, 1911-02-09

Strobe On With Unabated Pace. a.
Though He Had Not Heard.
OF ao2 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
to do 1t, Planck, and you were short
handed as 1t was"
That wasn't why we didn't do II.
You was a stranger, and you was in a
bad way. There was a mob of men
that wanted o mighty bad, and we
gave you shelter n carried you of
and made you a regular sharin' mem
Der OF the crew. OF course II we'd
q any reason to act contrary, we'd
have done 30. 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
like to know what 1t 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
If 1t had been only what he had ex-
pected. blu 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 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
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 70 to the
bottom like a plummet.
But still the slow. irresistible drift
Of the ice-paok carried them north n
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
sprins, and with It the breaking OF
the ice, Fielding and his men had been
able to carry their stores ashore. and
Of these. the greater part still re
manned.
or the Walrus people, in all. there
were IL, and these, with the three
original c~astaways, settled down to
the prospect of an indefinite numbei
of years upon that nameless coast
We can live like Christians" Cap
tain Fielding had said. land we can
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 out
the store from day to day, and, as
best he could. through that long win
ter night, provided entertainment for
the forlorn little group. He told them
OF his explorations on the coast, Of the
lay of the land. Of what they might
hope to see when the sun should
come back to them, marking the be
ginning Of another long arctic day,
Among other things. quite casually
he told them Of a ledge in the hills
across the glacier. which contained,
he believed. the most extraordinary
deposit of gold in the world. So m
credibly rich was 1t, that the rock
itself had almost been replaced by
solid metal. The Alaska gold. he said
was only the sweepings, In his opin'
- - Ill. dora
At the sound of the word gold" the
eyes of the man named Roscoe had
frightened for the first time since
they had taken him, shivering from
his long immersion in the cold water,
aboard the Walrus. He drew into the
circle that a about the reading lamp,
and began asking questions. Gold wal
/ somethinp he knew about. He had