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POLARIS OF THE SNOWS
by Charles B. Stilson
All-Story Weekly
_December 18, 1915-January 1, 1916_
"North! North! To the north, Polaris. Tell the world--ah, tellthem--boy--The north! The north! You must go, Polaris!"
Throwing the covers from his low couch, the old man arose and stood, agiant, tottering figure. Higher and higher he towered. He tossed hisarms high, his features became convulsed; his eyes glazed. In his throatthe rising tide of dissolution choked his voice to a hoarse rattle. Heswayed.
With a last desperate rallying of his failing powers he extended hisright arm and pointed to the north. Then he fell, as a tree falls,quivered, and was still.
His companion bent over the pallet, and with light, sure fingers closedhis eyes. In all the world he knew, Polaris never had seen a human beingdie. In all the world he now was utterly alone!
He sat down at the foot of the cot, and for many minutes gazed steadilyat the wall with fixed, unseeing eyes. A sputtering little lamp, whichstood on a table in the center of the room, flickered and went out. Theflames of the fireplace played strange tricks in the strange room. Intheir uncertain glare, the features of the dead man seemed to writheuncannily.
Garments and hangings of the skins of beasts stirred in the waveringshadows, as though the ghosts of their one-time tenants were strugglingto reassert their dominion. At the one door and the lone window the windwhispered, fretted, and shrieked. Snow as fine and hard as the sands ofthe sea rasped across the panes. Somewhere without a dog howled--thelong, throaty ululation of the wolf breed. Another joined in, andanother, until a full score of canine voices wailed a weird requiem.
Unheeding, the living man sat as still as the dead.
Once, twice, thrice, a little clock struck a halting, uncertain stroke.When the fourth hour was passed it rattled crazily and stopped. The firedied away to embers; the embers paled to ashes. As though they wereaware that something had gone awry, the dogs never ceased their baying.The wind rose higher and higher, and assailed the house with repeatedshocks. Pale-gray and changeless day that lay across a sea of snowspeered furtively through the windows.
At length the watcher relaxed his silent vigil. He arose, cast off hiscoat of white furs, stepped to the wall of the room opposite to thedoor, and shoved back a heavy wooden panel. A dark aperture wasdisclosed. He disappeared and came forth presently, carrying severallarge chunks of what appeared to be crumbling black rock.
He threw them on the dying fire, where they snapped briskly, caughtfire, and flamed brightly. They were coal.
From a platform above the fireplace he dragged down a portion of theskinned carcass of a walrus. With the long, heavy-bladed knife from hisbelt he cut it into strips. Laden with the meat, he opened the door andwent out into the dim day.
The house was set against the side of a cliff of solid, black,lusterless coal. A compact stockade of great boulders enclosed the frontof the dwelling. From the back of the building, along the base of thecliff, ran a low shed of timber slabs, from which sounded the howlingand worrying of the dogs.
As Polaris entered the stockade the clamor was redoubled. The rude plankat the front of the shed, which was its door, was shaken repeatedly asheavy bodies were hurled against it.
Kicking an accumulation of loose snow away from the door, the man tookfrom its racks the bar which made it fast and let it drop forward. Areek of steam floated from its opening. A shaggy head was thrust forth,followed immediately by a great, gray body, which shot out as ifpropelled from a catapult.
Catching in its jaws the strip of flesh which the man dangled in frontof the doorway, the brute dashed across the stockade and crouchedagainst the wall, tearing at the meat. Dog after dog piled pell-mellthrough the doorway, until at least twenty-five grizzled animals weredistributed about the enclosure, bolting their meal of walrus-flesh.
* * * * *
For a few moments the man sat on the roof of the shed and watched theanimals. Although the raw flesh stiffened in the frigid air before eventhe jaws of the dogs could devour it and the wind cut like the lash of awhip, the man, coatless and with head and arms bared, seemed to mindneither the cold nor the blast.
He had not the ruggedness of figure or the great height of the man wholay dead within the house. He was of considerably more than mediumheight, but so broad of shoulder and deep of chest that he seemed short.Every line of his compact figure bespoke unusual strength--the wiry,swift strength of an animal.
His arms, white and shapely, rippled with muscles at the least movementof his fingers. His hand were small, but powerfully shaped. His neck wasstraight and not long. The thews spread from it to his wide shoulderslike those of a splendid athlete. The ears were set close above theangle of a firm jaw, and were nearly hidden in a mass of tawny, yellowhair, as fine as a woman's, which swept over his shoulders.
Above a square chin were full lips and a thin, aquiline nose. Deep,brown eyes, fringed with black lashes, made a marked contrast with thefairness of his complexion and his yellow hair and brows. He was notmore than twenty-four years old.
Presently he re-entered the house. The dogs flocked after him to thedoor, whining and rubbing against his legs, but he allowed none of themto enter with him. He stood before the dead man and, for the first timein many hours, he spoke:
"For this day, my father, you have waited many years. I shall not delay.I will not fail you."
From a skin sack he filled the small lamp with oil and lighted its wickwith a splinter of blazing coal. He set it where its feeble light shoneon the face of the dead. Lifting the corpse, he composed its limbs andwrapped it in the great white pelt of a polar bear, tying it with manythongs. Before he hid from view the quiet features he stood back withfolded arms and bowed head.
"I think he would have wished this," he whispered, and he sang softlythat grand old hymn which has sped so many Christian soldiers from theirbattlefield. "Nearer, My God, to Thee," he sang in a subdued, melodiousbaritone. From a shelf of books which hung on the wall he reached aleather-covered volume. "It was his religion," he muttered: "It may bemine," and he read from the book: "_I am the resurrection and the life,whoso believeth in Me, even though he died_--" and on through thesonorous burial service.
He dropped the book within the folds of the bearskin, covered the deadface, and made fast the robe. Although the body was of great weight, heshouldered it without apparent effort, took the lamp in one hand, andpassed through the panel in the wall.
Within the bowels of the cliff a large cavern had been hollowed in thecoal. In a far corner a gray boulder had been hewn into the shape of atombstone. On its face were carved side by side two words: "Anne" and"Stephen." At the foot of the stone were a mound and an open grave. Helaid the body in the grave and covered it with earth and loose coal.
Again he paused, while the lamplight shone on the tomb.
"May you rest in peace, O Anne, my mother, and Stephen, my father. Inever knew you, my mother, and, my father, I knew not who you were norwho I am. I go to carry your message."
* * * * *
He rolled boulders onto the two mounds. The opening to the cave hewalled up with other boulders, piling a heap of them and of large piecesof coal until it filled the low arch of the entrance.
In the cabin he made preparations for a journey.
One by one he threw on the fire books and other articles within theroom, until little was left but skins and garments of fur and anassortment of barbaric weapons of the chase.
Last he dragged from under the cot a long, oaken chest.
Failing to find its key, he tore the lid from it with his strong hands.
Some articles of feminine wearing apparel which were within it hehandled reverently, and at the same time curiously; for they were ofcloth. Wonderingly he ran his fingers over silk and fine laces. Those healso burned.
From the bottom of the chest he took a short, brown rifle and a brace ofheavy revolvers of a pattern and caliber famous in the annals of theplainsmen. With them were belt and holsters.
He counted the cartridges in the belt. Forty there were, and in thechambers of the revolvers and the magazine of the rifle, eighteen more.Fifty-eight shots with which to meet the perils that lay between himselfand that world of men to the north--if, indeed, the passing years hadnot spoiled the ammunition.
He divested himself of his clothing, bathed with melted snow-water, anddressed himself anew in white furs. An omelet of eggs of wild birds anda cutlet of walrus-flesh sufficed to stay his hunger, and he was readyto face the unknown.
In the stockade was a strongly build sledge. Polaris packed it withquantities of meat both fresh and dried, of which there was a largestore in the cabin. What he did not pack on the sledge he threw to theeager dogs.
He laid his harness out on the snow, cracked his long whip, and calledup his team. "Octavius, Nero, Julius." Three powerful brutes bounded tohim and took their places in the string. "Juno, Hector, Pallas." Threemore grizzled snow-runners sprang into line. "Marcus." The great, grayleader trotted sedately to the place at the head of the team. Aseven-dog team it was, all of them bearing the names before which Romeand Greece had bowed.
Polaris added to the burden of the sledge the brown rifle, severalspears, carved from oaken beams and tipped with steel, and a sealskinfilled with boiled snow-water. On his last trip into the cabin he tookfrom a drawer in the table a small, flat packet, sewn in membranousparchment.
"This is to tell the world my father's message and to tell who I am," hesaid, and hid it in an inner pocket of his vest of furs. He buckled onthe revolver-belt, took whip and staff from the fireside, and drove hisdog-team out of the stockade onto the prairie of snow, closing the gateon the howling chorus left behind.
He proceeded several hundred yards, then tethered his dogs with a wordof admonition, and retraced his steps.
In the stockade he did a strange and terrible thing. Long used to seeinghim depart from his team, the dogs had scattered and were mumbling theirbones in various corners. "If I leave these behind me, they will perishmiserably, or they will break out and follow, and I may not take themwith me," he muttered.
From dog to dog he passed. To each he spoke a word of farewell. Each hecaressed with a pat on the head. Each he killed with a single grip ofhis muscular hands, gripping them at the nape of the neck, where thebones parted in his powerful fingers. Silently and swiftly he proceededuntil only one dog remained alive, old Paulus, the patriarch of thepack.
He bent over the animal, which raised its dim eyes to his and licked athis hands.
"Paulus, dear old friend that I have grown up with; farewell, Paulus,"he said. He pressed his face against the noble head of the dog. When heraised it tears were coursing down his cheeks. Then Paulus's spiritsped.
Two by two he dragged the bodies into the cabin.
"Of old a great general in that far world of men burned his ships thathe might not turn back. I will not turn back," he murmured. With asplinter of blazing coal he fired the house and the dog-shed. He torethe gate of the stockade from its hinges and cast it into the ruins.With his great strength he toppled over the capping-stones of the wall,and left it a ruin also.