Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1911-04-13

gave you shelter and carried you on
and made you a regular sharin' mem
Der Of the crew. OF course II we'd
had any reason to act contrary, we'd
have done so. And that's why it
seemed to us-to me, l would say,
that you probably had some reason
in this case, here. And, well-we'd
like to know what it is"
But the man he had addressed as
Roscoe" strobe on with undated
pace, as If he had not heard. For any
attention he paid to his questioner he
might have been alone in that ex
panse Of ice and sky.
Planck accepted the silent rebuff as
II 1t had been only what he had K
pected, but he sighed regretfully. He
had once known, and it was only four
years ago, that same staggering trick
OF contemptuous authority himself.
He had been master, the most tyran-
meal 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 n 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, where other
whalers in similar plight put in for the
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 crushed 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 a plummet.
ouI oliAl LhO oIOWt lSSlollDl6 uIllI
Of the ice-pack carried them north and
west into a 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 mutin-
GUS, they found a land that never had
been charted, and, most marvellous of
all, a human welcome. For here on
the shore were Captain Fielding and
the two other survivors Of his Ill.
fated expedition.
The fate of the explorers ship had
been, 1t seemed, precisely that of the
Walrus. She had been caught in the
pack, crushed in it and carried against
this coast. Before the coming Of
spring, and with it the breaking Of
the ice, Fielding and his men had beer
able to carry their stores ashore, anC
Of these, the greater part still re
manned.
OF the Walrus people, in all, there
were II, and these, with the three
original castaways, settled down tt
the prospect of an indefinite number
Of years upon that nameless coast
I'VE can live like Christians" Cap
tain Fielding had said, "and we car
always hope"
His superior knowledge of arctic
conditions made him, rather than Cap
tain Planck, naturally commander Of
the little company. He established
the regimen OF their life, doled on
the store from day to day, and, a.
best he could, through that long win
ter night, provided entertainment TO,
the forlorn little group. He told then
of his explorations on the coast, of thu
lay of the land, Of what they nigh
hope to see when the sun SHOULD
come back to them, marking the be
ginning of another long arctic day.
Among other things, quite CASUAL,
he told them Of a ledge in the hills
across the glacier, which contained
he believed, the most extraordinar,
deposit Of gold in the world. So in
credibly rich was it, that the roc
itself had almost been replaced b,
solid metal. The Alaska gold, he said
was only the sweepings, in his opir
ion, of this immense store.
At the sound Of the word "gold," tn
eyes Of the man named Roscoe ha
frightened for the first time sine
they had taken him, shivering fror
his long immersion in the cold water
aboard the Walrus. He drew into tn
circle that sat about the reading lamI
and began asking questions. Gold wa
something he knew about. He ha
mined 1t in Australia, in California
and in the Klondike. He questione
Captain Fielding about the exac
whereabouts Of the ledge, about tn
sort of ore 1t occurred in, and abou
the best means of cutting it out.
To some extent his own excitemer
infected the others. Even Capital
Planck, whose only well-understoo
form of wealth was whale blubber, b,
gan to take an interest in Roscoe
questions and in the explorers al
swers to them.
1t was a strange and rather patheti
sort Of excitement, Captain Fieldin
thought. To them, in their practica
ly hopeless plight, gold was about th
least useful thing they could find; nc
hard enough to tip lances or arrow
! with. too heavy and too easily melte
for domestic purposes, However,
gave them something to think abou
and he, without a suspicion Of Ii
sinister direction in which thes
thoughts might turn, went on and tol
fikarn ali ha knam