Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-08-02

| In the hut, so like and yet so terribly un.
like the victim OF his murderous lust four
years ago-of that, and of the more terri.
! bic apparition he had seen coming down
out of the sky. he thought. or tried ia
think. nothing at all. Ii was only a night.
mare only delusion. natural enough
when one considered ali the circum-
stances
When the fog lifted with the approach
of dawn, he discovered what Philip and
Jeanne did not become aware of until
several hours later. that the Aurora had
! drtfted out to sea in the gale. The clean
! line of the horizon was broken by nothing
hut the plunging masses of the ice
; There was just one chance, he thought,
that she might still be comparatively
near at hand. Southwark and eastward
-he horizon was unbroken, but the jutting
| mass of the promontory to the west cut
off his view I'm that direction. II was
| possible that the gale which had destroy
| ed the foe that formed the harbor had
also broken up the pack ice at the other
side of the peninsula. the side from which
Cayley, on the wing, had first approached
| this unknown land. The yacht might be
there. riding safely in practically open
! water.
| He got up from the snow nest he had
made for himself in the lee of the rock.
and cautiously fieXed his stiffened mus
cles. with the idea of setting out at once
down the beach and around the headland
! to learn whether this last hope of his was
no hope at all, but that fact made ii easy
| to postpone for little longer the putting
of this delusion of a hope he had TO the
test of reality.
The excuse he made to himself was that
he was ravenOuSly hungry and that his
most sensible course would be to go up
the glacier to the cave and cook himself
a breakfast before he did anything else
He was fully persuaded by that time
that what he had seen at the hut last
NIGHT during tho storm had haqn fhiup
but hallucination. None the less. he
knew that 1t would be easier to walk past
that empty hut in full broad day than In
this tricky. misty. uncertain light OF
dawn.
He carried out this plan at once to the
point, that is. of going up the glacier to
the cave, building a fire there and satisfy
ing his sharp hunger with an enormous
meal. But he had not slept at all the
f. night before. and now the warmth and
the satisfaction of his appetite made his
nerveless hand release the bone he was
gnawing, and caused him to roll over be-
| side the fire and to fall asleep.
He slept deeply for a number of hours.
| Then, arming himself with throwing
stick and a number Of darts. he stepped
outside the cave. intent upon his expedi-
ton to the other side of the peninsula
! where there was a possibility of finding
| the yacht.
| The cave was situated some little dis
lance up the glacier. and the shortest.
though by far the more difficult, way OF
reaching his destination lay not alon1
| the beach, but up through the interior
valley and across the precipitouS coast
| range of hills.
| 1t was not the natural way to go, but
the fact that 1t was actually shorter gave
him a sort of excuse for avoiding another
visit, just now, TO the scene Of his dis
comffture of the night before. He swore
at himself, not so much for taking this
course as for the reasons which his COM
! mon sense alleged against him.
! His present route took him close to the
| gold ledge, and the sight of the mex
haustible precious, useless metal that re-
manned here brought upon him for the
| first time, in full force. sense Of his
loss. a sense of what that luckless trip
ashore from the Aurora i'm search of that
! rosewood box had cost him.
At an increased pace he descended from
the glacier, crossed the valley and scaled
the landward side of one of the noun
tains of the coast range. to a notch where
he could command view of the sea to
the westward
He saw there what. in the bottom OF his
mind, he had all along been sure he
would see-nothing but another barren,
bleak horizon.
At that for a while. his fortitude broke
down, and he raved and wept and cursed
like one demented. But at last, spent.
sobered, conscious once more Of sharp
hunger. he climbed a little farther up the
mountain to a ledge, where as his
minute knowledge of the country led him
to expect, he found a number of looms
sitting. He killed one of these birds with
a dart. and then like the brute he was,
ate ii raw and warm.
BY that time il was late in the after
noon. Bravado. combined with more
real belief than he had Yet succeeded in
retaining, to the effect that all his terror
Of the night before had resulted from
nothing more serious than a nightmare,
led him to decide to go home by way or
the beach. rather than along the difficult
interior trail up which he had come.
The descent from the cliffhead 10 the
beach was nothing to man of his In
human strength and activity, though an
ordinarily skilled mountaineer might have
hesitated before attempting il. Never
theless, two-thirds of the way down he
nearly fell-but for luck he would have
fallen. for he caught glimpse of lonely
figure, a quarter of a mile away, per-
haps, seated upon a ledge, bending for
ward, chin in hand, in an attitude when
recalled, and horribly echoed. that OF the
man he long ago had murdered.
When he had steadied himself little.
he made his way cautiously down TO the
level of the beach. His emotions were
divided about equally between fear and
anger the anger existing because of the
fear.
With infinite caution he approached
that lonely unsuspecting figure, slipping
from the shelter of one rock to that OF
one a little nearer.
Three times his left hand drew back
the throwing stick, balanced and aimed
along a line that would send its thin
ivory dart as swiftly and surely To
that beautiful throat as the one that had
found and transfiXed Perry Hunters: and
three times his muscles braced themselves
for the effort to propel it. But each time.
with a GREATNESS oath, he lowered the
weapon again. and with the back of his
hairy hand wiped the sweat from his
forehead
(To be continued tomorrow