The Tupelo journal., 1912-02-23


that poured Its icy stream through the
leaky walls Of the hut and made the
candle flicker; oblivious, even to the
very sound which she had meant to
wait for-the sound Of Toms voice
calling out to her from the yacht, and
yths sound Of other, more alarming
nearer voices.
They all fell on deaf ears as she
turned page after page of that pre-.
cious record of her fathers life. II
was written. in the main. In the scfen.
,tinc, observant, unimpassioned temper
which she knew so we'll He chron.
icled those days Of peril, when their
ship. crushed in the ice. and only kept
from sinking by that very ice, which
had just destroyed her, was drifting
along in the pack to what seemed
certain destruction, as quietly and a.
explicitly az he did the uneventful
voyage through Behring strait The
mans courage was 80 deeply element
Al In HIN that he could not be self
conscious about i: -eaiasssussssSss"r''
He told Of the land, the strange, un.
charted shore, whose discovery offer
ed them respite, at least, from that
destruction; told how he got his re-
naming stores ashore and built the
hut, where, in all human probability,
he and his companions were to spend
the rest of their lives.
Finally she reached the record of
the day when he had consigned to the
sea the bottle containing the chart of
the coast and the account of his
plight, together with the course which
the relief ship must take, should such
a relief ship be sent out, to have any
hope at all of reaching them.
II suppose" his narrative for this
taJ concluded, there is hardly one
CT aUce in ten thousand that my mes
sage will ever be picked UP, and GER
tainly not one in a million that it will
be founS in time to bring an effective
relief However. it helps to keep the
others cheerful, and that is the main
thing"
At the close Of the days entry was
= single line which contracted her
heart with sharp spasm of pain
This is Jeanne's birthday" it said.
She resumed her reading presently.
and came to the point where the Wal
rus people entered into the narrative;
their plight, their rescue and their
welcome by the three men, who by
now were the only survivors of the
original expedition.
She was reading faster now, with
none of those little meditative pauses
that had marked her progress through
the earlier pages of the journal, for
the sinister termination of the narra-
tive began to foreshadow itself dark
ly, from the moment-the first mo-
ment Of the appearance of the Walrus
people on the scene. Her fathers de-
script,on of the man Roscoe, of the
that had been plain to read
in his face as he had listened to the
account of the gold-bearing ledge
across the glacier. gave her shudder.
ing premonition; apparently, her ia
Their had experienced the same feeling
himself. Day after day Roscoe's name
always accompanied by
some little phase Of misgiving.
For just one day this dread seemed
to have been lifted from Captain Field
ing's spirit That was the day the sun
came back to them, putting an end to
their long arctic night. 1T has been
q hard winter" he wrote, land / am
glad it is over. The hardest thing
about 1t has been our sleeplessness,
from which we have all suffered. To
day we have enjoyed change, having
taken walk along the beach. Even
Roscoe seems humanized little by a
return of the frank sunshine, and may,
perhaps, develop into tolerable COM
panion. Tomorrow I have promised.
If it is fine, to guide them across the
glacier to the gold ledge"
1t was the next tn the last entry in
the journal. She turned the page.
paled and pressed her lips tight to-
gether when the array of blank pages
before her told her that she had
ISdCucu IES SAu AhCd ohC iSoo NV
last words her father had ever writ
ten
took the Walrus people to the
ledge to-day Have no heart to de-
scribe the scene that they enacted
there. The man Roscoe certainly
means to kill me- If it were not for
my conviction that the danger from
him is largely personal to myself, that
he means me and no other, probably,
for his victim. think I should have
him shot as a measure OF tustifiable
prevention He is NOT man, but a
great sinister brute-!iserally sinister,
for he is left-handed. ! shall walk
warily, and hope the cRsis may soon
be over" Evidently that part of his
wish had come true.
The book slipped out of the girls
hands, and she sat, with horror-widen-
ed eyes. staring at the candle, until it
guttered and went out. Slowly, the
outside world began to take its place
again around her. She knew that she
was shivering, half-frozen, that the icy
wind was whining through the cracks
in her rude shelter
She thought she heard some one
moving about outside, and that