Frank Lillie Pollock

“ The noise of the gamblers beyond the door kept him awake for some time, but he slept soundly at last. A frightful roar awakened him that seemed to shake the whole earth. It was their own siren, blowing appallingly up above, and he heard startled exclamations in the saloon, a crash of glasses upset, and a rush of feet to the deck.
The next moment another steam whistle mixed with the bellowing uproar of their own—right overhead, too, it seemed—and as Lang jumped from his berth he was pitched across the stateroom by a terrific shock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lang could feel the rain dripping from his hat brim, and he humped his shoulders and stared through the gathering twilight and the mist.
They were well clear of the harbor proper. A black anchored steamer loomed up, slipped past; a couple of bare-masted schooners lay still without a sign of life aboard. Nothing was in sight ahead but another big three-master lying close to the western shore. Dimly he made out the lighted windows of the Bayview Hotel, where he had often sat with Eva. ”

“ At that instant Morrison, misunderstanding the situation, fired from the bluff. Like an echo of the shot, Louie’s pistol exploded into the fuel tank. For one instant Lang saw death. His heart absolutely stood still.
But there was no burst of fire. Louie sprang up, his shirt front suddenly streaming red, wheeled round and fell, and as a dying snake strikes, his pistol exploded—twice—three times—the bullets crashing into the floor, and the flashes setting fire to a matting rug.
Morrison’s feet trampled on the deck. He plunged into the cabin, and bent over the gangster. ”

“ The end of the harbor shaded off into shacks, fishing boats, rotten little wharves, and he turned back again. He was walking slowly when his eye was caught by a gasoline cruiser moored beside a pier. He thought he had seen it before, but it had been deserted then, and now seemed to be making ready to go somewhere.
Lang knew a little of motor boats, and once had nearly bought one. This craft must have been an elaborate and expensive cruiser at one time, but was growing old and unkempt and paintless, as if she had fallen on evil ways. ”

“ But it was not a middle-aged wreck that Eva Morrison was destined to marry. He was startled at his own chain of thought, and went again to look at Rockett. The defaulter lay motionless, breathing slowly, unchanged in anything. Lang touched the grizzled head that must hold the secret of so much rascality and so much money.
“If you die, you’re dead. If you wake up and talk you’ll be murdered,” he murmured. “Better stay just as you are, my friend.”
He went back to the deck and basked in the fresh, warm sea air and the sun. It was hard to kill time on the Cavite. ”

“ Between them they gripped the big man around the body, and half dragged, half carried him across the cabin. He was enormously heavy, and seemed to sag back into paralysis again, so that it was with the utmost breathless straining that they got him up the stairs to the deck, where all hell seemed to have broken loose.
The other steamer, more distant now, had turned a searchlight on her victim, dimly illumining the Cavite’s decks, and began to sound her roaring siren again, as in desperate signaling. Lang’s first glance saw the black water. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was cast away on what he knew to be a desolate and uninhabited coast, a hundred miles perhaps from any settlement, without food or any means of obtaining any, except the little automatic pistol in his pocket, which he hardly knew how to use. He had lost the great race, lost the emeralds, lost his life, and lost Morrison’s life, and Eva’s, too, if it happened that she had really gone on the expedition with her father.
He dragged the fire together and made it burn up. But he was too anguished now to sit still. There was a soaking fog in the air. The forest smelled of mold and death. ”

“ A dark scrimmage of men was surging about the motor launch that was hoisted in amidships. They hacked savagely at the tackle, with curses and shrieks, black faces and white, a shifting, squirming medley. Lang caught a glimpse of Harding hitting out. Knives flashed. A figure in a white sweater was shot out of the mob, falling on the deck. Louie raised his arm and projected two tiny red flashes, the reports drowned by the uproar.
Then the motor boat went over with a great splash, and the wave of its launching surged over the Cavite’s deck. ”

“ And then, with a terrible grinding and rending, the Cavite reeled back to an even keel, and he heard a great splashing of water.
Lang righted himself, too, pulled on trousers and coat and rushed out and up, barefooted, to the deck. The ship’s electric lights went suddenly out, flickered, and then shone again. He could still hear an uncertain throbbing of the engines.
A dark scrimmage of men surged over the deck, apparently to no purpose. The fog hung blindingly close, but perhaps a quarter of a mile away loomed and shone a vast glare of white light. ”

“ The mountains rose very high here, white-tipped, most of them, and that afternoon Lang espied a great white streak, dim through mist, extending down the slope and splitting the dark cedar forests almost to the coast line. It was a glacier—not the glacier he was seeking, but the sight gave him a prospective thrill, and a couple of hours later they sighted Punta Reale. ”

“ He crossed a great headland like Punta Reale, and rounded what seemed an immense bay. The going was nearly always hard and sometimes terrible, with mud or fog or tumbled rocks, and he had no idea of where the sun stood, or how the day was passing. His watch had been drowned and refused to go.
It was still daylight when he caught sight of the white gleam of a clump of birch trees on the slope above him, and he snatched at this piece of luck. He split and peeled off great rolls of bark, cut chips, and broke open a dead trunk to get at dry wood inside. ”

“ A shudder went through him at the memory of that ghastly ice cavern. It seemed unreal now as a distant nightmare. He began to pick out pieces of rock and discard them. Eva turned the stones over in her fingers with more respect.
“Look at this one—and this,” he said, “and think of what the jewelers charge you for a little emerald the size of a pea. And this! It would be worth a fortune in itself, but I’m afraid it’s imperfect. The smaller ones are better.” ”

“ The wind was from the west now, and stronger. The boat plunged and heeled, flinging spray far over her streaming decks. Gustav and Henry, at tiller and sheet, handled her with the skill of jockeys, apparently unconscious of the weather, and Lang’s heart warmed toward these patient, skillful, simple sailors. The rain slackened in the afternoon, but it did not clear all day, and that night they slept all together, huddled under the schooner’s deck, with a tarpaulin over them. ”

“ In splitting, the parting edges had torn the Indian’s body partly asunder; in fact, one leg was sticking in the ice on the other side. But Lang, hardened to horrors, hardly noticed this gruesome circumstance. He heard the ripple of water. There was a little stream flowing down the rounded bottom of the fissure.
More than that, he saw at once that the rending ice had torn the Indian’s skin swathings; green pebbles glittered in the tattered fur, and green stones lay scattered at the bottom of the running water. ”

“ Lang now perceived that Louie had a pistol—Carroll’s black automatic, he was sure—not pointing toward him, but with the muzzle directed into the tank below. He put his hands up instantly. He did not remember whether he had a gun in his pocket or not. He realized that Louie had the undeniable drop this time. That gun flash would explode the Chita like a load of dynamite.
“Don’t be a fool, Louie!” he tried to expostulate. “I’ve no gun. You don’t want to blow yourself up, too, do you?” ”

“ It might not be this stream at all; it might be any other of the scores of them; he might have to tunnel back for yards, hundreds of yards. He need hardly have feared being forestalled by any one; for there might be a whole summer’s work in the digging out of the treasure.
Considerably dashed, and scarcely knowing how to begin, he climbed out of the valley, and once more reconnoitered the sea. He returned to camp and got the hatchet. He wished in vain for the lost ax and pick, and made his way back to the little ice cave of the cascade, and began to hew into the glacier. ”

“ He thought with vivid anticipation of the tale he would have to tell Eva Morrison when he should at last present his promised report.
He lounged about the Cavite’s decks, trying to kill time, and his mind reverted much to Miss Morrison. He missed her extraordinarily. It was wonderful how, within but a few days, she had come to be a comrade whom it was hard to lose even temporarily. Of course he was not in love with her. In the desperate condition of his affairs it was no time to think of love, much less of marriage. Hard work and hard struggle must be his program for the coming years. ”

“ Lang, fuming with impatience, could not talk with his fellow passengers, who glanced at him with suspicion. He was already far behind his planned schedule; he was hungry, thirsty, tired, nervous and irritable. He tried to snatch a doze on the cane seats; he got out and walked about at the endless stops to load lumber or cattle; and it was almost with astonishment that he found himself actually and finally deposited at Puerto Montt, the end of the railway, more than three days after he had left Valparaiso. ”

“ Damn you, Carroll! What do you take me for?” Lang spluttered indignantly, too angry to be frightened. “You’re out of it. Why can’t you drop the thing?”
In answer he felt a cloth dropped across his face, then after a gurgling sound he smelled a most familiar odor—the scent of chloroform. He flung his head back, turned it from side to side, threw off the drugged towel. It is not easy to chloroform a man against his will, and he struggled so violently that Carroll let go, cast an impatient word to his assistant, and busied himself with something taken from his pocket. ”

“ A great adventurer’ll be lost in me when I go back to surgery in Boston. I’ve had maltreatment enough to kill a mule, as I’d have thought once, and it’s brought me to life. What a broken-down wretch I was in Mobile! What a whining, ill-tempered dog you must have thought me!”
“I never did,” Eva denied quickly. She had just relieved Lang at the helm of the Chita, sitting beside him in the little glassed pilot house forward. They had hoped to make Puerto Montt that evening and had kept on, though it was now two hours after sunset. ”

“ Eva took up his words. “Small mountainous islands, a steep slope, and a rainy climate. They had trouble to find anything dry enough to burn for their fires, until they came on an outcrop of coal right on the coast. There’s a long valley running to the sea, and a wall of ice right across it, like a great gate—the head of the glacier that goes away up the mountain to the top, where there’s a pass. ”

“ In the sudden shock he thought first of Carroll. But the second glance told him that the fire was old. The ashes were scattered, wet, beaten into the earth. They did not look quite like wood ashes, either; they were full of black charred pieces of stone. It looked like coal. It was coal, and Lang remembered now that Morrison and Floyd had found an outcrop of coal on the coast and had used it for their camp fires. ”

“ The barelegged roto stevedores swarmed along the wharves as he was put ashore. There was a terrific uproar of wheels on the muddy cobbles, and a tumult of harsh Chilean Spanish when he emerged from the customs with his suit case, and fell among the cab drivers. He could not understand a single word of their fierce ejaculations, but he surrendered to what looked the best of them, and was driven away to a hotel whose name he did not know. ”

“ Away to the left rose the mountains, steep, heavily timbered slopes, with now and again, far away, a glimpse of an ice peak.
There were strips of stumpy clearings along the track, burned slashes, backwoods farms, log cabins, berry bushes and rail fences, so that he might have fancied himself in Vermont, but for the squat Chilenos and brown Indians in ponchos that crowded the car, and the chatter of Spanish and Araucanian mixing with the rattle of the slow-moving train. ”

“ There was a bullet wound in Carroll’s head, no doubt from the last shot that Lang had fired into the thicket. He must have staggered several yards afterward. He had thrown the stones away, or dropped them. One trousers leg was stiff with blood, too. That was from Lang’s first shot, and probably Carroll had cached the jewels immediately after finding himself wounded.
Lang looked about on the ground, moved the body to see if anything was under it. The earth was overgrown with moss and ferns. That little silk package would be lost like a needle in straw. It might be anywhere within half a mile. ”