The Tupelo journal., 1912-02-02
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
sOPVRiOHf 1910 BY the CENTURY CO
,OpYR,oHT 1910 ~ TIVE SUCCESS &C

ward. The milling pressure OF great
masses OF ice crushed in her stout
hull, so that the open waterethey had
been hoping for, became, at once,
their deadliest peril. The moment the
ice broke away. she would 60 to the
bottom like plummet.
But still the slow, Irresistible drift
Of the ice-pack carried them north and
west into q latitude and longitude
which, SO far a. 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 a land that never had
been charted, and, most marvellous Of
al, q 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, II 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 1t 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-
NAMED.
OF the Walrus people, in all, there
were IL, and these, with the three
original castaways, settled down to
the prospect Of an indefinite number
Of years upon that nameless coast.
I'VE 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 ledge in the hills,
across the glacier, which contained,
he believed, the most extraordinary
deposit of gold In the world. So in
credihly rich was it, that the rock
itself had almost been replaced by
solid metal. The Alaska gold, he said,
was only the sweepings, in his opin-
ion, of this immense store.
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 sat about the reading lamp,
and began asking questions. Gold was
something he knew about. He had
mined it in Australia, in California,
and in the Klondike. He questioned
Captain Fielding about the exact
whereabouts of the ledge, about the
sort of ore it occurred in, and about
the best means of cutting it out.
To some extent his own excitement
infected the others. Even Captain
Planck, whose only well-understood
form Of wealth was whale blubber, be-
gan to take an interest in Roscoe's
questions and In the explorers an
swers to them. ..
1t was a strange and rather pathetic
sort of excitement, Captain Fielding
thought. To them, in their practical
ly hopeless plight. gold was about the
least useful thing they could And; not
hard enough to tip lances or arrows
with, too heavy and too easily melted
for domestic purposes. However, it
gave them something to think about,
and he, without suspicion of the
sinister direction in which these
thoughts might turn, went on and told
them all he knew.
When, after period of tantalizing
twilight, the sun again came fairly
over the horizon, they besought their
commander, with a savage sort of
eagerness from which he might have
augured III, that he take them at
once to the ledge. They had caught
sight of it from a distance, even as
Cayley had done, hung in the air
above the valley, and had run reck-
lessly on ahead of their leader. When
he came up to them, he found them
dangerously excited, the man Roscoe
fairly dazed and drunken with It, n
Finally Fielding had left them to
their own devices, and came away
with his two companions. And until
the light of that short day had begun
to fail. they-the Walrus people
stayed, gloating over this strangely
useless treasure.
For three days after that the man
Roscoe never. spoke a word. On the
fourth day. Hhen the little party as
sembled for their midday meal, the IL
men of the Walrus were the only
ones to answer the summons. Cap
tain Fielding and his two companions
had disappeared.
Captain Planck could not recall that
meal now without shuddering, for
there at the foot of the table, oppo-
site IN him had aaf the man R0ScOc