towards the distant heart of Unaga,which inspired its life. To him it suggested an attitude of thedevoutest worship. It seemed to his mind that these strange plants,containing all that was most beneficent, and all that was most deadly intheir composition, were yielding a silent expression of thankful worshipto the tremendous power which saved them from the frigid death to whichthe dead of Arctic winter would otherwise have condemned them.
His feelings yielded to the profound wonder of it all. For all his fearhis soul was stirred to its depths. And his thankfulness was no lessthan his wonder.
Yes, it was victory at last, after years of ceaseless effort. It was avictory surpassing even his wildest hopes. Here was the wonderful fieldof growing Adresol in all the glory of full bloom. Here was aninexhaustible supply of the drug the world of healing science was cryingout for. It was here, in its deadliest form, awaiting the reapers. Aharvest such as would accomplish everything he had ever hoped toachieve.
And as the moments passed, and his confidence in the protecting maskgrew, so a wonderful spirit buoyed him. It was a condition he had partedfrom many years ago. A happy, joyous smile lit his eyes. It grew, andbroke into a laugh. He reached out and daringly plucked a great stemsupporting a perfect bloom. He stood gazing into the deep, cup-likeheart for prolonged moments. He was thinking of Ian Ross and the days sofar back in his mind. Fifteen years? Yes. More. And now----
He contemplated with joy the labours ahead. The return to Oolak andJulyman. The work of the harvest. The portaging of it. The packing ofthe sleds. Then the long, last homeward trail with a success achievedbeyond his dreams. It was something indeed to have lived for andlaboured for. Marcel!