Frank Lillie Pollock

“ All the world was white, and a raging snowstorm was driving through the forest. The tree-tops creaked and roared, and the powdery snow whirled like smoke. Fred felt utterly bewildered. There was no sign of the camp-fire, nor of the toboggan, nor of any of his companions, nothing but a few mounds on the drifted white surface.
Finally he crawled out of his sleeping-outfit and dug into one of these mounds. Two feet down he came upon the surface of a sleeping-bag, and punched it vigorously. It stirred; the flap opened, and Macgregor thrust his face out, blinking, red and dazed. ”

“ He went to the open window to breathe, and on the dim gallery he perceived Henry Power, his feet on the railing, a pipe in his mouth. A little farther away he saw the gleam of a white dress in the faintly sweet darkness.
He went quietly around to the door and upon the gallery. It was a hot, dark evening, with the moon not yet risen. Overhead the stars glowed like white fires, and low in the south, over the vast pine forests, there was a rapid intermittence of distance, silent lightning.
“May I come out?” he asked, feeling for a chair. “Aren’t you a poker player, either, Mr. Power?” ”

“ The village was pitch-dark; not a light burned about the station except the steady switch-lamps; not a freight-car stood upon the siding. There was not even a roof over the platform, and, too tired to look for shelter, Elliott dropped upon a pile of lumber by the track, and went heavily to sleep in the rain.
The hideous clangour of a passing express-train awoke him; he was growing accustomed to such awakenings. It was an hour from sunrise. Close to him stood the little red station and a great water-tank. The village was still asleep among the dripping trees. Not a smoke arose from any chimney. ”

“ Carl uttered a shout of horror, but Alice had already dodged and was running like a deer across the bee-yard, with the bear hotly in chase.
Carl groped desperately for the rifle that had flown out of his hands, but failed to find it. Bees from the damaged hives seemed to be crawling all over the ground. He gave up the search and rushed wildly after the bear, shouting at the top of his voice to distract its attention. It paid no heed, but at that moment Alice, with most remarkable gymnastic skill, scrambled into a small hemlock just in time.
But a bear can climb trees better than any girl! ”

“ Lockwood rode the woods dreamily that next forenoon.
It was going to be impossible to kill Hanna, unless in the heat of sudden self-defense. He wondered at himself, for life had suddenly come to seem once more valuable to him. The old black purpose that had driven him so long was fading away. Not that he had forgiven his enemy; he was as determined as ever to defeat Hanna’s purposes, to see him sure of prison, if possible—not that he had any objection to taking his life, but he was no longer willing to wreck his own life to compass Hanna’s death. ”

“ Sometimes, far away to the east, he caught a glimpse of a white, sharp point in the sky—one of the snow peaks of the Andes piercing the clouds. It tormented him with the vision of that Chilean ice barrier, the glacier gate, which he might never see opened. Carroll would surely be first at that icy bar, but Lang promised himself to be not far behind, and at the thought of possible collision, of bloodshed, even, he had nothing but a thrill of fierce expectation that was almost pleasure. This time he would know how to defend himself, and attack in his turn. ”

“ They debated for some minutes, and then started to find the old channel to make a fresh start. Sam started with a great deal of confidence, but within fifteen minutes they came to a slough of what seemed bottomless mud. Stiff-leaved palmetto grew on hard spots, mixed with small, dense titi shrubbery, and red-tipped cypress knees thrust themselves out of the morass, like strange fungi. Half-sunken fallen trees lay all over the surface, offering a possible way across; and for a hundred yards they scrambled through this nauseous jungle, clinging to the shrubs and jumping from log to log. ”

“ The trail was blazed at long intervals, but not cleared, and it was hard, exasperating work to get the toboggan through the snowy tangle. After two hours they came out on the crest of a hill overlooking a great river that ran like a gleaming steel-blue ribbon far into the north.
"The Abitibi!" cried Macgregor.
They had come a good seventy miles from Waverley. At that rate, they might expect to reach their destination the next day; and, greatly encouraged, they coasted on the toboggan down to the ice, and set out again on skates. ”

“ To landward Elliott beheld a wet, white city climbing irregularly up the sides of a long serrated mountain. The waterfront along the sea-wall swarmed with traffic, with rickshaws, sedan-chairs, carts, trucks, gay umbrellas, coolies, Lascars, Chinese, Indians, Japanese. The port was crowded with shipping, from war-steamers to high-sterned junks, as motley as the throng ashore, and it was shot through incessantly with darting tugs and launches, so that in its activity it reminded him more of New York bay than of any other roadstead he had ever seen. ”

“ The glow of the boat’s deck lights showed the passing shore close alongside, a sliding series of bald white sycamore trunks, bare cypresses, water maples, clumps of mistletoe, Spanish moss, depths of unending swamp that looked as savage as Africa. The powerful searchlight at the bow shot ahead like an inquiring finger, touching the stream in the far distance, shifting and lifting, throwing into uncanny brilliance a clump of trees on the next bend a mile ahead, as the pilot picked out his landmarks for the deep channel. ”

“ He came to the edge of the ravine. There was a valley below him, a gravelly beach, the wash of the sea, a sound of running streams. A few hundred yards shoreward the valley was cut sharp across by what seemed a snowy wall. It was a glittering gate, going back and rising—rising perpetually toward the sky, luminous and white against the low moon, as if a flood of light itself had been poured out from the heavens and frozen into solidity. ”

“ The trap was not sprung, but two of the hives, which were farthest from the house, had been pillaged. One of them lay tumbled upon its side, the combs falling loose. The cover had been pulled off the other, and empty frames from which the honeycombs had been broken out littered the ground. Masses of bewildered bees crawled over the wreck, too cowed to be savage.
Alice gave an exclamation of horror at the sight.
“What can have done it?” she cried.
“Don’t know,” said Carl. “But come, let’s put these hives together again. If the queens aren’t killed, they may amount to something yet.” ”

“ This was the city of the treasure-finders, of the searchers of easy millions, of the buccaneers. It was the place above all others where the strong is most absolutely the master, and the weak most utterly the slave; where the struggle, not so much for existence as for luxury, reaches its most terrific phase, evolving a new and formidable human type. Elliott felt himself of a sudden strangely in harmony with this city which he was leaving. ”

“ Glancing over his shoulder, Fred saw the three trappers running down the shore, and firing as they ran. But in another moment the canoe swept round a bend in the river, and was screened from the trappers by the wooded shore.
"Keep it up! Make all the speed you can!" cried Horace.
Down the fast current they shot like an arrow. As they went round another curve, they heard the roar of rushing water ahead; a short but turbulent rapid confronted them. There the river, foaming and surging, dashed down over the black rocks; the shore was rough and covered with dense thickets. ”

“ The sky was hazily blue, radiating an intense heat. High overhead two buzzards soared in circles. The ground was a tangle of gallberry-bushes, and Joe rode through them by a trail that he followed daily on his rounds. From the gallberry flat it led down to a creek swamp, dense with titi and bay-trees and tangled with bamboo-vine, and it wound through this jungle across the creek itself.
“Want to drink, Snowball?” said Joe, as the black horse showed an inclination to pause at the clear water; and while Snowball drank Joe dismounted and dashed water over his face and arms. ”

“ They watched the bees work in the forenoon; they read and lounged lazily in the sun; and in the afternoon they went for a stroll up the river bank.
The stream was lined everywhere with willows and alders, all in flower and roaring with bees. Trout leaped from the water; once they scared up a pair of wild ducks, that went off with a great splashing and flutter. Several times they saw muskrats navigating along close to the shore, the apex of a long V ripple on the water, and once in a rick of drift logs they caught a glimpse of the slender, graceful form of a mink just diving into a hole. ”

“ For nearly three hours the boat wound in and out this ghastly labyrinth of swamp and bayou and jungle. It was certain now that the enemy was somewhere in the delta, but it seemed to Lockwood that anybody with the slightest cunning need never be caught in that place at all.
The other men, bred on the Alabama as they were, were almost as much at a loss as himself. Not one of them had ever explored the delta so deeply; perhaps no other white man’s boat at all had threaded it so far. Time and again they had to turn back; continually they diverged into fresh, mysterious tangles. ”

“ Here was surely the direct source of Morrison’s find. The water came in, no doubt, from the melting at the top of the glacier. It must go out where the emeralds had gone. He had only to follow it to the outlet.
At this positive direction and hope Lang had a shock and revolution in his soul that first dizzied him, and then changed to an almost agonizing ecstasy of joy. He had accepted death more fully than he had realized. With trembling fingers he fished up the green stones from the water, chipping them out where they were frozen into the ice bottom. ”

“ He looked more closely at his new acquaintance as they sat down at a table in the stuffy cubby-hole that passes for a smoking-room on the Indian mail-steamers. Sevier was a boyish-looking fellow of perhaps thirty, short, slight, and dark, with a small dark moustache, and a manner that was inexpressibly candid and ingratiating. In time it might come to seem smooth to the point of nausea; at present it appeared offhand enough, and yet courteous—a manner of which the South alone has preserved the secret—and Elliott in his growing loneliness was delighted to find so agreeable a fellow traveller. ”

“ Fred struck straight north from the river, and then turned a little to the west. He examined the ground with the utmost care. The land lay in great ridges and valleys, and he soon found that prospecting was almost as rough work as fighting the river. In the valleys the earth was mucky with melting snow water; on the hills it was rocky, with huge boulders, tumbled heaps of shattered stone, slopes of loose gravel; everywhere was a tangle of stunted, scrubby birch and poplar, spruce and jack-pine. ”

“ Joe heard the roar of the bees that morning before he was up. Before thinking of breakfast they all went out to look at the apiary. The air was like a snowstorm of bees. The insects were piling into the hives by scores, dropping heavy-laden on the entrance-boards, rushing wildly out again for fresh loads. All the entrance-guards had been withdrawn. The honey flow was fully under way at last.
“Now we’re off to a good start,” said Carl joyfully. “It’s all a gamble on the weather now for the next month.”
“It’s a winning game. I just know the luck will hold,” Alice laughed. ”

“ The whole cabin was hazy and damp. The pirates had a big fire burning on the shore; he could see the red reflection of it; and then, faint and rapidly increasing, he heard the distant drumming of the engine of a motor boat coming down the river.
Every nerve thrilled in him. It was destiny that was coming, he knew. He heard the boat slacken, then scrape through the willow boughs that masked the bayou, and then a bump upon the house boat, and a voice.
His heart sank. It was worse than destiny; it was disaster.
“Got him safe?” said Hanna.
“Got him alive,” returned Bob. “Ruther hev him dead?” ”

“ It was a long, sloping, gravelly beach, where the surf rushed up and ran back, two hundred yards away now, so fast the wind was driving them in.
But the shore was not the danger. It was a broken line of black points, spouting white froth, that was hardly a hundred yards ahead—an almost submerged sprinkle of barrier rocks that they could avoid only by luck.
Long moments passed as the men clung to the uncontrollable hull, before it became evident that she was going to strike fairly on the reef. Lang threw off his heavy poncho, preparing to swim for it. ”

“ The great wharf-shed was crowded, swarming and bustling about the great black wall of the steamer’s side, which appeared to be actually in the shed. The lofty, resonant roof echoed with the voices and with the roll of incessant express-wagons bringing late baggage. The place was full of the harbour smell of rotting sea-water, and the noise, the movement, the excitement, increased as the last moments arrived and passed. ”

“ He started down the river at a swinging trot, still listening over his shoulder, when the ice suddenly gave way under his feet, and he went down with so swift a plunge that he had time for only a shuddering gasp.
He had stepped on an airhole lightly crusted over with snow. He went down to his neck without touching bottom, and the black water surged up to his face. It was the gun that saved him; it caught across the hole, and he clung to it fiercely. As the current fortunately was not rapid, he was able to draw himself up and out upon the ice. ”

“ All looked most promising, but both she and Carl knew that everything depended on the weather from day to day. For the honey-flow is the most capricious thing in the world. If the weather is too wet, the bees cannot work, and the honey is washed out of the blossoms. If it is too dry, the secretion of nectar in the flowers will cease altogether. A cold spell, too, will check the honey-flow, and high winds will dry it up. Often the clouding over of the sky, or a shift in the wind will produce a heavy flow or stop one. ”

“ Dimly in the gloom they could see the pale outline of the rows of beehives, all full of good, straight, new combs and crowded with live bees—a valuable property which the boys had built up out of nothing.
“Those pirates are sure to be back within a day or two,” Joe went on. “They’ll see how we’ve looted the rosin, and then they’ll get us. But what are we to do? Can’t go off and desert the bee-ranch.”
“I should say not,” cried Bob, clenching his fists. “I won’t do that! We mustn’t be beaten now. Joe, we’ve just got to get these bees out of here right away, and down to the railroad!” ”

“ He had caught sight of Hanna’s scared face as the crowd shifted. He seemed to collect himself with a vast effort, and swung up his arm, the hand closed, as if he fancied it still held a gun. For two or three seconds Hanna faced that unsteady, wavering arm; then his nerve broke. He gave a swift glance to right and left, ducked under the arms of the men next him, and bolted, disappearing toward the rear of the house.
There was an instant yelling rush in pursuit. Gun flashes split the darkness. Lockwood was left alone with Henry Power, still supporting Jackson’s almost inert body. ”

“ Occasionally a black victoria clove its slow way past him, bearing a white-clad Englishman, who gazed unseeingly over the swarming mass; and Elliott for the first time breathed the smell of the East, that compound of heat and dust and rancid butter and perspiring humanity that somehow strangely suggests the yellow marigold flowers that hang in limp clusters in the marketplaces of all Bengal.
At the hotel, a gigantic and imposing structure, he was received by a Eurasian in a frock coat and no shoes, who assigned him to a vast bedroom, cool and darkened and almost large enough to play tennis in. ”