The Purple Cloud Read online

leapt up with a rent down his face.

  But singular destiny! Whatever I did--if I did evil, if I did good--theresult was the same: tragedy dark and sinister! Poor Maitland was doomedthat voyage, and my rescue of his life was the means employed to makehis death the more certain.

  I think that I have already written, some pages back, about a mancalled Scotland, whom I met at Cambridge. He was always talking aboutcertain 'Black' and 'White' beings, and their contention for the earth.We others used to call him the black-and-white mystery-man, because, oneday--but that is no matter now. Well, with regard to all that, I have afancy, a whim of the mind--quite wide of the truth, no doubt--but I haveit here in my brain, and I will write it down now. It is this: thatthere may have been some sort of arrangement, or understanding, betweenBlack and White, as in the case of Adam and the fruit, that, shouldmankind force his way to the Pole and the old forbidden secret bidingthere, then some mishap should not fail to overtake the race of man;that the White, being kindly disposed to mankind, did not wish this tooccur, and intended, for the sake of the race, to destroy our entireexpedition before it reached; and that the Black, knowing that the Whitemeant to do this, and by what means, used me--_me_!--to outwit thisdesign, first of all working that I should be one of the party of fourto leave the ship on ski.

  But the childish attempt, my God, to read the immense riddle of theworld! I could laugh loud at myself, and at poor Black-and-WhiteScotland, too. The thing can't be so simple.

  Well, we left Taimur the same day, and good-bye now to both land andopen sea. Till we passed the latitude of Cape Chelyuskin (which we didnot sight), it was one succession of ice-belts, with Mew in thecrow's-nest tormenting the electric bell to the engine-room, the anchorhanging ready to drop, and Clark taking soundings. Progress was slow,and the Polar night gathered round us apace, as we stole still onwardand onward into that blue and glimmering land of eternal frore. We nowleft off bed-coverings of reindeer-skin and took to sleeping-bags. Eightof the dogs had died by the 25th September, when we were experiencing19 deg. of frost. In the darkest part of our night, the Northern Lightspread its silent solemn banner over us, quivering round the heavens ina million fickle gauds.

  The relations between the members of our little crew wereexcellent--with one exception: David Wilson and I were not good friends.

  There was a something--a tone--in the evidence which he had given at theinquest on Peters, which made me mad every time I thought of it. He hadheard Peters admit just before death that he, Peters, had administeredatropine to himself: and he had had to give evidence of that fact. Buthe had given it in a most half-hearted way, so much so, that the coronerhad asked him: 'What, sir, are you hiding from me?' Wilson had replied:'Nothing. I have nothing to tell.'

  And from that day he and I had hardly exchanged ten words, in spite ofour constant companionship in the vessel; and one day, standing alone ona floe, I found myself hissing with clenched fist: 'If he dared suspectClodagh of poisoning Peters, I could _kill_ him!'

  Up to 78 deg. of latitude the weather had been superb, but on the night ofthe 7th October--well I remember it--we experienced a great storm. Ourtub of a ship rolled like a swing, drenching the whimpering dogs atevery lurch, and hurling everything on board into confusion. Thepetroleum-launch was washed from the davits; down at one time to 40 deg.below zero sank the thermometer; while a high aurora was whiffed into adishevelled chaos of hues, resembling the smeared palette of someturbulent painter of the skies, or mixed battle of long-robed seraphim,and looking the very symbol of tribulation, tempest, wreck, anddistraction. I, for the first time, was sick.

  It was with a dizzy brain, therefore, that I went off watch to my bunk.Soon, indeed, I fell asleep: but the rolls and shocks of the ship,combined with the heavy Greenland anorak which I had on, and the stateof my body, together produced a fearful nightmare, in which I wasconscious of a vain struggle to move, a vain fight for breath, for thesleeping-bag turned to an iceberg on my bosom. Of Clodagh was my gaspingdream. I dreamed that she let fall, drop by drop, a liquid, colouredlike pomegranate-seeds, into a glass of water; and she presented theglass to Peters. The draught, I knew, was poisonous as death: and in alast effort to break the bands of that dark slumber, I was conscious, asI jerked myself upright, of screaming aloud:

  'Clodagh! Clodagh! _Spare the man...!_'

  My eyes, starting with horror, opened to waking; the electric light wasshining in the cabin; and there stood David Wilson looking at me.

  Wilson was a big man, with a massively-built, long face, made longer bya beard, and he had little nervous contractions of the flesh at thecheek-bones, and plenty of big freckles. His clinging pose, his smile ofdisgust, his whole air, as he stood crouching and lurching there, I canshut my eyes, and see now.

  What he was doing in my cabin I did not know. To think, my good God,that he should have been led there just then! This was one of thefour-men starboard berths: _his_ was a-port: yet there he was! But heexplained at once.

  'Sorry to interrupt your innocent dreams, says he: 'the mercury inMaitland's thermometer is frozen, and he asked me to hand him hisspirits-of-wine one from his bunk...'

  I did not answer. A hatred was in my heart against this man.

  The next day the storm died away, and either three or four days laterthe slush-ice between the floes froze definitely. The _Boreal's_ way wasthus blocked. We warped her with ice-anchors and the capstan into theposition in which she should lay up for her winter's drift. This was inabout 79 deg. 20' N. The sun had now totally vanished from our bleak sky,not to reappear till the following year.

  Well, there was sledging with the dogs, and bear-hunting among thehummocks, as the months, one by one, went by. One day Wilson, by far ourbest shot, got a walrus-bull; Clark followed the traditional pursuit ofa Chief, examining Crustacea; Maitland and I were in a relation of closefriendship, and I assisted his meteorological observations in a snow-hutbuilt near the ship. Often, through the twenty-four hours, a clear bluemoon, very spectral, very fair, suffused all our dim and livid clime.

  It was five days before Christmas that Clark made the greatannouncement: he had determined, he said, if our splendid northwarddrift continued, to leave the ship about the middle of next March forthe dash to the Pole. He would take with him the four reindeer, all thedogs, four sledges, four kayaks, and three companions. The companionswhom he had decided to invite were: Wilson, Mew, and Maitland.

  He said it at dinner; and as he said it, David Wilson glanced at my wanface with a smile of pleased malice: for _I_ was left out.

  I remember well: the aurora that night was in the sky, and at its edgefloated a moon surrounded by a ring, with two mock-moons. But all shonevery vaguely and far, and a fog, which had already lasted some days,made the ship's bows indistinct to me, as I paced the bridge on mywatch, two hours after Clark's announcement.

  For a long time all was very still, save for the occasional whine of adog. I was alone, and it grew toward the end of my watch, when Maitlandwould succeed me. My slow tread tolled like a passing-bell, and themountainous ice lay vague and white around me, its sheeted ghastlinessnot less dreadfully silent than eternity itself.

  Presently, several of the dogs began barking together, left off, andbegan again.

  I said to myself; 'There is a bear about somewhere.'

  And after some five minutes I saw--I thought that I saw--it. The foghad, if anything thickened; and it was now very near the end of mywatch.

  It had entered the ship, I concluded, by the boards which slanted froman opening in the port bulwarks down to the ice. Once before, inNovember, a bear, having smelled the dogs, had ventured on board atmidnight: but _then_ there had resulted a perfect hubbub among the dogs._Now_, even in the midst of my excitement, I wondered at theirquietness, though some whimpered--with fear, I thought. I saw thecreature steal forward from the hatchway toward the kennels a-port; andI ran noiselessly, and seized the watch-gun which stood always loaded bythe companionway.

  By this time, the form had passed the kenne
ls, reached the bows, and nowwas making toward me on the starboard side. I took aim. Never, Ithought, had I seen so huge a bear--though I made allowance for themagnifying effect of the fog.

  My finger was on the trigger: and at that moment a deathly shiveringsickness took me, the wrangling voices shouted at me, with 'Shoot!''Shoot not!' 'Shoot!' Ah well, that latter shout was irresistible. Idrew the trigger. The report hooted through the Polar night.

  The creature dropped; both Wilson and Clark were up at once: and wethree hurried to the spot.

  But the very first near glance showed a singular kind of bear. Wilsonput his hand to the head, and a lax skin came away at his touch.... Itwas Aubrey Maitland who was underneath it, and I had shot him dead.

  For the past few days he had been cleaning skins, among them the skin ofthe bear from which I had saved him at Taimur. Now, Maitland was a bornpantomimist, continually inventing practical jokes;