The Irish standard., 1911-08-05


| Though He Had Not Heard.
tive, anxious glances at the man be-
side him. In any other company he
would have been q rather striking flg-
ure himself, we'll above middle height,
powerfully made, and with a face that
had lines of experience and determine
tion engraved In 1t. But the COM
parison dwarfed him.
He seemed to be trying to make up
bis mind to speak, and still to find
this difficult thing to do.
At last, with deprecatory cough,
he began:
What I can't see is, Roscoe, what
you did 1t for. 1t was all right to
DO it If you were figuring out any gain
from 1t. Well all agree to that. Any
thing for our common good that's our
motto But where's the gain in kill
Ing just one poor fellow out of party
Of 80? He seemed a good kind of
chap. too, and friendly spoken: We
didn't serve you like that. when you
come aboard the Walrus at Cape
Nome"
1T would have cost you four men
20 do 1t. Planck. and you were short
/ handed as 1t was"
THAT wasn't why we didn't do 1t.
You was stranger. and you was in a
bad way. There was mob Of men
! that wanted you mighty bad, and we
gave you shelter and carried you of
and made you q regular sharin' men,
Der Of the crew. or course If we'd
bad any reason to act contrary. we'd
have done so. And that's why it
seemed to us-to me, would say,
that you probably had some reason
In this case, here And, well-we'd
ike to know what 1t is"
But the man he had addressed al
Roscoe" strobe on with undated
pace, as If he had not heard. For any
attention he paid to his questoner he
might have been alone in that ex.
panse of ice and sky.
Planck accepted the silent rebuff al
II 1t had been only what he had ex-
pected, but he sighed regretfully. He
had once known, and 1t was only four
|
Of contemptuous authority himself.
He had been master, the most tyran.
nical sort of master, some say, to be
found anywhere in the world: the
captain Of an American whaler. And
this very man, at whose heels he was
scrambling along over the ice, had
been one of his crew; had never ap.
preached the quarterback where he
reigned supreme. without an apollo
getic hand at his forelock, and had
always passed to the leeward side of
him up on the deck.
But the Walrus had been destined
never to see port again. She fingered
too long on the whaling grounds to
get back through Behring strait that
fall; and failed in the attempt to
make Mckenzie bay, whore other
whalers in similar plight put in for tho
winter Instead Of this friendly har-
Dor, she was caught In the pack and
carried, relentlessly, north and west.
ward. The milling pressure of great
masses Of ice cru>ed in her stout
hull, so that the open water they had
been hoping for, became, at once,
their deadliest peril. The moment the
ice broke away, she would go to the
bottom like plummet.
But still the slow, Irresistible drift
of the ice-pack carried them north and
west into latitude and longitude
which, so far as they knew, no human
travellers had ever crossed before.
And then in the depth of the arctic
night, bereft Of hope, and half muffin.
GUS, they found land that never had
been charted, and, most marvellous Of
all, human welcome. For here on
the shore were Captain Fielding and
the two other survivors of his i'll.
fated expedition. IS
The fate of the explorers ship had
been, 1t seemed, precisely that Of the
Walrus. She had been caught in tho
pack, crushed in 1t and carried against
this coast. Before the coming q
ITO be Continual