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"WHERE ARE YOU GOING, ANNETTE ?” ASKED CHRISTINE, COLDY.
[page 159]


THE SHIP OF SOULS
BY
EMERSON HOUGH
McKinlay, STONE & MACKENZIE
NEW YORK


COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1924, by The McCall Company
PRINTED IK THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


Replace
t.com
1-4-39
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1 - 5 - 39 DOR
1. The New Man at McTavish .. I
II. CHASSE GALÈRE ....... 6
III. THE WHITE GIRL AT MCTAVISH . ..
IV. THE BARGAIN OF ANGUS GARTH ..
V. THE TEST . . . . . . . . .
VI. FATHER AND DAUGHTER . . .
VII. THE MURDERER'S Will . . .
VIII. ANNETTE AND CHRISTINE . . .
IX. LANGLEY BARNES . . . . . .
X. THE TWENTIETH MAN . . . .
XI. The MAD PIPER OF McTavish
XII. THE WEDDING ROOM . . . . .
XIII. MOCKERIES . . . . . . .
XIV. AVE MARIA . . . . . . . .
XV. THE DAWSON PATROL .
XVI. MIXED COMPANY . . . . . 135
XVII. BETWEEN FRIENDS . . . . . . 141
XVIII. THE NEWS FROM PALM BEACH . . .
XIX. PROPINQUITY . . . . . . . . 151
XX. THE CONSPIRACY IN FUR . . . . 158


vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER
XXI. Whose Hands Are Clean? . . . 167
XXII. Trouble at McTavish 175
XXIII. Angus Garth Argues 179
XXIV. The Maw of the North .... 188
XXV. The Tempests That Torment . . 195
XXVI. Both the Women 206
XXVII. The Invisible 219
XXVIII. McTavish Speaking 229
XXIX. The Impossible 236
XXX. The News from Outside .... 243
XXXI. Average Men 249
XXXII. The Ship of Souls 260
XXXIII. The Knees of the Gods .... 272
XXXIV. Rose o' the World 277
XXXV. The Cup , . . . 285


THE SHIP OF SOULS
CHAPTER I
THE NEW MAN AT McTAVISH
ASOLITARY snowflake, slowly spiraling down,
fell from a breathless sky upon a silent earth.
In the vast calm preceding the coming of the
Arctic winter, so nearly balanced were the temperature
of earth and air that the gray blade of grass which
caught the flake held it up unchanged.
The sky seemed no deeper in its even blue gray than
it had been for days, although the light autumn airs
now had ceased utterly. All the wide Arctic world was
waiting motionless for its winding sheet. In the open
space before the log buildings of the old fur post the
sledge dogs lay curled, nose in tail. They knew what
would come—the first storm after the annual twilight.
A figure not wholly congruous in these surroundings
turned up the path which ascended from McTavish
boat landing. The nets had frozen under this young
man's fingers when he ran them just now, rather un-
i


THE SHIP OF SOULS
skilfully. The product of his morning's labor he now
carried in one hand—not over thirty pounds of fish,
enough for the mouths of the post for one day.
The fisherman was perhaps three and thirty; in
figure tall, lean, muscular. Obviously, he was not
wholly new in outdoor activities. Indeed, his garb of
heavy wools showed him to have been hunter or woods-
man at one time. But his tall laced boots spoke him
from the lower latitudes, probably from some city.
The husky dogs still turned suspicious eyes on him,
even bearing gifts as he did now—rough fish not
wanted on the table, which they gulped down whole,
one or two fish still alive.
Having done so much of his morning's work, Lang-
ley Barnes approached the closely fitted door of the log
house in which dwelt Angus Garth, factor at Fort
McTavish. As he did so, he waved his hand at a tall
girl who passed, signaling to her to come and take the
fish.
She was of oddly composite costume, half that of the
white women in the settlements, half that of the native,
the whole supplemented by the gaudy blanket of the
North Country. Her feet, very small, were neat in
their bright moccasins. Her walk, as Langley Barnes
before now had noted, was the easy stride, light and
effortless, of the wild creature; the walk with red blood
under it. And Annette Garth, as the young man had
2


THE NEW MAN AT MCTAVISH
come to know, was half Indian, her mother once
a comely young Loucheux, the last to find favor as
mistress of old Angus Garth's log fortress at Fort
McTavish. Here was Sixty-seven, which is far north
of Fifty-three, where law of God and man is supposed
to halt embarrassed. A fur post has its own ways.
Annette was one of the proofs of that.
The girl made him no gesture in return, but the flash
of white teeth, the following gaze of full dark eyes
was reply enough had he been aware of it. He did not
know that she often had watched him over the corner
of her drawn blanket, as a young woman of a fur post
will.
Angus Garth himself, factor of Fort McTavish,
opened the door. A gray man, carrying the impression
that always he had been gray. His hair, a heavy mop,
dense now as in his youth, made a high, grizzled mane.
It fell to his neck, where it was cut off square, hanging
like a mat. His eye too was gray, porched over by
the shaggy gray brows of age. His beard was gray,
not fully white, but shot with darker streaks. A short
man he was, but heavy and powerful of body, seventy-
odd at least.
Once a year Angus Garth took on a suit of tweeds
from the annual Company boat, to carry the dignity of
his station as bourgeois before the natives. Moccasins,
of course, he wore. He had not known other foot


THE SHIP OF SOULS
covering in fifty years. Not in fifty years had Garth
seen a white man other than those in the Company or
Constabulary service. He was a king, and a stern one,
handling an absolute monarchy of his own, two hun-
dred by six hundred miles in extent, living wholly
without reference to the outside world and its laws.
And he collected fur, fur, fur!
Genius he had, as the Company books showed beyond
cavil, year after year. Competition or comparison
never entered into his mind. He cared nothing, asked
nothing, of what went on outside his own territory.
His furs were prime always, always well cased, always
well baled, always ready to be put at once into cargo,
always more in quantity than came from any other two
posts on all the great river. Hence, no inspector ever
meddled much with old Angus Garth.
With a grunt, the old man flung open the door, ad-
mitted Langley Barnes, pushed a bottle to him across
the near-by table, though the hour was early. He him-
self had by now fairly recovered from the annual
carouse which always marked the boat's arrival, but
still occasionally was seeking to drown his annual mel-
ancholy.
It is lonesome business, drinking alone in the Arctic,
with the long night coming on and no white companion
to aid one in one's cups. It is of no comfort to a man
to roar a drinking song when he is quite alone, as old
4


THE NEW MAN AT McTAVISH
Angus Garth had discovered these forty years or so
ago—and rediscovered recently.
A week after the boat had gone, he had found him-
self at table in his own house with Langley Barnes,
who sat smoking quietly, with now and then a taste of
the Scotch, frequent enough to prove him a man of the
male sort. Old Angus Garth at first had felt no more
than half resentment when Barnes told him he had left
the boat deliberately, that he intended to cut himself
off from civilization for a year, that he intended to live
at the factor's house. Well, at least and at last Angus
Garth would not have to drink alone!


CHAPTER II
CHASSE GALERE
MAUN say ye’ve your impudence,” the old man
now replied to Barnes' refusal to drink. “But
I maun say ye've had talent to sit so long at table
with me before now. Ye are not welcome now, and
have not been. But ye may stay until I change my
mind-or until you change yours, and take a drappie.”
It was their old and rather snarling discussion.
Having no other place to go, though caring little
where he went, Langley Barnes had stayed on into his
third month at McTavish. Making it plain that he
had abundant means to pay his own way, he made no
second offer to do so. Without much of a word on
either side, he had dropped into the system of life as
well as he could, and tried to be helpful, knowing that
here no man could buy his way. He had taken lessons
in dog harness. He ran the nets. He felled wood for
the fireplaces. He brought in ptarmigan, hares, showed
rifle skill enough to prove that he would be safe to send
for caribou when the herds came. He began to learn
a few words of the tribal dialect, showing strange apti-


CHASSE GALERE
tude at that. He had said he could do his day on the
snowshoes; and now that soon could be proved, as
yonder single snowflake had shown.
True, he was a Yankee, but he could not be turned
out now. And old Angus Garth had lived a living
death for forty years—Scotch and having no one with
whom to drink, or with whom to argue!
They sat not untidy now for winter, for this was a
known and conquered environment, this log building
which had been the home of Garth for forty years.
Now the roof of moss and bark and stones was ready
for the snow. The annual chinking of moss had all
been finished. The black-throated fireplace was ready
for its larger logs. The low small windows all were
tight. The bed place in the angle at the side of the
chimney was piled with soft furs and flaring six-point
Company blankets. There were furs on the walls. A
parka or two hung on pegs. Old Angus Garth was
ready, so let winter come. Barnes, his unwelcome
guest, had helped him prepare.
"Well, at least ye were not bare handed," he said
now, commenting on the fishing. "Mayhap more luck
to-morrow. 'Tis Providence guides the fish into our
nets or out of them. A pipe's not bad. Ye're cold?"
"Not at all."
"Ye're aweary?"
"Not in the least. What's on your mind, Mr. Garth?
7


THE SHIP OF SOULS
Do you think a man of the Yankees isn't as good as the
best Canadian man? I'm no babe in these woods."
Since his arrival, Barnes always had been truculent,
independent, ready to fight the best possible policy in
a land of unending war.
"Well, ye've plenty to learn."
"But a man does learn if he's got it in him. Some
men take to the wilderness. It calls them."
"Aye, it calls!" said old Angus Garth. "And ye've
a pretty opinion of yerself about the wilderness, eh?"
Barnes sat silent for a time. "I've a belief, not an
opinion, Mr. Garth."
"How do ye mean, lad?"
"At home I had money, and I made money. A made
beaver skin here may be worth more than a thousand
dollars is there. I'm no fool, either there or here. But
civilization? The American civilization, Mr. Garth, is
the thin lid of hell. What does all its culture, science,
progress—so-called—come to? Take the radio—the
furor of the hour when I left home—that's only going
to make the world a smaller and more unpleasant one
to live in. If I die here, let me—I'll not whimper about
it. I failed but did not die, back yonder. That was
the worst of it."
"That can be," said Angus Garth, simply.
Barnes turned to him suddenly. "What brought
you here yourself, long ago, Mr. Garth?" he demanded.
8


CHASSE GALERE
"The same as yourself, lad. A woman. And my
bread and butter. The two are all there is in life.
Which ye hold the first depends on the age of a mon.
I was young, then."
/ He did not look to see the red flush rise on the face
of Langley Barnes, who made no reply.
"Aye, it calls!" mused the old man. "And ye asked
me what brought me here! Why not be true with ye?
It was the Chasse Galere!"
"The Chasse Galere?"
"Ay, the Great Canoe that rides the storms, lad—
paddled by its crew of the lost souls! It runs but the
ane way—to the North! It ne'er goes back again."
Barnes bethought him of some such tale heard on
some hunting trip among the Canadians, a tradition
preserved in a wild voyageur's song. He nodded now.
"'Twas in the French provinces, at old Mo'reau—
that the Great Canoe picked me up."
Barnes nodded, gravely. Garth went on.
"Ye've never heard—the song of the Chasse Galere?
Always in a great storm she comes, riding low under
the clouds. Ye can hear the paddlers laugh, miles far,
and their chantey whiles they paddle. They swing
low, and the bowman has an eye out for what's ahead,
whiles the steersman leads the song. Ye know the
story? To be sure ye do! Since the first fur boats
left Mo'reau, the tale's been known.
9


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"A mon goes out alone to his trap line. He ne'er
comes back! Well, his mates know what's happened.
Each time it's death it brings. Or waur than death."
His shaggy head sank on his breast for a time before
he continued.
"Ye'll know it, lad. Always the Great Canoe has
twenty paddlers, or places for twenty, but never the
thwarts will be set full. Always there'll be ane seat
empty. She maun have another paddle, do ye mind?
Hah! When the crew sweeps doon over the forest top,
the bowman reaches out his hand whiles the crew roars
laughter. And the boat gaes on—and all her seats are
full! And the place that knew that young mon knows
him nae mair. The North has him then.
"Who knows where young Angus Garth went when
he was a lad? And I was young! Aye, alas! Some-
where, 'tis usual, there was a woman!"
"Now I know why old Angus Garth never has gone
out to the settlements!"
"Sure ye do, lad. The great Chasse Galere runs but
the ane way. If she catches ye—she goes North again
with all her seats full. Soon, the new soul paddles.
Mayhap he sings, too. And so off they go, across the
far forests. And never he gaes back. No, nor wants
to!"
"Aye, it calls!" he mused still, for a time. "Go
back? ... To what?"
10


CHAPTER III
THE WHITE GIRL AT McTAVISH

HRISTINE!" called Angus Garth, sud-
denly. He and the young man long had sat
A blanketed door rustled. There stepped into the
room a girl, not Annette, the young half-blood whom
Langley Barnes had seen just now, but a young white
woman, and one of startling beauty.
She made no fitting part of this rude picture. Her
garb, not rich, but very neat, was within a year at
least of current styles as Barnes had seen them last.
It had no trace of the savage. She did not even wear
moccasins.
It was known of a few men, a very few, wise enough
not to talk, that within the same box with Angus
Garth's annual suit of tweeds, there were each year
certain pairs of shoes of the latest prevailing style, also
hats, gloves, handkerchiefs, other matters unknown.
Some men knew that the cases of books—always books,
many books on many themes, including good fiction,
not much of which, therefore, could be so modern—
silent.
II


THE SHIP OF SOULS
were not for Angus Garth himself, but for Angus
Garth's only white child, the one thing in the world he
loved, the one thing with which he was always gentle.
Thus now had grown to young womanhood the only
white girl within five hundred miles, companionless
alone.
This young woman seemed perhaps three and twenty
years of age. Of good height, of strong, deep, au-
burn hair, fair skin and blue eyes-eyes in which dwelt
a continual question—on Ebinboro Hill in Scotland
of a Saturday, she would have passed for a beauty none
too well turned out. Here, she seemed a beauty very
well clad.
She had great personal dignity. Why not? She
was one of the best educated young women in the
Dominion of Canada, although she never had been in-
side a school and never had seen a white woman in all
her life—with one exception, twenty years ago, her
mother. Alone, eager, taught only by her parents,
Christine Garth had read for years; and in surround-
ings such as these, one remembers. The North had
not swallowed Angus Garth's white child, whatever it
had done to him. One look at the girl's face would
prove that. She was a being apart, and she dwelt apart.
But Langley Barnes had not dreamed of this girl's
existence until now! Few men ever saw her or knew
of her-outside those on the annual boat, none at all.
12


THE WHITE GIRL AT McTAVISH
There was once a myth, a tradition, that old Angus
. Garth had a child whose mother was a Mission teacher
at a lower post, long years ago, five and thirty, or thirty
years ago at least. Meantime the York boat had passed
and steam had come. Most of the old trade personnel
was gone. The fur post has its own ways. And Mc-
Tavish turned out fur, fur, fur! Enough, and very
well.
As the apparition of this wholly civilized young
woman now suddenly came into the room, Langley
Barnes sprang to his feet, turning his eyes first to the
girl and then to old Angus Garth. He never had
dreamed of such a being, although he had been in the
house for months! He really had talked but little with
Annette, who was here, there and everywhere.
"My daughter, Christine Garth," said the factor,
gravely, with no explanation or apology. "Christine,
this is Mr. Langley Barnes. He was left by the boat.
We turn no man away. I have not made him welcome,
but I now have told him he maun stay."
The girl lacked social education. Her life had been
a blank in many regards. She had seen hardly a white
man, certainly never a gentleman. Of the arts or cus-
toms of ladies and gentlemen she knew nothing at first
hand. True, she did not tell her father that often she
had looked out her window at Langley Barnes, wonder-
ing, speculating. Hers was a nature wholly untouched
13


THE SHIP OF SOULS
by any comprehension of man as man. She could not
tell why she had looked at him.
She stood now, silent and motionless, but not awk-
ward or self-conscious. Of a bow, a handclasp, a
curtsy, she knew little or nothing. She did not smile,
because there existed in her mind no cause for it. She
only stood silent. Her father did not reprove her.
"Tea, please, Christine,” said Angus Garth. She
departed. Barnes was wise enough to wait, silent.
"An Indian woman, by long training, can make a hot
toddy,” remarked Angus Garth, “but tea can be made
only by the white woman. Six Indian women I've
had about the house, but never ane would I let pour
my tea. So you see, Christine's useful—when she
comes from her ain part of the place. 'Tis not
often.”
Christine did pour the tea for them now, and could
offer sugar with it. But she herself did not drink with
them, and soon left the room. She had not spoken a
word, nor had she been chided for her silence. Only
remained the question of her eyes. Langley Barnes
still waited. But that his heart beat faster he could
not deny. Was there, then, no place in the world where
a man could get away from women?
Angus Garth accepted life and human beings as they
were. He gazed now into the fire for a long time be-
fore he spoke. His preliminary was a nod over his
14


THE WHITE GIRL AT MCTAVISH
shoulder which said that he would speak when he felt
ready.
"Ye did not know of Christine,” said he, not in query,
after a time. “I had hoped ye never would. Ye've
thrust yerself into a place where ye had no right. 'Twas
only the tradeetion of the Company's hospitality that
made me open door to ye. Never have we allowed
white man to want when he knocked-from Mo’reau to
Vancouver-unless he was after fur. All such we
handle in our ain way.
“But ye're not after fur, and now I know that.
'Twas other cause brought ye here. Ye're not wel-
come. Ye're not guest in my house. Ye're no more
than traveler accepting the Company's hospitality.
That is to say-unless!”
Again he did not see the temples of the young man
redden. He went on presently in his own direct
fashion.
“But ye are here! And I, Angus Garth, am sax
and seeventy. And Christine is three and twenty, may-
like. And Annette is now by way of eighteen.
"To be sure I have children, wards of the Domeenion,
as all others of the old factors have-scattered from
Abbitibi to Chipewyan, from Nelson to McTevish.
And they have children. And some of their children
have children too.
"Oh, ye've pushed your nose now into the North,
15


THE SHIP OF SOULS
from which nae mon sends back word! We did not
ask ye, and I dinna want ye. The world little knows
our ways here, and we dinna wish it to. I am mon of
the old Trade, no better, no worse. Indian weemin?
Aye. But didna each factor better the woman he took
out of a lodge and put into a house? I'll make no
comment of them, nor any apology.
"But one woman at McTevish was marrit. White,
she was. And Christine—"
"Christine is all white, Angus Garth."
"Aye!" said the old man, "body and soul she is.
And but that the command of the Company bids me
save the traveler cast away in the wilderness, I'd never
say to any mon living what I maun say to ye.
"She's white, all white, aye, Christine! And though
now ye not speak it, ye ask it: Who was the mother of
Christine?
"Lad, I maun tell ye that! Though never had I
meant to say a word of it to mon again, I maun tell
ye that, because of many things."
He sat motionless now for many, many moments.
"A mission woman she was, the mother of Chris-
tine, yes. And God save Angus Garth, who doesna
ken even now whether he damned two souls, or one, or
mayhap saved the two! 'Twas by no grace of mine,
whatever came in any case.
"Listen to me! One time I was minded to go out
16


THE WHITE GIRL AT McTAVISH
to the settlements. 'Twas thirty years ago. They told
me I should go down at least as far as Weenipeg. But
I went no further than the Great Slave Mission.
"Ye will see we hate the missions, we traders,
though we swear we dinna! They teach our natives—
what? A little sewin', a bit prayin', singin' about the
Savior which they dinna understand—and that's all!
Save their souls? Their souls were made to gather
fur! A good Father dies here and there, and who
minds that? What has he gained? The life of a good
mon of the Anglican Church, who could have made a
useful mon in civilization with less labor and mair
comfort—what gain, if 'tis thrown away?
"And but for the missions, I had never sinned.
'Tis no sin to take up with native women—'tis neces-
sary.
"But the women of the missions! Of their own
Church of England, the meenisters should have been
prevented, from the first, from ever bringing a white
woman nigh the Trade north of Weenipeg! We need
no religion here."
Again the long silence while he stared into the
fire. Angus Garth seemed loath to resume. His voice
broke when he spoke.
"Mon, she was an angel! And when she steppit off
the boat, her husband was waiting for her. A good
mon, I presume. And he'd been at yon Mission two
17


THE SHIP OF SOULS
years. And when she steppit off the plank the puir
booby had not the manhood to take her in his arms and
kiss her before the boat's crew. And she fairly trem-
bling with fright and hope and longing to be protectit,
here in a land such as this! Her, brought to save souls
in the North! My God! She lost her ain—and mine!
Aye—and yours, too, I'm thinking, Langley Barnes !
"Oh, aye, marrit they had been, so far as religion
and love can make marriage. This was her coming
out to her ain home. Yon long log house was to be
hers. And I with my ain two eyes saw him walk the
half mile to the house, and he not even touched her
hand! And he didna even walk fast with her to their
cabin! It was the cauldest, damnedest meeting hus-
band and wife ever made. And I carena whether it be
meenister of the Gospel or not, I carena, even now
yon was a fair crime—her trembling with fright and
longing to be loved and comfortit. And so, to love and
comfort her myself I swore then and there, the first
time or ever that I saw her.
"Well, lad, that was the ane time Angus Garth had
danger of losing his poseetion at McTevish. As it was,
McTevish had no more than a clerk for factor for six
months. It took me sae long as that. I stayed on at
yon mission. I had seen her. From the first I saw
her, I—"
Langley Barnes looked at him and nodded.
18


THE WHITE GIRL AT MCTAVISH
“Ye know? Ye've been a mon among men? Then
ye know! It took me six months to show her, a good
woman, that she had no duty saving souls at Great
Slave, but had one in saving one soul at McTevish-
me, Angus Garth! And there never has been a mis-
sion at McTevish, nor will be while I live!
“It is all! I have told ye. She came with me."
“Yes.”
“Aye. In forty years I have ne'er been below Great
Slave. And Christine ? Christine has ne'er been below
the Circle, nor e'er will be. And yet she's white! Ah,
my God! So now ye see what ye’ve come into, here.
"Ignorance! Ignorance! That is the one hope for
happiness! Civilization—that is no more than the thin
lid over hell-ye've said true, lad.
"I drave the dogs myself, north down the reever,
when I stole her away. Months it seemed to me-
with her white and cauld and greeting. Here she lived
then, and none dared say nay. 'Tis my ain land. And
here she died. And if it be love and care of mon a
woman craves, she had that. I could never tell if it was
I loved her, or wanted most to comfort her. She
lacked nothing I could get till she died. For two
years she made fair pretense.
“The bairn, Christine, came late for us. Then she
was content a space; then glad to die. She died in
terror, and her face I shall never be able to put out
19


THE SHIP OF SOULS
my mind. For she said her soul was damned. Ah!
that white lamb!
"Marrit, I said. How could we be in truth? No
courts, no officers, no meenister-I'd not allow one
here. First was the divorce, and how could we get it
here—the wife of an Anglican meenister? No, no!
'Twas simple, the way I did, and the only way. And
ye ask me, was I so mad of carnal love of her? I have
not said I was. I have said I took her. I have said
this is my child by her. Well, at least as regular as
any of the others. I'm of the auld Trade. But to
her, before God, I was marrit. And all I ever will
know of heaven was Alice at her cradle, singing.
Her voice was fair wonderful. Christine's is even
better. But Christine shall never sing in any mission
school!”
Fiercely, the old man flung his gray mane up.
“Now then, ye damned interloper and stranger, ye
unwelcome guest in the house of old Angus Garth-
why do I tell ye these things? I dinna ken altogether.
Ane thing I know is the great reason I did that, and
do this. I was white !—and I am white !
"Oh, aye, I'll suppose the White Woman's a dream
and an imaginin'. I'll suppose she's ceevilization. At
any rate, I brake the heart for one white woman as well
as any ceevilized mon might have done-as well as
ye've done yerself? I never brake the heart of ane
Wom
20


THE WHITE GIRL AT MCTAVISH
Indian woman. They know better. They're the only
ones for the Trade.
"So there's Christine. She never smiles. She
reads."
“And Annette?" interrupted his hearer.
“Annette ? Annette never reads. She smiles.
“Which one then, Mr. Langley Barnes?” He turned,
his eyes lit by so somber a fury he might well have
seemed half mad. His hand, heavy and hard as iron,
fell on the other's arm and gripped it.
"Because, do ye mind, it will come to one or happen
both of these two! And the two are my ain! I'm a
mon, and I know!
"Oh, I know well enough the eye the red woman
or the black or the yellow—has for the tall white mon!
I'd rather have died than have had ye come here. But
ye've come. I could kill ye. Yes, but 'twould be too
late, now! They both have seen ye. Who can call
back the spark that starts from man to woman, from
woman to man? 'Tis youth, 'tis the blood of youth!
"But-well, let us reason. Aweel, I'm old now.
Soon Angus Garth dies. Who takes his place here?
'Tis a hard post, and few of the best could handle it.
When Angus Garth dies, who takes his place ?”
Barnes only sat and looked at him in silence; nodded,
his lips close set.
“Nae sae happy?” Garth smiled, one-cornered.
21


CHAPTER IV
THE BARGAIN OF ANGUS GARTH
BARNES bent his head, pondering the story of
this savage man. Before his own mind came
the picture of a cold, beautiful, slender, elegant
and faultless woman, dainty, garbed exquisitely, radi-
ant with gems—the most beautiful and the coldest
woman in the city where they made their home, the
last product of the world's highest civilization—his
own wife, Alicia. *vT^
He had given her much. She had driven a hard ,
bargain, sold herself high, and denied delivery. After
ten years he realized that she had given him nothing
and had nothing that she could give. Flower of civil-
ization she was, no more than orchid, no fragrant,
blossom of good, normal, human soil.
Langley Barnes shook his head once more, his lips
close. Garth began again.
"Ye're marrit? Oh, aye, of course, but that matters
not here. 'Tis far. The ane question is: Have ye
left your world and come north in the Chasse Galere,
never to go back again? 'Twould mean naught if ye
22


THE BARGAIN, OF ANGUS GARTH
spoke of that to either of these two. Christine knows
little of marriage. Annette would not care. . . . Sit
still! I'm coming to my point.
"So now, I'm Scotch! I drive good bargains!—and
I see far ahead. I see further now than ye do. Is it
not so? Yet I'm only saying what's bound to happen
here!"
"But what can you possibly mean, sir?"
"Christine—or Annette—or both! If both—ye die!"
Barnes could only stare at him, not at all compre-
hending. But the old man went on.
"Always I've bought close. I maun buy for these,
my ain, for their betterment—if 'tis to save their souls!
I'm Scotch. After all, I believe we've souls.
"Now, say I offer the Company, five years from now,
a factor trained by Angus Garth's ain hand? The
new factor is marrit to one—sit ye still, mon, I say!—
to one of Angus Garth's two daughters! The other
still lives on at the post—but not for you!
"Ye shrink back! Oh, I know the practice. Also,
I know the opportunities for young blood, and its striv-
ings and its clamorings—aye, even for women, mair
for those who had no mother and no training. Look
at me! Also, I know the necessities of the Trade. A
factor maun have a native wife, else he gets nae fur
among the natives. And ye may have a native wife,
sir.
23


THE SHIP OF SOULS
/"But if the new factor had a native wife—what
about Christine? If so I can solve the problem for my
ain flesh and blood at all, there is nae other way but one
ye can pay me for your keep, Langley Barnes! God,
IH drive a close bargain with ye!
"Ye care nothing for the wife ye've left. I'm caring
for mine, that's dead. It's her girl, my lamb, I'm think-
ing of.
"Winter is here, and if ye spend the winter here I
know what maun happen! Youth will have its way,
nor can aught prevent that. Should I not know? One
ye'll be following, and one will be following you!
Well, the best factor is he who takes his happenings and
turns them into fur! And as to women, red or
white—" His voice trailed off into a hundred mut-
tered curses of himself and his bitter fate.
"Did ye say to me, ye'd left your ain wife for aye?"
he resumed at length. "Ye're off with all that? Ye're
free sailing? I ask no more. I maun trade the best I
may."
"I do not yet know," said Langley Barnes. "I
would not lie to you. There is no love between us. I
think she cares for another man more. I came away
to give her a chance to get free. Still we are man
and wife—unless the court meantime has given her her
divorce—I think it has, by now. In any case, I never
will go back to her, that's sure."


THE BARGAIN OF ANGUS GARTH
1
“ 'Twould be no use. There's but ane thing can be
the answer! Once ye've heard the chanson of the
Chasse Galère, ye're damned to the wilderness for your
life. But if ye've found what ceevilization denied ye
-what then? Could ye be content to live and die here?
I could die well myself then, serving the Great Com-
pany still, rest good Prince Rupert in his grave!
"Ye see, I know that ignorance may save my daugh-
ter-or it might be, both my daughters—from being
damned! Knowledge that would damn them both!
Let them live ignorant. Let them be happy. Annette
—for sake of the Company. Christine—for sake of
her mother? Could that be? I'd know then that I'd
drave my last bargain with the wilderness !"
Barnes could not speak at all. The old man went
on.
"All 'twould have cost would have been a soul!
'Twould be only ane more soul-only your ain, Mr.
Langley Barnes! Mine's gone, long a-gone. I tell
ye, we drive hard bargains here."
The young man looked him fair in the eye. For
the first time the hard gray orb of Angus Garth grew
softer.
"For 'tis this way, ye see, lad. The giving of your
soul might rest the soul of a good woman that's gone.
It might save-it might bring to living beauty and
happiness-ane soul that's still here sleeping–Chris-
25


THE SHIP OF SOULS
tine! Shall we damn her, boy? And if it be not you,
who then? No one comes here. She must have her
equal, body and mind. What chance has she?
"Oh, there'll be no playing between her and you!
Naething half wilderness and half ceevilization! 'Tis
this or that! If you marry Annette you save a fur
post for the Company. If you marry Christine, you
save a soul to God. You lose your own. No man ever
came here but came in the Chasse Galere. It comes to
the Wilderness—it gaes not back again."
He sat moody, his hands twitching, for some time
before he raised his head in decision and went on.
"Now then, uninvited and unwelcome mon, there is
the one way ye may be welcome! Ye might step into
your fortune here. I'm rich. Ye can't spend much
here, and gin ye could, I'm rich. Ye've done with your
old life. Step into a better one more fit for a mon.
"But I'm Scotch, and aye canny!" he added, hotly.
"I trade close! I'm sure first! The next factor at
McTevish maun1 be able to buck the North. Are ye a
coward, Langley Barnes?"
"I don't know."
"Then probably ye are not! But a test ye maun
have. Listen. I'll name it for ye.
"Up river a hundred miles are two white men, inde-
pendent hunters. I've allowed them to stay in my coun-
try because they're good hunters. They bring more
26


THE BARGAIN OF ANGUS GARTH
fur than any three families o' my natives. Since they
buy here and sell here, aye, and make no attempt to
trade in fur, I allow them in my district. Yankees,
they are.
"But this summer they did not come in to meet the
boat. There's no news of them. I've sent my natives
aside from their country, so I've had no word from
them. And in their country, lad, is mair fox-silver
and black and dark cross-than in all my reaches! I
could have counted on four or five thousand in their
hunt this season. But I got-nothing at all!
"Hensley and Durgin—that's their names. Now, I
want their fur. I also want word of them. Ye'll be
runnin' down there for me?" The old man's eye nar-
rowed, glowing like a coal.
“How far is it?”
"A hundred and five and twenty miles."
"And how do I find the place where they live?”
“The cabin is on the right bank of the river. It
can not be missed by a real woodsman. None but a
real woodsman will ever be factor at McTevish!”
“The snow is coming.”
“Oh, aye.”
“To-morrow?”
“ 'Twill be beginning now."
"I should take sledge and dogs ?”
“Oh, aye.”
27


THE SHIP OF SOULS
“I've never driven a dog team yet.”
“Oh, aye. But the factor of McTevish will have
done so !”
“I can have no guide, no native?”
“None whatever."
"I may die."
“It may be. But the factor of McTevish will not
be the sort that dies. He'll go out, and he'll come back.
Fur is high. And all ye could lose, my lad,” added
old Angus Garth, "would be your life, and your soul!
We're both white men after all. What is the giving
of your soul, if ye save ane and rest ane, and them the
souls of women?
“Ah, God! Don't I still hear her-Alice-greeting
all the night, and asking me what I have done for her
lamb? And is not this a good trade to offer a young
mon? Tell me that, Langley Barnes! I'm supposing
ye're a strong mon, but done with your wife, and done
with ceevilization; aye, and done with life itself! But
I am not supposing you will never care for weemin-or
that weemin will never care for you!"
In answer the young man only looked him again
straight in the face.
“ 'Tis a fierce land, Langley Barnes, ye’ve fung
yourself into! 'Tis a hard-living and hard-dying land.
But shall a white mon lose his hold? How can he trade
other than hard? Life for fur. Hungry babes o' red
28


THE BARGAIN OF ANGUS GARTH
weemin for warm babes o' white; souls for souls; life
for life; aye, life for love! Hard trading? Yes. Yet,
so lies the test for the next factor o' McTevish! They'll
be expecting me to name him, soon."
“Annette!" he called sharply. There came now into
the room, silently in her moccasins, the compelling beau-
tiful breed daughter of Angus Garth_tall, dark,
ripely appealing to any young man's eyes, enough to
carry off his feet any young man in whose veins ran
hot, unscrupulous blood.
"Take away!" He motioned to the tea things. The
girl complied, smiling. Her dark eyes were fixed on
the clean, strong features of Langley Barnes, almost
the only white man she had ever seen thus close, ex-
cept her father, for when the boat came, the factor's
daughters were locked in their rooms. Garth said a
sharp word or two in some Indian tongue. Annette
hurried away.
Barnes after a time rose and began to look around
the room. “May I?” he asked. The old trader nodded,
guessing his intent and watching him keenly. He took
down two blankets of woven rabbit fur, a pair of
caribou-web snowshoes, a caribou parka faced with
wolverine fur, a pair of great fur mittens, an ax, a
rifle, harness for a dog team.
him a box of great matches, each a foot long, as thick


THE SHIP OF SOULS
as a pencil. "They'll burn when wet," said he. "'Tis
easier when a mon's fingers are frozen. Best also to
take along the old flint and steel, against loss of other
means of making fire.
"And when was ye starting?" he added.
"Now."
"Not seeing Christine again?"
"No. Let me first prove I am fit to look at her
again."
"Not waiting on the weather, eh?"
"No. The Weather will be the weather. Have the
women pack the sled with plenty for the dogs and some-
thing for me—meat, tea—"
"Ye speak somewhat like a mon! Perhaps I should
ask your pardon. I'll say, God speed ye! I'd be sore
to lose ye, now.
"Ye're not afraid?" He asked this last half sav-
agely.
"Yes. Why not?"
"Ye speak the mon, my lad! So God guide ye! If
ye come back—it may be two weeks—three—ye'll tell
me what ye've seen, what ye've heard—what ye've felt
—so I can tell if ye're a mon?"
/"Why, yes." Barnes laughed. "Chasse Galere?"
/ "Chasse Galere!" replied old Angus Garth.
And presently he closed the door on Langley Barnes,
who passed out into the open. He had spoken very
X 30 .....


THE BARGAIN OF ANGUS GARTH
little. He now seemed to have the way of going di-
rect to the first essential thing.
"Marie!" called out Angus Garth, now left alone;
and this time the old Indian woman who came brought
with her another bottle, a spoon, a tankard of precious
sugar. As recompense, her lord and master gave her a
handful of sugar. The Scotch he kept for himself.
Angus Garth stirred and stirred in his glass a quarter
of an hour, a half hour, gazing into the fire. Then
he set down the glass upon the table, untasted. He did
not even look out the window. He was pondering this
matter of a trade in souls.


CHAPTER V
THE TEST
T N the open space before the cabin, Langley Barnes
finished his preparations for his first journey in
the North. A young breed stood at the corner of
the house idly watching him, half smiling. The dogs,
curled up, growled at the white stranger. At this he
cracked the lash of his long dog whip savagely and
gave an order which they understood. He held up the
front collar of the harness and advanced. Still growl-
ing, the hair along his back erected, a great wolfish crea-
ture of the group arose, pushing his head through
the collar. A second dog came in like manner, a
third, a fourth. The McTavish teams were well
broken.
Barnes turned now after he had fastened the thongs
and made as though to crack his whip also at the young
breed.
"Go, you!" he exclaimed. “Get the load for this
sled. March! Quick!”
But as he spoke Annette came around the corner of
the house, smiling. She tossed on the sled load three
32


THE TEST
pairs of moccasins with the accompanying squares of
, duffel cloth. She added a pair of Eskimo mukluks,
oiled seal boots, traded at McTavish when the Eskimo
whale boats came up from the salt water in the summer
time. "Good when wet," she said.
And Annette helped her brother—the half-foreed
was none less—to arrange the load of fish for dog
feed, the supplies for the man, his robes and such other
impedimenta as they held fit; enough for all, not too
much of anything.
Annette cast an eye upward to the sky. "Bimeby
plenty."
The fall had even now begun, white and dense. Be-
yond him lay a blurring wilderness. This was his
initiation.
Laughingly, Annette stepped between the guide poles,
back of the gaudy hind sack which her own hands had
embroidered. Between them they got the dogs down
the bank to the water's edge. And, since he really never
again expected to see Annette, nor ever to get back
alive, he could see no reason why he should not kiss
Annette good-by, as farewell to woman and to life.
He did so, much to Annette's surprise, by no means to
her resentment. Even in the snow her sudden lips were
warm, her clasp warm.
"God, girl!" said Langley Barnes, laughing amus-
edly, "where did you learn that?"
33


THE SHIP OF SOULS
But Annette only laughed. "Come back soon to
me!"
The runners cut through to the gravel of the beach
for half an hour, but then the snow deepened. In the
blinding smother of it no wise sledge man would have
attempted travel, but his road lay between the bluff
and the water's edge, so he staggered on, leading his
team on a leash, not trusting himself to drive. In some
way, he perhaps got on four or five miles before dark-
ness grew too dense and he resolved to encamp.
The sledge dogs obviously did not recognize him as
master, and they were very close to home. They might
desert. Trusting to no thongs, easily cut, he found a
few lengths of copper wire, taken from an ancient
trolling line, and after feeding each dog his two white-
fish, he wired each securely to a tree before committing
himself to sleep—a proceeding not ethical but effective,
which he never later mentioned.
He made his bed as he often had before on winter
moose hunts—scraping away the embers of his fire, and
throwing down on the hot ashes the boughs which were
to make his mattress. On this, his blankets; over him,
his rabbit robes; under and over all, his canvas square.
He racked up some green back logs, split some dry
wood for the front, but made no double fire, for the
temperature was not extreme.
Snow enough by morning he had, but the fall had
34


THE TEST
ceased. His bed was a grave, his dogs so many snow
heaps. But he made shift with breakfast, made shift
to get his dogs in harness, and now was off on the first
full day of his real journey.
He knew nothing of dog work, but his charges were
well trained and willing to follow, though for a time
he held to the wire leash of the lead dog, breaking trail
on the snowshoes. Indicated trail there was none. The
river's reaches were like lakes or arms of the sea at the
greater bends. The great river had not yet fully frozen,
so he must hug the beaches and make every foot of the
shore line, his journey being at precisely the most diffi-
cult time of the year. He pushed on, bravely, stub-
bornly, till the light grew dim. He camped, as he sup-
posed, some twenty-five or thirty miles from McTavish.
That night, after his hour of work and his meal of
meat and tea, he smoked by his fire, thinking of the
warm corner of the house at McTavish where his bed
had been. He dreamed also of other matters.
Again he could see the luxurious interior of his own
home in the far-off city. It was rich in rugs, in pic-
tures, works of art. He could recall the cushion-piled
divans, the soft-backed davenports, the period furniture
he himself had carefully selected. In fancy he carried
himself to the great Georgian dining hall of his man-
sion, with its crystal chandeliers, its china and its an-
cient silver—all different from the firelight, the tin cup
35


THE SHIP OF SOULS

and plate he but now had used. His own couch room,
the marble bath, the boudoir of his wife—all rich,
elegant, modern, the best—one by one he analyzed all
these things, asking what of it all was really needful to
a man's comfort. It came to a cup and plate, a knife,
an ax, a roll of blankets, a fire. He could not have
dispensed with any of these.
And what was needful beyond mere comfort, Lang-
ley Barnes asked himself? What was the real mean-
ing of a man's life? What was it that gave satisfac-
tion, what was it that made happiness? Was it the
ownership of yonder fragile though stately bit of human
| Sevres, exquisite as art could make, delicate, odorous,
languorous, exquisite—the woman Alicia, his wife, mis-
tress of his home, bearer of his name?
Barnes found himself half upright, unable to bear
the sudden sense of oppression. All the arts and arti-
fices of the pampered modern woman seemed to drop
away like crumbled silk from a broken frame, as had
these so many other customary things from the re-
quirements of mere physical comfort. . . . Here he
sat in the snow in the wild forest, with an ax and a tin
plate, but the blood glowed red from his heart. He
was not uncomfortable, but to the contrary.
He seemed again to see, standing at his fire uninvited,
the figure of a breed girl with red lips and smiling
face, a woman of the Trade, unable even to speak much


THE TEST
of his own language, but given by instinct all the lan-
guage needful to convey comfort and content to a man
who now was stripping life of its usual uselessnesses.
What lacked, here in the North? And had he not left
Alicia, the orchid woman, for ever in her Sevres selfish-
ness? What had she to give a man? What had the
city to give?
He sank back, his arm over his eyes. He had loved
Alicia, once giving her, at least in his imagination, as
a young lover will, all the qualities a man wishes a
woman to have. The change had been gradual, but,
comparing the end of ten years with the beginning of
it, how tremendous, how unmistakable that change!
The increase of their material possessions had brought
decrease in happiness to Alicia and himself.
He could recall the frown, the tapped foot, the petu-
lant, impatient retort, the growing air of dissatisfac-
tion, the increasing frankness and frequency of her
criticism of all he said and did. Patiently, wonder-
ingly, querulously, then shruggingly, he had accepted
these things as a part of life, and had gone the way of
the American husband—until at length he had found
himself in a cold sweat of comprehension, and had be-
gun to ask himself whether this was right, and how
much further his duty demanded him to go.
And then, chilled in a cold and barren life which
had icy sensuousness but no peace, content, nor warmth
37


THE SHIP OF SOULS
in it, at last he had pleaded broken health. And then
he had gone as far away from his home and from Alicia
as the continent would permit, in order to give himself
and her time and place to think, to frame some new and
basic philosophy of life, to get at the fundamentals
which had lain wrong, under their failure, and to re-
adjust as she might say, since she no longer found
happiness under his guidance.
He flung himself back on his blankets in the snow
in a roar of sardonic laughter.
"Alicia !” he commanded sternly. “Tea!” And he
saw her face.
"Alicia! Take away!" He saw her face again.
"Alicia! Bring in wood! After that, go feed the
dogs! Then mend my moccasins and fix this parka
hood!”
And then, at length, “Alicia, have done! Come to
me. Kiss me-no, not to freeze my lips, to warm
them! Alicia, take my feet into your bosom, for they
are still half frozen from the trail. Do as I say! No
tears, no arguing! If all goes well with the hunt,
Alicia, I may get you at the trader's four yards of calico
and six strings of beads, and a bracelet that is not of
gold! Because, by God! Alicia, there's an end of this
frippery of yours. And the end is now!"
His roars of laughter made his sledge dogs whine
and look at him.
ANONS


THE TEST
is that it? Came again what he fancied he had
fore-faint sounds, wild, high and far, mock-
men's laughter broken with ribald song.
s put back the rabbit robe and listened. Then
ied again, or thought he laughed though he
last of the laughing geese, going south!” he
The storm's driving them down from the Arc-
is. So! That's all there was to that yarn of
sse Galère !"
ink back again, doubling his legs to his belly
warmer, drawing the rabbit robe and the canvas
face. He must sleep. He had made the tea
ng, but he must sleep, or he could not break
morrow. ... If Alicia were there, how she
hiver and weep! If Annette were there, she
out wood on the fire. And Christine? Well,
it sleep.
gain, past midnight, as he supposed, he found
awake, alone in the white wilderness. His
re standing, hair erect on their shoulders, whin-
in t growling. The leader raised his head and
gave it to the very voice of the mysterious, uncon-
quered, terrible North—the howl of the northern dog,
gifted with a sixth sense, feeling the menace of an un-
seen world.
"My God! What was that that passed !" Barnes
39


THE SHIP OF SOULS
caught the bedding about him. He had spoken aloud,
as men sometimes do in the wilderness. Had it not
been for the howling of his dogs he would have been
sure that he heard, passing out over the forest, a sound
like the far laughter of reckless men—the lost souls of
the Chasse Galere.


CHAPTER VI
, FATHER AND DAUGHTER
THE buildings of Fort McTavish were not
more pretentious but certainly were more ex-
tensive than those of any Company post in
the North. Angus Garth was not one to waste money
in cost or upkeep, and the commercial housing did not
exceed the needs of a post whose trade personnel was
so large; but another reason for spacious roofage was
one which the Company knew but did not question—
the white family of Angus Garth, the only one sup-
ported by any factor north of Fifty-three. No mis-
sion ever was established by either of the two great
churches of the sub-Arctics, but few missions had
more or better buildings than McTavish, and in none
was the influence of civilization more distinct. That
is to say, here the white woman dwelt, if not dominant,
at least apart.
The main structure of the post proper was much
like any other of the fur trade—a well built log house,
carefully chinked with moss, carefully roofed with
poles and moss and earth. At one side of the main
4i


THE SHIP OF SOULS
room, which served as general meeting place and din-
ing hall, lay the personal sleeping room of the factor;
and once this had been all there was to McTavish, for
shelves and a rough counter then had held the Trade
goods in the main room. But long since an additional
building widely removed from the central quarters had
been erected for the Company store, with a loft for
goods and furs. Nearer the river front was yet an-
other large and strong warehouse for goods and furs.
Opposite this stood the quarters of the Mounted Police,
a workmanlike log barracks, untenanted now for the
past several years. A shallow loft over the living
quarters was used for keeping the most valuable furs.
Back of the central building were two smaller log
houses, in one of which, after her native ways, dwelt
now Marie, benevolent and wrinkled, known as the
Mother of McTavish among the Loucheux and Huskies
who traded there. Annette at times slept or lived in the
other hut, close to her mother, whom she much de-
spised.
For sake of the white blood of Annette, another
room was provided under the main roof. It was a tiny
apartment, at one side of a very narrow hall which led
out from the main assembly room in a sort of ell or
extension. On the opposite side of the hall a similar
room was occupied by Christine as her own.
Beyond these, and across the whole end of the hall
42


FATHER AND DAUGHTER
and its side rooms, almost as large as the assembly
room, ran the white woman's apartment, built origi-
nally for the unhappy mate of the savage man who
brought her there, where after a few years she had
died, perhaps the most wretched white woman who ever
lived along the Circle, and the one most deeply to be
pitied.
To this larger apartment, and its belongings, Chris-
tine was heiress, and tacit law gave her exclusive posses-
sion. Here in a sort of log prison, she had grown to
young womanhood. Among her books, amid her white
surroundings, she dwelt almost wholly apart, with no
concern whatever with the affairs of the trading post.
Annette knew fur, knew every breed and Indian at the
post or at the village, a half mile away, knew every
dog, but of these things Christine knew nothing at all.
It was her father's fierce pride to keep her apart, as her
mother, Alice Shoreham, had been before her. Naught
on earth save the perfect physical health and normal
mental balance of Christine—still strangely young and
arrested in woman instincts—had thus far kept her
from being even a more wretched prisoner than her
unhappy mother had been before her.
The main heat supply of all these buildings came
from cast iron cannon stoves, but the large central stove
was supplemented by a fireplace Angus Garth had built
with his own hands of stone and clay for sake of his
43


THE SHIP OF SOULS
white wife Alice, whose coming had altered many other
arrangements about the post and gradually given it the
quality which left it now alike the wildest in fact,
the most civilized in appearance, of any of the upper
posts.
The best of these buildings, with their narrow little
half-sashes of tiny window panes tucked up close to the
eaves, with their puncheon loft floors just above head
height, shallow roofs, squat chimneys, could be called
no better than a hovel. Far, far off, two thousand
interminable miles, along a waterway broken by such
savage falls and rifts and rapids of heavy water as no
other but the Cree half-breed voyageurs regularly
could pass, lay the supply source of every item of white
man's goods, white man's appliances, white man's luxu-
ries, that ever found way to this sad, wild spot just
below the Arctic sea, and close to the most northern pass
of the Rockies, here dwindling down to their most
northern tundra.
A wild, starving land it was, where no plow ever had
or could come, where nothing grew of crops, where no
domestic animal "-ave the dog ever had or could come.
A more terrible home than McTavish for any white
woman could by no human imagination have been con-
ceived, and Angus Garth was right when he said the
white woman alone could never support the Company
trade.
44


FATHER AND DAUGHTER
Yet here two white women, mother and daughter,
had completed one tragedy and begun another. Angus
Garth had lived in both. A sadder, fiercer, bitterer,
more desperate man stood not in moccasins north of
Little Slave. And now fate, accident, Nemesis call
in what one likes—daily was adding to his problems,
until at times his burden seemed unsupportable. No
sayage so unhappy as the most savage of all savages
the white man gone back–because he always feels the
God of his fathers looking down on him in his re-
version.
In surroundings such as these, with perplexities
thickening upon him, Angus Garth now strangely
missed the presence of the new young white man who
had so unhesitatingly gone out alone into the storm in
a wilderness of which he knew so little. He hated this
young man as in general he hated all men, but in spite
of the hatred he felt a certain admiration for him
more, a certain sympathy, for here was a man who
also had suffered by reason of a woman.
Again and again, conquering the implacable North,
had Angus Garth turned adverse circumstances into
fur. Could he now, with no better materials than
these at hand, work some solution of a problem in
which the happiness of two white women-one dead
these twenty years—was so terribly entangled? Well,
he had conceded his own soul lost. He did not hesitate
45


THE SHIP OF SOULS
to cast this young man's soul additional into the trade
scales of the Fates.
For three days after the departure of Barnes the old
factor held muttering, drinking, smoking, to his own
room, and hardly saw another soul. Then he went to
the door of the narrow dark passageway and called.
"Christine! Christine !” That he called twice was
proof of his agitation, for one word usually was the
limit with this man of yea and nay when one word
possibly could serve.
She came and stood, as seemed to be the custom of
all who came into the presence of the master of Mc-
Tavish. Her costume could not ever much change,
but the keen eye of Angus Garth noted a ribbon at her
throat, another in her hair. He never before had known
how splendid was her hair, till he saw it piled high, deep
and rich, ribbon-bound in some way he never had seen
--and which she herself had never seen beyond a pic-
tured page. Christine had never seen a white girl in
her life.
“Ye're bonnie, lass,” said Angus Garth, suddenly.
“Sit ye down.”
When they spoke intimately together, or when either
was much hurried along by any emotion, they seemed
to drop into the Scotch way of speech which once had
been native with Garth, perpetuated by associations in
the trade.
46


FATHER AND DAUGHTER
"Ye'll be liking my ribbands, feyther?” she replied
demurely. “Mysel', I'm no sae bonnie.”
"As was never maid mair!" exclaimed her father with
fierce jealousy.
"We've no seen sae mony, feyther!" She laughed,
spread out her hands, her arms, deprecatingly, gayly,
in a way he did not remember of her. “I make nae doot
I'll be the bonniest white maid in five hundred miles.
Aye, there is no anither the like or equal o' your dauch-
ter Christine alang the entire Circle for hundreds o'
miles!”
They both laughed. In a strange impulse of affec-
tion manifested, which she had not known of him in
many a year, he put out his hand and drew her upon
his knee as though she were still a child, touched her
bright glossy hair wonderingly, reverently, as though he
did not know how she came there. She felt her head
suddenly drawn down, felt the rough sweep of harsh
beard as his lips touched her cheek-his first kiss for
his child in twenty years.
“Dinna muss me, feyther!" she laughed, sudden tears
at this in her own eyes, and wonderment as to what she
ought to do. In this doubt, she kissed her father's fur-
rowed forehead. He drew her close to him, but dared
not try to speak, for his breast was heaving, and for
the factor of McTavish to display emotion were a
crime.
47


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"In ony place in a' the warld ye'd beat the bonniest,
my love!” said he. "Child, ye're mair beautiful than
yer ain mither. Frail she was. But ye're strang,
Christine, deep an' roond an' strang. And ay sae
bonnie! God help us a', ye're so beautiful, child! Mair
so, I'm thinkin', the last month or so than ivver before
the noo. Why, Christine ?"
His hand touched her hair again. They both knew
the answer to his question, but neither would voice it-
indeed, perhaps Christine herself did not really know
why lately she studied so much more in her little mirror
and so much less in the books—from which, for years
and years, she had recited regularly to this stern and
remorseless, teacher at McTavish.
At last he turned her face square to his and their
eyes met, his own softer than she ever had seen them.
“Puir lamb!” he said. “Puir, mitherless lamb! How
ye do need a mither! And here am I, not fit e'en for
your feyther. Unclean! Unclean! 'Room for the
leper, room!' Yet here are you, innocent and sweet,
and aye sae fine, sae fine! Be your ain mither the noo,
my love. Tell me—tell me, Christine! Hae ye no
found in ony o' your readers ane word to guide us the
noo? Not e’en in the Scriptures?"
She nodded. “'Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.
Thy rod and thy staff - feyther, don't you know?
48


FATHER AND DAUGHTER
"They shall comfort me'-don't you know? Of all my
books, that is the wisest one, feyther. Times, it's fair
grand.”
"Aye. I've forgot. Said it not once, 'How beauti-
ful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth
tidings,' eh, Christine ? 'Tidings o' great joy'? Has
it been so, Christine? My lamb, what tidings for you
and me?"
She suddenly averted her face, but he drew her head
to his shoulder, his hand gentle at the back of her deep
piled hair.
"Are his feet beautiful to ye, Christine ? And
what tidings shall be his to my girl?"
His old rage broke out again. "I had no askit him
to come, Christine. I would he had na come. But tall
he is and manful, strang and not ill favored. And he's
the first young mon o yer ain bluid ye've ever seen
with those wonderin', askin', sleepin' eyes o' my ain
bairn. God! were yer mither but here, or any white
woman to counsel with!
"Christine, ye've read o' love?"
"Oh, aye, feyther," demurely.
“The terriblest and sweetest o' a' life, Christine !
Nane may escape it. Ye've not escaped it. Ye've pit
up yer hair! Noo, what shall we do?"
"Is it sae terrible, feyther ?”
"Aye, it is. What shall we do?"
49


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"I'd no thocht o' doin' onything, feyther!"
"Wull, I hae thocht, gin ye have not! I'll tell ye noo,
Kirstie, child, love without marriage ye shall na have.
Love wi' marriage ye shall! 'Tis best. 'Tis the way.
Aye, ye shall be marrit!"
"But wi' whom, feyther?” innocently.
“Ye ken well.”
"But I'm no askit yet!”
“Shall we wait for askin' at McTevish ?”
“The books say we maun wait.”
“Damn the books! I know! I, Angus Garth, fac-
tor here, wait for nae mon's askin'! Rose o' the
warld ye are, child, prize o' the warld, chiefest amang
ten thousand. Ask? I'll no even ask him to ask ye!
I'll tell him!”
Christine was laughing a bit uncertainly on her
father's shoulder, her face hid. “What a strange mon,
my feyther! I hae no known ye unco well, dear. I'm
thinkin' we could hae been such friends, sae lang!
We'll aye be friends noo, feyther?”
"Aye, by God! I'll be your friend, Kirstie. Let
nane offend ye !
"But then,” he added, pushing back her face, “don't
I know? The young mon disna live can luik on your
face and not love ye, my ain. I'll but gie him his chance
—and tell him what he maun do.
“Kirstie, girl. I couldna' help watchin' ye grow.
50


THE SHIP OF SOULS
mon. And damn his soul, he shall be happier than ony
mon ever was, who marries you, my ain! If he is na
happy, if he disna say it and show it, I'll"
“What wad ye do, feyther?”
“Kill him, I suppose. Brak' him in two."
"Oh, lawk! Listen at ye, feyther, and we've not
yet marrit him whatever! Do not, feyther-let us wait
till we've marrit him awa!”
Laughing, she buried her face again on her father's
shoulder; raised it, kissed him swiftly once more on
his grim wrinkled brow, and fled from the room, her
hands extended, her voice still laughing.
Afar, through the blanket-hung passageway, he
heard her voice-a magnificent, a marvelously rich and
sweet voice it was—in an old Scotch melody he knew
well. She accompanied herself—with the least of
schooling—on the little melodeon, so out of place here,
which once had been her mother's.
"Ye banks and braes o' Bonny Doon—".
Each drop of liquid gold and amber and honey of
her voice was a drop of blood from the heart of the
old gray man who sat with bowed head in the outer
room.


CHAPTER VII
THE MURDERER'S WILL
NOW the snow lay soft and white over all the
world, two feet deep and trackless in the
forest, blown thinner over the wide reaches
of the river, now frozen across. It was the third day
out, and though Barnes knew little of sledge and shoes,
he did know that he was afoot ten hours daily and
thought he must average at least three miles an hour.
He ventured gingerly on the ice close in shore, not
trusting midstream footing. His dogs, seeing that the
course followed always the shore line, would now go
ahead when he dropped back on a stretch of thin
snow. Now and again he longed to steal a short ride
while the sturdy brutes broke ahead, panting,
courageous, but he held to his feet. He was putting
distance behind him. His dogs knew he was doing his
part, that he was their master. They would not now
desert him.
It was time to begin to watch the right hand bank.
Any ten hours, any forty miles now, he might find the
lost trappers. He must not pass the cabin, though he
53


THE SHIP OF SOULS
did not know how it looked, or how far it lay inshore,
or whether it could be seen from the river. If there
was any back trail anywhere through the interminable
forest of the black spruce, it was now entirely obliter-
ated by the snowfall. The actual problem on the
ground was a very different thing from the discussion
of it by the fireside. He alone must decide.
Trusting to his eyes no more than to the instinct of
the dogs to detect human presence, he plodded on, try-
ing to master the steady trot with which he had seen
Indians and breeds cover five miles and more to the
hour on the webs. He was tiring fast, for the deep
soft snow was at its worst, but he got on in spite of
fatigue, seeking the "second wind," traveling fatalisti-
cally, as though all life were to be an endless succes-
sion of one foot before the other, ankles aching, to the
accompaniment of the panting of his dogs, the hiss
and grind of the runners on the snow, hardening as the
cold increased. He only knew that he was going to
his fate, taking his test before whatever gods might
be. His former life lay far back, in a thin gray dream.
All the world was blue-white, with a frame of black.
He never could recall whether it was four nights or
five that he lay out, and it became a matter of indiffer-
ence to him at what hour it was that he first smelled
smoke. It was two miles ahead up the wind, when his
dogs put up their noses and began to trot; and pres-
54


THE MURDERER'S WILL
ently he himself caught it, the scent-association quick-
ening his pulse. Man, his fellow, was near.
He saw a tree, felled at the water's edge; made out
a snow-covered canoe, bottom up under the spruce
fringe. The vague thinning of the dark forest line
spoke of an occupancy by white men.
He pulled in at the path by the river bank, followed
up to the open space, his dogs tugging ahead, toward
the low cabin from whose chimney faint smoke rose.
It was a house—a hovel, but yet a white man's
house! Here a traveler might rest and eat. More-
over, beyond this feeling which the smoke-smell in the
forest, the look of this red light in the window, always
awakens in the wilderness wanderer's heart, here was
the end of his road. This was the cabin of Hensley
and Durgin, whom he had set out to find. Well, at
least some one was alive. He had not failed. He could
get back to McTavish too. He straightened, drew up
his belt.
He heard no sound of ax nor voice as he ap-
proached; no dog answered his own call or the keen
and excited yelps of a young member of his dog team,
a full-blood husky. Why no reply? Why then the
smoke? Was no one at home?
There broke upon the air the sudden sound of
strangling, cursing—the mad, inarticulate, brute
sounds made by men in combat. There burst out from
55


THE SHIP OF SOULS
the cabin, into the trampled open space before it, the
figures of two men, struggling, locked, wrestling,
shouting like maniacs. They did not see him. It
would have Been fatal for either of them to have turned
his gaze.
The dogs instinctively halted. Before Barnes could
intervene, or indeed could tell whether this was
drunken sport or actual battle, the men broke apart
Then could be seen the gray gleam of steel.
The shorter of the two men—both bearded, rough-
clad like the customary white tenants of that far land
—held in his hand a great knife, with wide, heavy,
pointed blade, known for two hundred years as the
"Hudson's Bay knife," devised as the most compre-
hensive weapon and tool in one that could be thought
out for use in an actual wilderness—ax, saw, butcher
knife, adze, draw shave, fleshing tool, bone breaker, all
in one.
With this terrible weapon the frenzied owner now
made lunge and chopping blow, one after the other,
at the man who backed away—taller and heavier he
was than the man with the knife.
At the instant, the hand of the fleeing man struck
a weapon, the long killing pole carried by the trapper
as staff in his daily snowshoe rounds—seven feet long,
heavy, thick as a child's wrist at one end, better
weapon than nothing, at least, with which to face a
56


THE MURDERER'S WILL
madman's knife. Barnes called, but they did not hear
him. His team broke into a tangle. And it all was
over soon.
Fiercer than ever, now that his hand held something,
the taller man sneered, mocked at the other's offense,
as, lightly, confidently, the staff sometimes slanting in
both hands as in quarter-staff play, he parried or
caught the knife blows rained at him blindly. Once he
swung the staff overhead, swift as a flash, and
brought it down against the other's neck in a stag-
gering blow.
It was an unfortunate blow. The wielder heard the
snap of the fibers of the light spruce pole. Again he
ran back, on the defensive. Came then a downright
swing of the knife's edge, and the heavy blade sheared
the pole in two. Before the yielding man could rally
to the need of greater agility, his antagonist made one
more sweep, quartering down, full arm. In terror the
victim stooped, turned his body, his head, to avoid
the blow.
The edge caught him full force at the base of the
neck and cut half through the spine. The jolting
shock, the loosened muscles cut off, sent the head oddly,
grotesquely sidewise—it was a man's head no more,
but an object, belonging nowhere. All in a few sec-
onds. Langley Barnes was not thirty yards away
when the murder was finished.
57


THE SHIP OF SOULS
He hurried forward now, covering the guilty man
with his rifle, for reasons of self-protection. "Drop
that!" he commanded.
The man to whom he spoke flung the knife away
into the snow, sank down in the snow himself, cover-
ing his face, and sobbing like a child. Yet he was
fifty years of age. Yellow-fanged, shrunken, un-
wholesome, eaten of scurvy, the wreck of a man only,
he was himself apparently not far this side of the
grave.
Barnes caught him by the shoulder, kicked him into
the cabin, and for certain reasons tied up his dogs with
their bits of wire. The beaten snow was red in a
blotch, there were points and spots of red cast far, as
though a sprinkler had been used.
He forced the living man face down on the single
bunk bed, moaning, sobbing; shook him out of his
hysteria.
"Come, drop this, my man!" he said. "I saw it all.
What's up? Are you Hensley?"
The human wreck before him shook his head. "No,
that's him. I'm Durgin. That's my name, William
Durgin. I don't deny it. Are you a Mountie?"
"No, I'm a Yankee. From McTavish. Factor
Garth sent me down to find out about you. Why
didn't you come in?"
"Sick. Been dying. I've killed the man who's been
58


THE MURDERER'S WILL
killing me for weeks. I'm glad. I'll die now. But
I'm glad I killed that devil!
"We was friends," he added.
And indeed that came near to explaining the whole
tragedy. Two friends, partners, month after month
condemned to the same food, the same routine, the
maddening monotony which drives womanless men in-
sane in army or wilderness life. Then, illness, inabil-
ity, a lassitude condemned as laziness, quarrels over
trifles, condemnations, actual shirkings. Then, in-
creasing illness, and the mocking of the weak by the
strong, sneers, taunts, neurasthenia—and at last the
end in hysteria. Neither really to blame.
"I wanted him to go up for medicine!" sobbed the
survivor. "Weeks, I begged him to. He was strong
enough. I don't know what got into Jim. He went
crazy. He'd sing, and say things. At night, me so
sick, he'd lay by me and laugh at me, mock at me, call
me names, torment me, till I'd cry. Then he'd laugh.
It was hell. We was friends.
"It wasn't because he wanted the fur. It was only
that we was friends. Close together so long. Us with
several thousand dollars, awful lot of good fox. But
he wouldn't even go for medicine, though that would
have saved me. I've killed him, and I'm glad. To-
morrow I'll be dead too. I'm glad I got him first.
He was the first to go. I did kill him! I said I would
59


THE SHIP OF SOULS
I told him I would. And he laughed—the devil
Barnes looked around the cabin. The men had be
good trappers. A year's catch was hung on the wa
or stored on the cross poles that made a garret filo
They had not come in last Christmas, had not met t
midsummer boat. Deep-piled black fox, the whi
tipped silver gray, the dark-shouldered cross fox, scoi
of soft dark marten, many of the great Arctic mir
a dozen skins of wolverine-proof of art in their wo
-yes, the two friends had been in a fur hunter's pai
dise, these past years. A fortune was at their hana
Now one was dead, the other sure soon to make go
his prediction of his own death.
Barnes saw that the man's violence, physical
mental, was the last flickering of vitality left in a buri
out shell.
"Durgin,” said he, “you are right-you know yı
can't last. What do you want done? Do you wa
to make a will? I'll take it out. I'll do anything yı
ask. My name's Barnes-Langley Barnes, of M
Tavish.”
"Barnes-Langley Barnes? A new man? Will
Our wills was each to each, and neither had kith nor ki
chick nor child. Lone men, both. Partners, even u
We come up here-God! I don't know why we can
We was friends. The North—"
"I'll lock the cabin as it is," said Barnes. "Is th
60


THE MURDERER'S WILL
what you want? We can send down next year for the
Mounted. They'll get up the next year, maybe earlier,
and take charge!"
"Those fellows—no! Why wait? Who cares?
Lone men, lone men— friends. And both gone now!
"I'll tell you what I'd do!" suddenly added the
trembling man. “For the man who'll cover Jim's face
with a blanket-put his head back-I can't! I can't!
... But for the man who'd do that, and get me a can
of red tomatoes, now ... and would cook a panful
right here on the stove where I could smell them. ...
God! it was tomatoes I wanted him to go get. I
couldn't stand the spruce tea. We was friends. Lone
men. But if a man would do that for me, I'd—I'd-
And you're American, too. My own people! I'd—”
"Why, I've got stuff !” exclaimed Langley Barnes.
"Wait—I'll cook for you!" He hurried out of the
noisome place.
His dogs were tangled. A certain smell was on the
air, the smell of blood, of flesh, and they were mad.
He cowed them, righted them, dove into his cargo, se-
lected a few things needful.
He was gone not very long, but had done what was
asked of him. He stooped to enter the low cabin door
-paused. The man on the bed was silent now. Be-
side him lay his will ... a few, lines scrawled on the
back, dated:


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"It's all mine. For value received I sell and bequeath,
give and devise it all to Mr. Langley Barnes, this day
down from McTavish. William Durgin, once Yank-
ton, North Dakota. Amen. No other will."
Durgin was dead.
Whether this was bill of sale or last will and tes-
tament, whether done by a sick man or a maniac, Lang-
ley Barnes did not ask nor care. True, he was in all
likelihood now, within ten minutes, several thousand
dollars richer than he had been. But he had tried
riches before now, and found them wanting—last year
he was of the millionaires. The paper meant nothing
to him, whatever it might or might not mean in law.
Then, all at once, Barnes paused, blanket in hand,
caught by a certain thought. He looked at the rich
stock of furs.
Under the tests of the land of fur, what could be
purchased by any man in comfort, in happiness, with
these accumulated furs? What made comfort for a
man; what made happiness? Had he, Langley Barnes,
successful man in business, a failure in content and
happiness, now within reach both those things, all
those things, which till now he had lacked? Had he
earned this by risk? Had he made good in the wilder-
ness? Ah!
His errand? How might it end, now? How about
his test before the Arctic gods? He would go back
62


THE MURDERER'S WILL
and put these things before old Angus Garth, who had
sent him out to die or to live as the chance might fall.
He took all the blankets and comforters he could
find. Since the men had been partners and friends, he
divided these coverings fairly between them now.
Then he found caribou hides, moose hides, and lashed
each long bundle tight. He could not dig a grave—
he tried it; but with the short rope and block the men
had used in their butcher work, he gave each bundle
the burial of the air, as the Indians of the old Plains
did. Then he uncovered his head and kneeled down
in the snow and said such prayers, in such belief in
prayer as remained to him in his own disillusioned
life.
It was dusk. He fed his dogs. Being practical, and
being in the wilderness, he concluded it would be
easier to camp in the cabin that night, with a fire in the
stove. He kicked out room on the floor to spread his
bed and did not use the bunk. After he had eaten his
meat—and the pan of tomatoes which he had cooked
for the dying man—he poured new fat into the lard
saucer, tore a new wick out of a greasy dish rag, and
by the feeble light began to sort and fold the furs—
his furs, surely as much as any other man's now liv-
ing, or Alicia's. He had bought a black fox stole and
muff for Alicia last year. Eight thousand, called cheap.
When morning came, he drank a quart of tea, ate
63


THE SHIP OF SOULS
from a flour sack that would be used no more, packe
his sledge heavy with its rich new burden, and turne
back on his own trail to McTavish, his face grime
with pine and spruce smoke, his fingers cracking a little
but his eyes straight ahead.
The dogs knew their master now.


CHAPTER VIII
ANNETTE AND CHRISTINE
CHRISTINE GARTH, musing alone in her
prison-like room, close shut for winter now,
tried to figure out an estimate of the time it
would take the stranger called Langley Barnes to make
his trip—if ever he was to return at all. She pitied
him. He was new in the North, and knew nothing of
dogs. Perhaps he had perished, alone.
Angus Garth gave it no concern, so far as might be
seen. Annette did no figuring at all. By some process,
she knew the day when this white man would be back.
On that day, no more than an hour before his dog
sled showed around the river bend, five miles away,
Annette sat in her parka on the great slab at the edge
of the bluff, the seat where Angus Garth himself sat
motionless, hours at a time, the summer through. An-
other hour Annette remained motionless, waiting.
CWhy?
She knew that Langley Barnes would return at any
moment. She ran down the sloping path to the river's
edge. There she met him. Barnes broke the icicles
65


THE SHIP OF SOULS
from his yellow mustache, rubbed his eyelashes, the
frost not holding to his parka facing of wolverine.
"Well?" he began.
Annette pushed beyond him. "You go!" she said.
"I fix all these things." She ordered her man to go
to the fire, to eat, to be warm. She, the woman, would
attend to the dogs, care for the sledge cargo. . . . One
instant, Langley Barnes saw a man ringing his own
door bell. A servant opened, took his coat, gloves, hat,
stick. Beyond, in dinner dress, waiting for him, was
a woman, thin, beautiful, of faultless gowning, turning
her cold colored cheek coldly to be kissed.
Having expected never to see Annette again, he
could see no reason why he should not kiss her in wel-
come, as he had in farewell, below the bluff here, where
none could see. He did so.
She did not turn her cheek. Her eyes half closed,
her red lips met his, her body closed toward him! Here
in the ice and snow . . . where was more warmth
than in any boudoir delicately prepared for love of
man and woman! There at the top of the bluff, in full
view of the windows, Langley Barnes, gay in the
thought that he was back alive, blithe in the thought
that perhaps the world was not all dead, flung an arm
half in sport again around the young creature; and
again she did not resist. She only laughed, as young
women will. Then, too late, he thought.
66


ANNETTE AND CHRISTINE
"Marie!" called old Angus Garth, with little greet-
ing to Langley Barnes when at last he entered. The
Indian woman brought what she knew her master
wished. Neither of them said anything about the trip
for a long time. It was not etiquette among out door
men.
"Ten days and the half. Ye found it. Ye're back.
Ye've done well, for a beginner. Lad, ye've the mak-
ings of a mon!"
"By God!" he added, gazing at the young man's un-
feigned indifference to his own achievement, "ye are
a mon! The Yankees I hate, each and all of them.
And yourself I never welcomed! But ye're a mon!"
He ordered in food and they ate. Then Garth
filled his pipe and passed the buckskin bag of tobacco
to the other.
"And what did ye find, below? he asked, presently.
"Why didna they come in?"
"Annette!" called Langley Barnes. He knew she
was just behind the blanketed door. She came and
stood inside.
"Bring in the furs!"
The girl complied. She brought in bundle after
bundle, which she had taken from the sled, her own
skilled eyes shining at their worth.
Garth took up skin after skin, his face cold, his eyes
narrow but glittering as he graded, tossing the black
67


THE SHIP OF SOULS
fox into a pile, the silver into another. Laying a skin
over his knee, he paid no attention to the coat, but ex-
amined the inside, at the root of the tail—all white;
clear, fine, clean white!
"Prime!" said he. "Good hunters. What a hunt!
Yet fools say the fur is gone! Not McTevish way!"
He sorted the furs, each species to its pile, his face
immobile, hard.
"Ye'll have been making them no price?" said he,
cannily, unconsciously dropping into the burr of his
native speech, as he might when much moved over any-
thing. "And whaur are the owners o' these? Why
didna they come in?"
In answer Barnes spread on the table the last will
and testament of William Durgin, bequeathing the
furs to Langley Barnes. Without use of glasses, the
old man read, turned it over, read it slowly again.
"Why do ye come here, mon?" he exclaimed fiercely.
"Why do ye raise questions we never have had here?
I trade for the Company! This is in Company terri-
tory!"
"Very well," said Barnes. "The Company pays the
hunters, the owners. It cannot confiscate."
"Oh, aye," grumblingly.
"And the Company pays."
"What is right, aye."
"No reason exists why the Company should not buy

68


ANNETTE AND CHRISTINE
these furs of the owner or owners. The last owner is
dead. He sold to me. You shall say who owns them
now. If I do not, the Dominion does. Which makes
the best shipment, next season, when the boat comes?"
Perhaps the corners of Angus Garth's eyes changed
a trifle. "Ye're a trader, lad!" said he.
"Not at all. I'm only a business man—and a Yan-
kee, if you like."
"The factor at McTevish maun be a trader. Good!
But he maun aye be just."
"As you are, sir."
"Aye! Well, then, lad, ye've six thousand or mair
in fur. Such fox I've not seen in years; and we can
pay high for such. In trade, of course!"
"Part in trade, of course!"
The old man's eye twinkled.
"Hah! Why should I pretend? Ye've it in ye, lad!
Ye'd not stand for squeeze or bluff or crooked work!"
"No. No matter what it meant. Not from any
man on earth! Nor give it to any man."
"Such men have made this Company! Such men
have made McTevish. Such only can hold it for the
years to come. And they are not many—the men who
dinna cheat, but who are just and fair—nae so many—
nae so many!"
"With your pay for a hunt ye never made, for fur
ye couldna buy, ye'll be going home next season, well
69


THE SHIP OF SOULS
paid for your small adventure in these parts, eh, sir ?'*■
The keen eye was fixed on him.
"I would make as much in a month at home. What
would it buy, there? Why then did I come here3
Take the furs. Give them to Christine and Annette,
share and share."
"To the weemin? And why do ye name Christine
first?"
Barnes colored. "I did not know I had. She is
older."
"And she is all white?"
"That might be why."
"Do ye think the Company wad pick ye a white
wife, for the trade among the people?"
"Did they pick her mother, for you?"
"Gad! mon—dinna drive home such a blow. But
McTevish wants nae mair follies. The new factor
maun be a practical mon—he maun care most for the
Trade, all the time, all the time. He maun know weemin
is weemin! He maun have the natives come a hundred
miles to have tea with his woman at the back door of
the post—unbeknownst to him! And she maun speak
their tongue. 'Tis the Trade! What Yankee knows
it? Not ane of them all.
"Ye'll be going home, the summer?" he repeated, a
cautious look out the corner of his eye once more.
"I've not said.'
70


ANNETTE AND CHRISTINE
Angus Garth was a man of few words, an autocrat
iwhose whim was law along the Arctic, whose ways
never were discussed. And since in two races he was
a father, let none ask what now was in his grim, dour
mind.
"Christine!" he called, suddenly.
The girl came into the room, where in her civilized
garb she never seemed other than incongruous. She
stood, questioning, looking from one to the other,
slightly flushed, her eyes very bright, eager.
Langley Barnes again arose, instinctively. He
noted now again that the girl was very striking, very
womanly. He saw the faint color on her cheek. . . .
Clear as through glass her soul lay before his sophisti-
cated, cynical eyes, expert in women, weary of women.
... As honest as the day, as true as steel, he saw
her. . . . Faithful, making a good wife and good
mother. . . . And back of that, the worship of a
normal woman for a normal man, a man who could
assume the rights due him north of the Circle. A
sweet soul, an ungrown soul, a virgin heart, wasting—
ah! His own heart paused a beat or so at this cool in-
ventory. Then he felt shame that he had made in-
ventory.
"Stand ye together, both!" The old man's voice rose
clear, commanding. "Take hold of hands!" . . .
Suddenly Langley Barnes stepped forward, caught
71


THE SHIP OF SOULS
in his the hand of Christine Garth. In one swift
flash he knew—and he decided like a fool, a criminal—
or a man. He could not put away the look in this girl's
eyes. He took his venture.
She turned to him, the color high in her cheek, but
obedient to the man who always had obedience, her
hand lay soft and warm in his, not withdrawn. She
took her venture also? Or did she know?
"Christine, this lad's been marrit in his ain country.
He's done with his old life for aye. He never will go
back again. He'll be factor here, when Angus Garth
says it. He's a brave mon. He trades well and fear-
less, yet he's just and fair. Christine, ye'll never see
his better here.
"Do ye take this mon for your husband, Christine,
till death ye twain shall part?"
The girl, comprehending now, suddenly trembled
all through her body. She looked at her father, at this
man—so much closer now than through her little win-
dow pane. In a flash some new thing came to her also,
some visitation, some answer, some swift and daring
resolution. She could make no answer audible.
Only, she did not withdraw her hand. And since
she looked at his face with sudden, shy reverence, since
her hand unconsciously held to his the warmer and the
tighter, since also now he knew that he was then the
salvation or the ruin of a soul whose saving could be
72


THE SHIP OF SOULS
It all was over in one swift, compelling, unpremedi-
tated moment. And now, indeed, he knew that upon
him was the solemn charge of saving or damning a
soul; yes, though that might cost his own. . . . Well,
till now, in all his life he never had known the glory of
giving service to the world or putting himself and his
interests back of those of a fellow being.
“The rest shall be in time, and your ain time," said
Garth, simply. “Ye've hardly met till now. Rest ye
easy and apart. Not yet the feast. And mayhap a
meenister may come, or ye come to a meenister, some
day.”
"Marie!"
The Indian woman, mother of Annette, entered.
“Your son!” He nodded to Barnes. She stood, im-
passive.
“Annette !” Again the high, imperious command.
And Annette entered, to see the man who once had
taken her in his arms, standing, holding another woman
by the hand-her sister; in whose eyes she saw enough.
“Your brother, Annette !”
And then old Angus Garth, the tears rolling from his
eyes, turned to the fire and dropped his face into his
hands.
"Lord God of my feythers !” he groaned. "Ha' peety.
on us a'. I hae done the best I knew!"
74


CHAPTER IX
LANGLEY BARNES
TIDWINTER came to old Fort McTavish,
the long midnight of the Arctics. The na-
tives of the vicinity had all scattered into
the wilderness since the Christmas trade, to wage one
more battle with starvation. The few buildings of the
post were long mounds of snow, which only the blue
smokes identified as human homes. The vast reaches
of the frozen river, mile wide, lay like level white
plains. In the forest the snow was five feet deep, un-
broken by track or trace of man, trailed only by the
creatures of the wilderness who had fought for life for
centuries here and learned survival.
In the home of Angus Garth the same complex
remained. Langley Barnes was moody and silent al-
most as the trader himself. Now and again it seemed
to him he caught a gleam of contempt in the old man's
eyes. For, as Langley Barnes made no denial, there
still remained under the one roof two maids and a
young man. And still the same questions came up in
the young man's mind.
75


THE SHIP OF SOULS
He evaded Annette and her arts now. What could
be the issue of it all? Was there a wedding or a mar-
riage covenant between Christine and himself? Had
he himself been free man or bigamist when he swore
to cleave to Christine alone? Was it expected that the
wedding should be repeated in case a minister should
ever come? And meantime, was he married? Had his
wife by then secured her divorce? He could not know.
Annette, smiling, always ready and efficient, always
waiting on him as though he were her own and that
were her duty—what was the truth of that? Could it
be that Angus Garth had indeed gone wholly savage,
devoting both his daughters to his double problem?
At least, he said nothing whatever regarding Annette,
and he gave no sign to aid the man he openly had
chosen both as his successor and his son-in-law. Angus
Garth waited—waited till youth and the North should
speak to Langley Barnes.
Driven in on himself, having time now if not to re-
pent at least to reflect at leisure, Barnes tried sober
reason—too late. And then came the sting of con-
science. Then, the drag of habit, the grasp of con-
vention, the shackles, centuries old. Alicia, his law-
ful wife—did she suppose him dead? Suppose he
were dead, what would Alicia do? Would she find
another mate for her ease-loving life? Would her
frowning, petulant, nagging treatment of himself be
76


LANGLEY BARNES
repeated with another husband? Well, Alicia might
marry if she liked, as she liked, and when she liked.
Not one faint trace of male jealousy now remained in
his heart. That was done. That slate was washed
clean. So he knew he no longer loved Alicia. Why
then go back to Alicia? And if not to Alicia, to what
else? Had Christine known all this, she would have
been happier. Between Christine and Langley Barnes
now was nothing but his conscience. To the girl, the
wedding had been an actual, sacred, solemn thing. She
was unwed wife to a man she loved.
He kept on reasoning. . . . Was there so much
savor in civilized success? What did it mean to rise
early and work late, to keep the pace set by other men,
to plunge into the hypocrisy and insincerity of business
and social life? What was the actual and eventual sum
in comfort in all that? Was that life—did it hold all
that life could hold? And what was here—a real
woman, his wife, two doors away? Yes—except for
his conscience!
Langley Barnes, full-bearded now as old Angus
Garth himself, as grim and taciturn also, went out
one morning into the yard and stood looking at his
dog team.
Alex, the breed son of Garth, approached. He no
longer smiled when the new man handled dogs.
77


THE SHIP OF SOULS
“Alex, how far up the river to the first Company
post?”
“Two hundred eighty, three hundred, may be so,"
replied the boy.
“How much will you take to go with me?" demanded
Barnes.
The breed boy understood, but hesitated.
"Ten skins (five dollars) each day, if you go."
"I go," said the boy at last. “What you want?"
"Minister!" said Barnes. Alex shrugged his shoul-
der. “All right,” said he. “Maybe we lose it.”
"If we do lose our lives, it's no worse than losing our
souls here!" But to this Alex made no reply, because
he did not understand.
“To-morrow morning, Angus Garth,” said Barnes,
entering the house again, “I start out for Hope—maybe
Preservation—I don't know where. I'm going to
bring back a minister.”
The old man's head remained half turned over his
shoulder, his brow frowning.
"Poor fool!” said he. “What need ?”
"What the drivers of the winter mail packet do, I
can do. Alex will go with me."
"Ye're leeberal! Ye'd take a son as well as two
daughters! I dinna see why I didna shoot ye long
ago!"
Old Angus Garth dropped his face in his hands.
78


CHAPTER X
THE TWENTIETH MAN

HREE to five pounds of fish daily for each
great dog of the team; half so much if needs
must—it is easy to see that a week, ten days,
must limit any journey between food supplies unless
the march be starving.
But at Good Hope post the travelers learned that
both the minister of the Anglican church and the priest
of the Catholic church had gone out on the August
boat. Their quest had been for naught.
"Alex," said Barnes, "stay you here. Go back to
McTavish when you can get dogs. I go on alone—
Fort Henry—Fort Preservation—I don't know.
Maybe I can catch the winter packet and go with the
But Langley Barnes had in his heart of hearts no
real intention of catching the winter mail sledge. He
was putting his fate to its last test and traveling alone,
a thing no man does on these long reaches. But still
he headed south, up the great river, alone in the pale
twilight that did not change, over the maddening blue-
mail.
80


THE SHIP OF SOULS
Each day, each night, then, should have strengthened
him in that resolve to return to the God of his fath-
ers—that same God whom old Angus Garth had sup-
plicated for mercy and understanding. Langley Barnes
stolidly answered himself that he was going back to
civilization. . . . He was going to be a man. . . . He
was going back. . . . Aye, but to what? . . .
And so he swung, between honor and instinct, be-
tween conscience and unrestraint, between a man's
duty and a man's tendencies.
One day, out of the black forest, over the blue snow,
in the gray night, came the figure of a tall breed, a
Hare Indian, heading his sledge train North to Good
Hope, over the immeasurable distances that Barnes
now had left behind him.
"Boojoo!" The salutation of the Trade. "Boojoo!"
replied the white man; and produced tobacco from his
hind sack; and asked no questions. If a man traveled,
he traveled.
But after they had boiled the kettle, the breed told
Barnes that twenty-five miles ahead lay the next Com-
pany post—a good settlement, with two churches. The
priests of both were in their quarters now. There had
been a sudden increase of that post, many white men
had come—more than ever had been known. To this
post the trail, cutting across a great bend of the
Mackenzie, would lead him by the following morning.
82


THE TWENTIETH MAN
His own sledge had left the trail broken and plain.
So, presently, with no farewells, the two parted in
the white and blue wilderness of the sub-Arctic night.
And now Langley Barnes knew that he must decide.
He knew he was within striking distance of civiliza-
tion—the church, the law, lay close at hand. By noon
to-morrow he could tell some holy man his story. He
could tell the story of Christine and himself.
About him lay a vast white silence. Overhead the
stars shone, curiously disarranged from their old places
as he had known them at his accustomed latitude. The
cold was like a fabric, enveloping, gripping close. A
faint wind breathed across the forest as sleep began
to come to him. A haze came across the moon. There
might be snow. . . . He slept.
He knew not what time he awoke, but when he did
so it was in a world of cold faint blue silence. The
forest no longer swayed and moaned above him, and
the night was still. But a thousand voices sounded all
around him, above all, a stirring tumult, coming closer
—the sound of human voices, surely, mingling dis-
cordantly—voices, shouts, a chorus of strong voices
uniting in a wild song? Could it be? No men could
travel in such a storm, at this hour of a night like
this.
Langley Barnes reached out a hand, pushed an ember
to the center of his paled fire. He had answer in what
83


THE SHIP OF SOULS
seemed a vast, gusty shout of laughter of strong-voiced
men. The chorus of a ribald, rioting song seemed to
come to him, a compelling music!
Something stirred the soul of the man in the bivouac,
some reaction he had not known, some ancient Viking
call of Valhalla, over the far vague spaces of the world,
reaching to the cave of the heathen animal, man, dor-
mant all these centuries, but never dead, always ripe to
revert.
The fire began to cast a shadow against the forest
wall. He saw, or thought he saw, the sweep of a vast
black shape, dipping above the forest. Then he sank
back, his hair rising, prickling. He knew it was not
the chanting geese at all—they had gone south months
ago; and this was going back into the North—into the
wilderness again.
. . . Twenty paddlers, but one, ten at the further side,
nine on that closer to him! There was the next man's
seat—his own. And he heard the hiss of water—then,
the roll of the paddles on the gunwale as the men
checked the Great Canoe to land to take him in. . . .
Nay, is not the sounding of wave and wind sweeter in
a strong man's ears than the skreeling of the street tram
wheels?
"Chasse Galere! Chasse Galere!" The passing
laughter swept like a wail across the wilderness. The
Canoe had its passenger! The bivouac was empty.
84


THE TWENTIETH MAN
Langley Barnes saw his own blankets lying flat and
empty.
Langley Barnes felt a hand touch his shoulder. He
saw a face-inviting, alluring. It was not the face of
Alicia, his wife. . . . Nay, not New York—Valhalla!
At such hour as would mark morning, Langley
Barnes arose and made his fire, rolled his bed, covered
his cargo with the laced hides.
"March!” he called, and cracked his whip over his
team.
To the post? No. Within touch of church and
state and law and custom, he had swung his sled about,
and was faced on his own back trail. He was going
back-but back to the North! At last he had reached
reason. Now he knew that, until he surely was free
of Alicia, he would take no holy man to deceive Chris-
tine. That was not the answer after all.
Weeks later, his gaunt and starving team of dogs
rounded the bend and headed for the landing at the
foot of McTavish bluffs, the sled followed by a single
plodding figure.
Annette that day-as on many another day—had sat
for hours on the great hewn lookout slab, staring over
the dim white plain, where now no traveler could be
seen. But here a traveler must show on the way to
McTavish.
85


THE SHIP OF SOULS
So she was waiting, fur clad, fresh, smiling, radiant,
when he pulled in at the foot of the path, his yellow
beard white with frost.
She took the whip from his hand, pulled up his
parka hood for him, ran a swift eye over his gaunt,
hard frame, his tawny frozen beard, looked into his
hard blue eye.
"You got no minister?"
"No!" he croaked, hoarsely.
Then, seeing that her man had come back, whom
she had had no right to suppose she would ever see
again alive, and whom she had no intention of sur-
rendering to any other woman in the world, Annette
kissed him—suddenly, without invitation.
Her lips were warm, even in the icy North. But
now, he had thought.


CHAPTER XI
THE MAD PIPER OF McTAVISH
ETLE pleased at the forwardness of Annette,
Barnes stalked off, once more headed for the
house, which now as much as any roof in the
world meant home for him, not looking over his shoul-
der at the girl whose lips now thrice had met his own.
Must there be a kiss waiting in some color for the
male, in whatsoever corner of the world? Was there
no escaping woman? He called to mind his wife, thin,
fragile, painted, a cigarette hanging out of the corner
of her little, hard, cold mouth. A wax figure in a rich
man's show window she was, that was all.
At the door, as he stamped the snow from his mocca-
sins, he bethought him of the fashionable toboggan
party in the Adirondacks, where Alicia wore her
galoshes as girls did on the streets, over thin silk stock-
ings, one top turned down, one left wide and flopping
—like the painted girls in the streets, in the cafes, half
clad, with chipping sparrow warmth in them, but not
vitality enough left to warm a kiss for a man who
would dare the paint. Well, here he was. It had all
87


THE SHIP OF SOULS
been a mistake. And a kiss was a kiss, in any color.
... Or was it so?
The melancholy of his eyes grew deeper. He knew
he was going back now to a woman with whom could
be no fast and loose. Aye, and he was eager to see her
face, albeit with this veil of doubt between him and her.
He was not half using any of his senses. He had
not heard definitely the sound that came full to his ears
as he stood at the door. It was the squeal and skirl
of the Scottish pipes. Here—how? No matter; across
the parade ground where the Indians and the Mounted
Police played football under the midnight sun, yonder
came the pipes.
It was old Angus Garth, bare headed, his gray hair
blown in the icy wind. He was in his usual sober
tweeds, his feet moccasined as always. His eye was
fierce under a bent and frowning brow. He strode
high, sternly, as he came, looking straight ahead, chan-
ter and drone at peak of their capacity. And never,
in any wild corner of the world, have the Highland
pipes threatened and wailed to a wilder listening than
now, in the far and forgotten North, speaking to the
spirits of the Arctic air.
Garth advanced to the nigh end of the path he had
beaten in the snow, from the corner of his own house
to the low barracks once occupied by the detail of the
Mounted stationed there. Barnes looked at him stead-
88


THE MAD PIPER OF McTAVISH
ily, concluding that he was not intoxicated, but only
driven by one of his wild moods.
If Garth saw him, he made no sign, even at twenty
feet. Staring, frowning, absorbed, he did an about
face at the end of the path with military exactness, and
skirled off in the opposite direction, at the same un-
varying pace. An uncanny thing to witness.
Barnes gave the courtesy of wild men to wild men's
rights in a country where a man did wholly as he
liked, did not speak, opened the door and entered.
In the light, relatively dim, he was conscious of a
figure moving toward him from the window—Chris-
tine. Neither spoke at first, then Barnes, after a time.
"The old man ought not to be out there. Is he
drunk?"
"No, worse, sir," said Christine, simply, "my
father's fey."
Barnes nodded. He knew. He sat down at the fire-
place, drew off his mittens, his cap, untied his mocca-
sin at the ankle flaps. Without a word he took the
dry moccasins, the fresh duffel squares, which the girl
silently handed him.
"This can't go on!" said he, at length, savagely,
turning to her. "There'll be an end of everything
here. How long has he been this way?"
"Two days 'twill be. I can do nothing with him.
He's fey."
89


THE SHIP OF SOULS
“I did not know he played the pipes, or anything.
Where?"
"He's always had them—before my time. At his
worst, he plays. 'Tis to ease him, he once would say;
but now he says nothing. Only, when he plays, we us-
ually hide. It may be years apart, his spells; of late,
more often. I've seen him, from the window, this half
hour. He'll freeze.”
"The window—” Barnes turned, uneasily.
"Oh, aye. I saw."
"You saw what?"
“Annette does not fear our father. She no more
than laughs at the pipes.
"And I saw Annette kiss you, sir,” she added, "You
did not put her back.”
"She has never told you?” said Langley Barnes,
after a long time.
“Always. She boasts, mocks, taunts me-always.
She says she will have you, sir. I would not fail to
welcome you back, sir; but to see you just now-
Annette—and you! But how shall I help? And my
father's fey! Oh, I think, sir, I am in need of help.
He's gone fey!"
In her emotion she had dropped again into her fath-
er's Scotch fashion of speech.
Barnes was on his feet. He caught the girl by the
shoulders, a sudden feeling in his own heart he could
90


THE MAD PIPER OF McTAVISH
not name or classify, since it was altogether new. He
swept the girl's hair back from her brow, looked at her
eyes. They were soft with welling tears. His hands
dropped.
"My God!" said he. "Who did all this? What is
it that we all have done!"
The scream of the pipes, approaching again, made
the only answer, demoniacal.


THE WEDDING ROOM
trimmed and of abundant oil. The interior was the
more illuminated because the walls, instead of being
left of raw logs with ragged moss seams, had been
covered not with furs or blankets, but with white drill-
ing, so that at first they seemed done in plaster. And
there were pictures, here or there, books on shelves.
The room was at first sight a boudoir, for at the
far corner was a bed, its counterpane smooth, immacu-
lately white; and there were chairs, not boxes nor log
ends for seats; even a sofa, or long divan, at one side.
But all the center of the room was filled with a din-
ing table, covered with a good linen cloth! There was
glass, there were dishes, there were service plates laid
for ten persons, the serviettes, the side plates, the flat
silver all in place!
He was looking at a marvel, a miracle; stunned,
dulled, and uncomprehending as he so long had been.
He stared, indeed did not have much thought.
Christine, in her straight, easy way of walking,
stepped across the room and drew back a hanging cur-
tain. It had covered not a window, but her little
melodeon—the sort that mission churches sometimes
have in this or another land, far out. At the rack were
pages of music, additional music piled orderly atop the
instrument. She ran a hand lightly, lingeringly, along
the narrow keys.
Barnes stood uneasily silent. It was difficult for
93


THE SHIP OF SOULS
him to determine any line of procedure. Continually
she kept her face turned away from him, her head
bent. At length she turned to him suddenly, her head
erect, her cheeks burning. He could not see the inter-
laced fingers of the hands she held behind her. Only
he could see her pride, her ambition, her shame, her
humiliation—and something more.
"Now you know!" said Christine.
Over the soul of Langley Barnes, now twice turned
back toward despair, suddenly swept the returning
surge of the white man's decency. When he spoke it
was in the knightly courtesy of the gentleman he once
had been. Quickly he stepped toward her, his own
hand insistent till at last she put hers into it. His
voice was vibrant with a genuine emotion—pity, com-
prehension, admiration, almost something more—when
he spoke to her at last.
"You have done me a very great honor, my dear,"
said he. "In all my life I have never had a greater—
no, not in all my life. I see. You—you've been trying
to get upward. Me, I've been slipping down and not
trying to get up. You're so much my better, I'm
ashamed to speak to you."
She moved her head from side to side, her eyes
down.
"Ah! You've been a girl with no chance on earth
—and look at your ambition! I've had every oppor-
94


THE WEDDING ROOM
tunity in the world—and look at me! I'm not worthy
to loose the latchet of your shoe. A brute. A cad. A
deserter. A foresworn man. A traitor to my race,
my color, my blood-and to you! And look at you!
Oh, if you had not seen only the ill side of me. If
we could get out of here"
"We can not.”
"I said, if we could."
"If we could, you'd have laughed at me. Poor igno-
rant fool I am, castaway for aye, with never a chance
and only a hope—Ah, had ye not come, had ye not
come !"
"I said, if we could get out_”.
“If we could, and if we did, and you'd once be
ashamed of me, if once you'd laugh at me I'd die
then, surely I'd die. And often-since you've come
I've wished I might.”
"Christine! Cease--you must not !"
"My book said, 'Pity is akin to love.' Sir, I wish
you might pity me, since I have such distress. But it
is not pity a woman wants. If I knew you pitied me,
I'd die of it. And I'm only a savage-ignorant, igno-
rant, ignorant! Tried? I don't know why I've tried.
We met-why? Why?”
"We met on the hill, Christine. I was going down;
you were going up.”
"To pass—at least—to pass! Don't I know? Well,
95


THE WEDDING ROOM
"No, Christine !” said he, "we were not. Time now
for the truth, and all of it."
She drew away to the opposite side of the couch
to which he had drawn her.
“Then my one hope is naught! I am twice alone.
Now then I am damned for my father's sin, and my
mother's!
"But how could I see all this clear ?" she broke out.
"Who could have taught me? You, who could have
done so, did not. Instead, you kissed Annette. Are
all men so ? Then why should I have tried to figure
out a husband, a man, a white life for myself some
day, where I could be what was in me to be, where I
could find—ah! for what good? If men there, in your
world, are as they are here, what use for me to try?
And if we were married—which we were not and never
will be now-did you first do as all your men do, kiss-
ing Annette--so soon? And if you did it then, will
you not kiss her again? Well, who else is for her,
now?”
"I did worse !” broke out Langley Barnes. "I did
infinitely worse! I stood before witnesses and took
your hand and swore to love, honor and cherish you so
long as I lived—as I 'shall, so help me God! Your
father said it was to save your soul. No, it is you
alone ever can save mine. And now you can not.
Because, Christine, I lied, I denied my religion, denied
97


THE SHIP OF SOULS
the law and the truth. God never does forgive those
things.
"I was already married, Christine, when I stood on
the floor with you! I promised I would care for you
in sickness and in health, for better for worse, till
death should us part. By God! so I shall, though 'twas
criminal of me, to do what I did. But your husband
in law I can not and could not be. Husband of any
other sort I shall never be. I shall save you from part,
at least, of the contempt you could have for me."
She swept a slow hand in gesture to the little white
clothed table. Her smile was a grievous thing for a
man to bear. It wrung tears suddenly from the hard
eyes of Langley Barnes.
"It was to have been our wedding meal," said she.
"A dinner? I have read all I could find of what makes
a marriage, and what wedding customs are, sir. I—
I tried to make it—nearly as I could—like the table of
your own people. I tried to be like you! I—I read so
many books—about etiquette, you know? All that.
So you should not be ashamed of me. So you would
laugh and kiss me, one day, in this very room, and say
everything was right, and that you would not be
shamed by your—your—"
She choked, unable to say the word that she had her-
self earned by payment of well nigh all a woman has
to pay.
98


CHAPTER XIII
MOCKERIES
EADENED by the distance and the interven-
ing walls, few sounds here were consciously
audible. They were alone. They were
young. By argument of many things they might have
convinced themselves. But suddenly, as they stood
silent, dangerously silent, they started, at sound of a
distant slamming door.
"He's gone to his room!” said Christine. But she
made no move to join her father, nor could Barnes
leave the place. He felt strange fingers plucking at
his heart.
The girl, strangely womanly, strangely gracious and
gentle, rose and passed to the spread table. He saw
her ever after in his memory. Her body, inclined to-
ward him, as though imploring understanding, her
arms down, with hands spread a bit, fingers curved,
confessed her shame in her ignorance of his own ways
of life. But of coquetry, of appeal of any cheap sort,
there was none in the face or body or soul of Christine.
Her attitude showed only the longing of her life for
99


THE SHIP OF SOULS
expression. She paused as one at the threshold of his
world, wishing she might enter it but ignorant of what
might be within. None the less, she pulled herself to-
gether and sought refuge in safer things.
"In my books I read how the silver must be laid,"
said she, calmly. "They use first from the outside
forks, is it not so?"
Her face was scarlet, but here was a brave woman.
Langley Barnes sprang to his feet and joined her at
the table side—their wedding table, which could not
be.
"Well," said he, "the oyster forks—"
"I know. They have three tines, rather a slim
handle. I have none. Let me use some little sticks to
represent them."
Gravely, she searched about the mantel until she
had found certain twigs she earlier had put there.
She placed them as dummy forks.
"I have never seen an oyster," said she. "What
are they like?"
He tried to tell her; could not.
"Ice we could have, surely," said she. "Catsup, we
get, in the stores, sometimes. I could make a—cock-
tail—is it?—in whisky glasses, or we could have them
raw—if we had oysters—
"Soup next, of course. I can do that, many ways.
We'll say, clear?
IOO


MOCKERIES
"But fish? Oh, now!" Her eyes kindled. “Some
day, I had planned to broil a whitefish. The inconnu
is not so very bad, but the whitefish, that is what we
shall have! Then we remove, once more ?"
“Yes, everything. We have now had three courses,
I believe.”
"In all my life I never have sat at a table where all
was not served at once. In all my life I never have
seen a man in what you call ?-dress-up, one's
clothes--"
"Evening clothes. No, up here we could not wear
them.”
"And now~my knives and forks are all the same
size, in toward my third plate, sir. Is it right? I
can do no better."
"The fourth plate, really, Christine. The service
plate the butler just put down, but he takes it away
when he begins to serve.”
"How odd! And I never have seen a butler, of
course."
"The knife and the fork for the roast might be a
trifle larger, Christine. But as the servants quite often
carve such meats, carving does not so much figure
as—”
"As with us? No, I suppose not. But, sir, you
have quite forgotten the iced olives—perhaps a fresh
radish—some celery? I have never seen any one of
IOI


THE SHIP OF SOULS
those things! But we must imagine the two dishes—■
here, and here? They are glass?"
"Yes. Very well. Now, with the roast the man
will offer each guest also, from a silver dish which he
will bring, one after another, after the roast is served,
perhaps mushrooms, or potato rissole, or potatoes in
small spheres, Christine, with melted butter and chopped
parsley, perhaps? Maybe an artichoke. Maybe aspara-
gus. Maybe a sugared baked apple. Maybe a very
extra sweet potato, baked, candied, you know? Maybe
—but what is your roast, Christine?"
"Caribou, moose. I never have seen a joint or saddle
of beef or mutton!"
"Very well. It is caribou. Now, the master may
carve. The butler receives the portion. He carries it
first over to you."
"Me?" her face scarlet.
"That all may observe the hostess prove the dish—„
and show it, how it is done, you know?"
"I?" The scarlet deepened. "But it is I who have
passed—I who have cooked, have done the dishes,
who—"
"We are making believe," said Langley Barnes,
gravely and simply. "I think we shall have a saddle of
young caribou. Then, of course, we shall have passed
white wines and have come to Burgundy."
"It must all be Scotch."
1
102


THE SHIP OF SOULS
luncheon, if you wished, you could lead with a salad,
served with the first course. That's California. Now
is where you do the salad. Smaller plates now, smaller
forks."
"And knife?"
"We don't do salad with a knife. And—I forgot to
say: asparagus and cheese straws if you have any—
just the fingers, Christine."
"That's odd."
"Many things are odd. But the hostess knows—"
The slow red in her face again, so that he winced
again. But he went on gayly.
"Hearts of lettuce to-night, Christine. We'll not do
tomatoes to-night. Can you direct the French dress-
ing? Usually or often the host can do the dressing—
oil and vinegar, salt, paprika—not one in a thousand
can do it right, but each thinks he can. Or the man
has it made, in a silver sauce boat, on the edge of the
plate; and little balls or so of nice cream cheese on the
plates, eh what?"
"It's lovely!" said Christine. But she meant it all,
sincerely.
"Now the man or the maid, with her little white
bow in her hair, brings in the finger bowls, each on a
fresh plate—the best in the shop, Christine; this tin
cup will do. See, under the finger bowl, which we
represent with this tin cup, for silver or gold or crystal,
104


MOCKERIES
is a fine lace doily, Christine, our best, because this is
rather a good dinner we are doing."
"And they dip only the finger tips. And the napkin
has never been tucked. It never even has been fully
opened, only half, and it's on the knees—"
"Wait, Christine. Not yet. See, we take the bowl,
doily and all, from the plate, and set it on the table
cloth in front of the plate. It's the last plate."
"I'm so glad."
"Yes. Well now, the man or the maid comes to the
left side with the dessert. Of course, we've had a taste
of champagne at the salad. Now the dessert—"
"Ice cream? I've read of that."
"Sometimes. But the French say no, even with hot
chocolate on it. I've known a nice casaba melon find
praise. There are light pastries, sometimes. You can
have near by a dish of colored mints, you know."
"Stick candy only. From a keg." She spoke bit-
terly. But he did not smile.
"This is a modest little, informal, every day dinner,
you know—"
"Informal? Everyday? Did—did she?"
Langley Barnes nodded, his face suddenly sharp in
pain.
"Yes. We might have branched out—entremets,
that sort of thing. But this is a very good dinner,
Christine, so you need not be ashamed of it. And now,
105


THE SHIP OF SOULS
since it is not a big or formal party, you see, we can
have coffee, all of us, right at the table, and the ladies
don't need to go, because wine isn't used so much,
lately. But it's very nice, if this is just you and me,
you know, to go to our nice drawing room for the
coffee. The man brings it in a high silver pot. Little
cups, very fine, on the silver tray, never large ones as
for breakfast. Sugar in lozenges, in a nice bowl, silver,
I hope. Little spoons, simple, but good ones. There's
a very fine little creamer along, but I wouldn't use
cream—or even much sugar—in after dinner coffee."
"Our napkins?"
"They're in on the dinner table, just put up loose, not
folded, say the half fold is in where we left it on the
knees, Christine. Never tucked in use, never folded
after—that's if you are well to do and don't use the
same napkin twice, Christine. Very well. You don't
know you've got a napkin, it's nothing to you. So now,
with coffee, cigarettes, usually, you know."
"Women?"
"Quite usually, yes, now."
"Did—did she?"
"Yes."
"Was—was she—sweet?"
"Was I?"
"I do not know. Annette's mother, my—my father's
housekeeper," proudly, "smokes a pipe. Annette
106


MOCKERIES
smokes a cigar—when the men are here. But-my
napkin! Annette mocks me about it. My father does
not notice. But for three years I've had a napkin at
every meal! I made these-four. But”-here the
scarlet again in her fair skin—"I used one two or three
days, quite commonly. I-I had a ring, of birch
bark—”.
“Yes, I've seen silver napkin rings. That's in the
line of mortuary record. Now, since nothing hampers
us, let's not. Let's act as though means and ease and
custom and assuredness—”.
"Oh, please don't! Pity me!" she broke out. "See,
see! It is all a play, and all a mockery to me.”
“Yes," said Langley Barnes. "It was all a mockery
to me, when once I lived it daily. I came to learn of
you."
“To learn what, sir?”
“The part of life that is not mockery. And now
I've ruined that.”
"Hush!” She raised a hand, her ear catching some
sound he did not notice.


CHAPTER XIV
AVE MARIA
THE door opened, without warning. The hag-
gard, bearded face of Angus Garth appeared,
blinking at the light. He had come silently
down the passage, in his moccasins.
"Christine!" he growled; then, as the girl sprang
toward him, he raised a hand to stay her. "I but
missed ye. Stay here, Christine, with him, and have
it out between ye. It maun come one day.
"How came ye here to her ain room?" he demanded,
turning to Barnes.
"Just now I came, sir," replied Barnes, "on unfinished
business."
"Ye'd finish breaking yon girl's heart?"
"Father!" Christine's voice, in shame, unspeakable.
"Oh aye; why not be plain? The time's short. So
ye came to her room, for what?"
"To pay my price, sir!" exclaimed Langley Barnes.
"To sell my own soul also at the best price I could."
"Ye're meaning what? Come, be plain!"
"Oh, I've told her the truth at last. I've told her I
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
a rein on your tongue, man, or I'll put it there for you."
"Say ye so?" replied old Angus Garth, gently,
calmly. "Speaks any man so to me, factor o' McTevish
forty years? Well, well, well! If so, he maun be the
new factor, eh? And has not the chance companion of
the new factor favored him with more than a table fair
empty? At least the bed could have been full—or
the music box not sae idle.
"Has she nae sung for ye, the lass?" he demanded
of Barnes, suddenly, as the latter stood red with anger.
"Did she no sing to ye?"
"No, sir—I did not know she sang."
"Humph! 'Tis much ye know of your ain wife!
Sing? But for the singing of Christine I'd have been
dead a thousand times—lang, lang ere now. It's the
nights, the nights, do ye ken? Forty year." His
mind really appeared affected, his mental processes dis-
arranged.
"Christine!" he added, with the same odd gentleness.
"Sing to him! I'm gaun lie down a bit—sing so I may
rest. Gie my poor brain a bit medicine the day. Sing,
lass."
He was gone when Barnes turned again to the girl,
his eyes uncertain, troubled. Christine smiled.
"You did not credit me with that, or anything?
Well, it may be I sing badly as I do all else. But this
is first instruction. In music I am not quite so new."
no


THE SHIP OF SOULS
come here. They go—and they are gone. My music
I got from him, all I ever had."
She did not even ask him why he asked his questions,
though it was not for her to ask whether a sudden
change of expression had come on his face. He felt it
incumbent to respond to her delicacy.
"You see," he added, "my wife, Alicia—a Har-
bridge, she was—came from Canada to the States. A
mere child, then. Boston; New York. She came from
Toronto, originally. Often she went back.
"But I am always indelicate with you," he broke off,
suddenly. "Here I stand, talking of—her. I want
to hear you sing."
"You will not laugh at me?"
"Did I, ever? But I shall not need to."
"How do you know?"
"I can not tell you. So, sing. What shall it be?"
He stepped to the music rack, picked up sheets, edged
over yet others, turned to her with wonder in his
eyes.
"But Christine!" said he. "This—this is—"
"Music?" she smiled
"Rather! Pergolesi—the 'Stabat Mater'? Why?"
"We sang it, sir."
"And in this—the 'Messiah'?"
"For the most part he alone. But I would rather
not that."
112


AVE MARIA
"What would you like, then, to do for me? My
mind needs medicine, too."
She made no immediate answer. Dulled, moody, he
flung down into a chair and hardly knew when she
passed him. He expected only stuttering regrets, the
certainty—to sense more crudeness, some fresh de-
mand on his sympathy, a new pathetic revelation dis-
playing the barren barbarism and utter emptiness of
life for this castaway here on the Arctic shores. He
turned away, that she might not see him trying
to be kind, might not detect him in any lie of merci-
fulness.
So he did not aid her among the piled music sheets,
hardly was ready when the banal little instrument gave
a moan or so, a softer essaying, a note or two missed,
till the reeds dwelt on the key she ought. Then, gently,
softly, tenderly filling all the little apartment, he heard
a voice—at whose first notes he turned swiftly as
though some shock had come to him. He knew in a
flash that he might reserve his sympathy.
"Ave Maria!" began the voice, "Ave Maria!"—
Gounod's rendition of prayer; at first, a wail, more
than a supplication; then rising through despair to
supplication; to confidence, to faith, to triumph!
He scarce breathed, because he could not believe the
manifestly impossible. As the number closed, the walls
of the paltry little room rose and spread into the archi-
"3


THE SHIP OF SOULS
traves and nave of a cathedral space, and light through
many colored glasses came into the lamp glow, itself
at the last trembling in the vibration of a voice too
great for that confinement. . . . And at last the sob of
weariness and of peace.
She turned to him simply, on the rickety melodeon
stool, her hands in her lap, the great balance, the splen-
did vast reserves of her normal mind and body leaving
her not even more color, her bosom rising not so
much more markedly. She looked straight into the
eyes of Langley Barnes. . . . He knew, then, that
there no longer existed a world which as children men
once knew. ... No. There was a new world now,
with miracles so unusual, there might no longer be
anything miraculous. But certainly, this was a miracle.
He did not speak.
“Did I do it quite right, sir?” she asked, still in
that vast simplicity, that Norse Viking calm which
always smote him. He could only nod, half
choking.
"Perhaps it may make you feel better, sir-music?
That number quite often makes my father feel better,
when he is—bad."
"But-but—this is a Voice, Christine! Such voices
-I'm no musician, but I know such voices—why,
they're not found, that's all! I_" he blushed—“I was
a vestryman in our church once. So I had to attend.
114


THE SHIP OF SOULS
little table. "No, I have sever seen an oyster. I have
not seen celery. A fresh vegetable I have never tasted.
I do not know champagne, whatever it is like. I have
never seen a lady. I have never seen a table spread for
the civilized. I have seen nothing! All I could do was
to read! An orchestra? He told me of it, Arthur
Churchill. Many musics, all in one? I can not quite
think that, because one instrument, two voices, is all
I have ever heard, and one my own. But this I read,
again and again. It is how I know orchestra—know
about it, only—only just about it, as I do all of life—
about it!
"Read it to me, sir!" she demanded. "I—I fear you
might not like my reading. I would na like to have
you smile. Read to me."
He began, giving her, from the printed page of a
precocious, priggish school girl authoress of long ago
(yet a born musician) that impression of her own
dreams of music—that overture of the "Mer-de-Glace,"
in which a fantastic hero performs as leader of an
orchestra.
"At first awoke the strange, smooth, wind-notes of
the opening adagio; the fetterless chains of ice seemed
to close around my heart. The movement had no bland-
ness in its solemnity, and so still and shiftless was the
grouping of the harmonies, that a frigidity, actual as
well as ideal, passed over my pores and hushed my
116


AVE MARIA
pulses. After a hundred such tense yet clinging chords,
the sustaining calm was illustrated, not broken, by a
serpentine phrase of one lone oboe, pianissimo over the
piano surface, which it crisped not, but on and above
which it breathed like the track of a sunbeam aslant
from a parted cloud.
"The slightest possible retardation at its close brought
us to the refrain of the simple adagio, interrupted again
by a rush of violoncello notes, rapid and low, like some
sudden undercurrent striving to burst through the
frozen sweetness. Then spread wide the subject, as
plains upon plains of water-land, though the time was
gradually increased. Amplifications of the same har-
monies introduced a fresh accession of violoncello and
oboe contrasted artfully in syncopation, till at length the
strides of the accelerando gave a glittering precipita-
tion to the entrance of the second and longest move-
ment.
"Then Anastase turned upon me, and with the first
bar we fell into a tumultuous presto. Far beyond all
power to analyze as it was just then, the complete idea
embraced me as instantaneously as had the picturesque
chilliness of the first. I have called it tumultuous—but
merely in respect to rhythm; the harmonies were as
clear and evolved as the modulation itself was sharp,
keen, unanticipated and unapproachable! Through
every bar reigned that vividly enunciated ideal, whose
117


THE SHIP OF SOULS
expression pertains to the one will alone in any age—
the ideal, that binding together in suggestive imagery
every form of beauty, symbolizes and represents some-
thing beyond them all.
"Here over the surge-like but fast-bound motivo—
only like those tost ice-waves, dead still in their heaped-
up crests—were certain swelling crescendos of a second
subject, so unutterably, if vaguely, sweet, that the souls
of all deep blue Alp-flowers, the clarity of all high
blue skies, had surely passed into them, and were pass-
ing from them again. . . .
"It was not until the very submerging climax that
the playing of Anastase was recalled to me. Then,
amidst long ringing notes of the wild horns, and inter-
mittent sighs of the milder wood, swept from the
violins a torrent of coruscant arpeggi, and above them
all I heard his tone, keen but solvent, as his bow seemed
to divide the very strings with fire, and I felt as if some
spark had fallen upon my fingers to kindle mine. As
soon as it was over, I looked up, and laughed in his
face with sheer pleasure." . . .
He ceased. Christine was elate, exalted, beating her
hands together. "Ah! Almost I could laugh with
pleasure!"
He raised his eyes, in new respect, to the enigmatic
creature before him. Tears now in turn were in her
eyes.
118


THE SHIP OF SOULS
you do go back in your readings! Are all your books
of a hundred years ago?"
"My life is far more than a hundred years ago, sir.
[With the Company, a century is naught. We do not
change. Does love? Would na this do? 'Twas what
one named Coleridge said of love, to a friend, long,
long ago. Read that also to me, sir!"
Therefore he began in such words as must be cold
enough epithalamium.
"This I many years ago planned as the subject mat-
ter of a poem, viz., long and deep affections suddenly,
in one moment, flash-transmuted into love. In short,
I believe that love (as distinguished both from lust
and that habitual attachment which may include many
objects diversifying itself by degrees only), that that
feeling (or whatever it may be more aptly called), that
specific mode of being, which one object only can pos-
sess and possess totally, is always the abrupt creation
of a moment, though years of dawning may have pre-
ceded.
"I said dawning, for often as I have watched the
sun rising from the thinning, diluting blue to the
whitening, to the fawn colored, the pink, the crimson,
the glory, yet still the sun itself has always started up
out of the horizon! Between the brightest hues of
the dawning, and the first rim of the sun itself, there
is a chasm—all before were differences of degrees, pass-
120


AVE MARIA
ing and dissolving into each other—but this is a differ-
ence of kind-a chasm of kind in a continuity of time;
and as no man who had ever watched for the rise of the
sun could understand what I mean, so can no man
who had not been in love understand what love is,
though he will be sure to imagine and believe that he
does.
"Thus a friend of mine is by nature incapable of
being in love, though no man more tenderly attached;
hence he ridicules the existence of any other passion
than a compound of lust with esteem and friendship,
confined to one object, first by accidents of associa-
tion, and permanently by the force of habit and a sense
of duty. Now this will do very well—it will suffice
to make a good husband; it may be even desirable (if
the largest sum of easy and pleasurable sensations in
this life be the right aim and end of human wisdom)
that we should have this, and no more-but still it is
not love.
"And there is such a passion as love—which is no
more a compound than oxygen, though like oxygen it
has an almost universal affinity, and a long and finely
graduated scale of elective attractions. It combines
with lust-but how? Does lust call forth or occasion
love ? Just as much as the reek of the marsh calls up
the sun! The sun calls up the vapor--attenuates, lifts
it-it becomes a cloud-and now it is the veil of the
I21


THE SHIP OF SOULS
divinity; the divinity, transpiercing it at once, hides and
declares his presence! We see, we are conscious of
light alone; but it is light embodied in the earthly na-
ture, which that light itself awoke and sublimated.
"What is the body but the fixture of the mind—the
stereotype impression? Arbitrary are the symbols—
yet symbols they are. Is terror in my soul ?—my heart
beats against my side. Is grief?—tears pour in my
eyes. In her homely way, the body tries to interpret
all the movements of the soul. Shall it not, then,
imitate and symbolize that divinest movement of a
finite spirit—the yearning to complete itself by union?
Is there not a sex in souls? We have all eyes, cheeks,
lips—but in a lovely woman are not the eyes womanly
—yea, every form, in every motion of her whole frame,
womanly?
"Were there not an identity in the substance, man
and woman might join, but they could never unify;
were there not throughout, in body and in soul, a
corresponding and adapted difference, there might be
addition, but there could be no combination. I and
1=2; but 1 cannot be multiplied into 1:2X1 = 1-
At best, it would be an idle echo, the same thing need-
lessly repeated, as the idiot told the clock—one, one,
one, one, etc."
He ceased. He had read faithfully, glossing noth-
ing; but now he looked away, embarrassed over words
122


AVE MARIA
which would have caused not the lifting of an eyebrow
in the circles he had known.
"So you have read a chemical analysis of love,
Christine, as well as a synthetic conception of music!
Well, then—"
"Aye! But it was not music! It was not love! It
was about it, and about! That is all I have known.
And yet I am a marrit woman, too—so long!"
She obliged herself to laugh, smoothed down her
apron quaintly. Barnes noted now a very distinct
dimple in a cheek, apparently concurrent only with a
certain mood. But most he admired her courage and
her calm, her simple self-respect.
Love? Never in his life had he thought to study
love, to ask what it was. Women? Why yes, many,
many, as come to all city men of life similar to his own
in a great center of luxury, of hysteria, of degeneracy.
Women, yes. But love? Had he ever yet known it,
or even known what it was?
She went on, smiling and weeping both. "I have
the shadow—aye, I read about it all, but I have naught
in my heart, in my arms, sir. By sin I was born, not
asking. By sin I have lived, not caring. No! No!
Mr. Coleridge is quite right. One can not be multi-
plied into one. 'Tis with love as with the orchestra—
I must aye guess and aye dream—"
Then at last her restraint broke, "I alone, an idiot
123


CHAPTER XV
THE DAWSON PATROL
IT would have been easy to be a man now and not
a gentleman. But that Langley Barnes once at
least had been a gentleman might perhaps have
been argued. He made no move of sympathy, uttered
no word of condolence for Christine. He sat silent.
v How long it might have been, how long it had
been, that they sat thus, neither of these could have
said. But there came, suddenly, a concerted howling
of the sledge dogs from their lairs in the open. Seem-
ingly the entire pack made off toward the crest of the
bluff above the river. At the instant the door was
flung open once more. It was Annette.
The breed girl never was riper in devil-beauty than
now, the taste of a strong white man's kiss still on her
lips. Her oval face was framed by curtains of night
black hair, her black eyes sparkled under the stimulus
of woman blood come to its very zenith. Her restless-
ness showed her keyed vitality. Even in the ill-de-
fining garment of fur, belted at the waist, she was a
compelling figure, above the stature of any woman of
125


THE DAWSON PATROL
that sort's happened here, and nothing of this sort is
going to. Out with you!
"What's that row about?" he added. "Some one
coming?"
"Dawson Patrol come around the Point. Three men,
two sled. I come to tell you." Which last probably
was a lie, although the first was the sulky truth.
The Point was the timbered tongue at the river
bend which Barnes himself knew so well. He stepped
out, following Annette. In the main room of the post,
he met old Angus Garth, who also knew the news.
"'Tis the Patrol!" said he. "Two weeks late. I'd
thought it another party gone to join M'Kinney and
Carter and the others that was lost in Nineteen-Eleven.
Christine! Christine!"
The call brought Christine from her inner room.
The old man was feverish.
"Quick!" he said. "My best! Hurry! I must have
my best wear—new moccasins, mind ye. And find
Marie and tell her to uncover the bottle of Scotch I
know she's hid. Spread—spread now, and dinna stand
there gawkin', Annette! Ye'll mind the factor o' Mc-
Tevish maun be factor. That means for yourself too,
Meester Langley Barnes."
He walked up and down, excited, his eyes wild, the
fever of his mad fit still upon him, his hands trem-
bling.
127


THE SHIP OF SOULS
For very relief from these sordid affairs, Barnes
turned to the open air, walked to the lookout point. Be-
yond, the white level lay spread either way for miles,
the world bathed in a pale blue light, suffused over an
inferno of monotony, the shortening of the night's
eclipse now betokening the eventual passing of the long
Arctic night.
To the cold, Annette—who joined him here—seemed
insensible. An excitement of hate, a flush of female
eagerness at sight of approaching men, stirred addition-
ally the animal-like fires of her bodily vigor. Hands in
her sleeves, muff-like, dancing, turning impatiently, her
eyes were fixed on the group of wraiths advancing along
the icy river, at times almost hidden by the caprice of
cloud and wind and snow.
They came slowly, wearily, literally hour after hour,
though now they had but five miles to do. At times
the vague procession stopped, again to resume its plod-
ding. They saw a man, sledge line over shoulder, at
the head of each team. Two dogs only remained to
each sledge now. There were three men. There should
have been five, and the teams should have been full.
Indians and breeds gathered along the rim. The thin
fusillade of welcoming rifle fire began for the Dawson
Patrol, eight hundred miles out from the Yukon town.
But the hearers hardly raised their heads. Leaving a
trail of red behind them from the feet of dogs worn to
128


THE DAWSON PATROL
showing a sinewy, hard-framed man approaching
middle age—one of those wilderness products hard to
classify as to years; dark, strong, the black hair thin-
ning back on his forehead, his eyes, full, prominent,
piercing black, shaded by oddly drooping lids, giving
him a singularly sinister aspect.
"Johnnie's an Atlin Indian," he resumed, coolly,
pushing the bottle without invitation to the swart black-
visaged native who meantime had stood silent.
"We're both Coast men, though not new on the Yukon
and the Tanana, eh, Johnnie?" He grinned as the
native tossed off his portion.
"Go and bring up the loads," Garth said. "My peo-
ple will show ye." The factor turned to Barnes, and
in curt words made the men acquainted.
"Mr. Barnes is a new man at McTevish. My son-in-
law, he is. He and Christine were married two months
agone. He's to succeed me. Forty-five years at Mc-
Tevish, 'twill be, and this season's the last."
The two, Barnes and Churchill, looked one another
in the eye, nodded, but they did not shake hands.
Garth made the running.
"I'd not thought to see ye again at McTevish, major.
Ye're in the Mounted, now?"
"Yes. Back in. I'd heard something of this busi-
ness on the lower river, so came over the divide to look
into matters. Stampede, maybe, next boat season. I
131


THE SHIP OF SOULS
came out through the States, by Skagway, to Daw-
son."
"Aye? And ye'd look in at McTevish,” was Garth's
dry comment.
“And who wouldn't?” demanded the man called
Stikeen, whose bold eyes scarce had wandered from the
face of Annette, who, turning a dark eye now and
again, sat across the room. “Two such girls belonging
here!"
"They are both my daughters, sir!" said the old man,
savagely. "Ye'll ken that.”
Churchill's gaunt face was turned in query, "A
dominie came up from the new camp? Then there's
something in this talk of strikes on the Mackenzie?”
"What matter?” said Garth, calmly. “I'll no see it,
nor want to. I'm through with the fur and all. I'm
sax and seventy. But the Company'll find no gap in
the succession. She'll put in the man I say. Aye, the
son-in-law and the daughter of auld Angus Garth'll
han'le McTevish anither forty-five year, and their
children thereafter! Fur? McTevish she'll always
have the fur, whatever! I make naught of yon fool's
tale of a stampede, for oil or gold or what ye like,
below! This is the fur, McTevish!
"Christine!" He spoke gently to the pale girl who
arose, still silent. “Set ye the table for them, of our
best. Marie! Marie! Annette! Busy now!
132


THE DAWSON PATROL
"And whiles ye eat, men, I'll aye play for ye on the
pipes, the like I was the morn. Oh aye, I knew ye was
coming. Should I be forty-five year a Heilander cast
awa', and not have the second sight?"
Before any fully understood him or could stay him,
he strode away into his own room. The scream of the
pipes rose again, boring into the tense situation in a
room where might almost as well have been so many
wild beasts crouching, eying one another.
The officer turned to Barnes, nearest to his own
kind here. Barnes returned the gaze calmly.
"Married?" said Churchill at last, his white teeth
just showing in a smile. Christine had left the room.
Stikeen had crossed boldly to Annette. Barnes looked
again at the haggard face of Churchill, high, aquiline,
aristocratic, the face of a younger son, wanderer, sol-
dier, ne'er-do-well.
"You heard him, I fancy," said he.
"So! Married? Well—"
"Do you bring word to me, in the mails—to Lang-
ley Barnes, say, Captain Langley Barnes?"
"How should I know? You were in your service?"
"Yes. And you were at Toronto, where you joined
on for the Royal Flying Corps, yes?"
"Yes. And now I'm just out of worse. Nearest
squeak of my life, just now. And I find you—at Mc-
Tavish!"
133


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"I have heard of you from my wife!"
The face of the half exhausted man almost got a
tinge of color. He tried to smile. "Which one? The
—other one, back in the States?"
"Yes—Alicia. The other one, as you say."
"Then—this one?" Churchill looked into the hard
eyes of the man he had heard described as the new
factor at this post, Langley Barnes. Barnes? Yes, he
knew the man, now! Ought he not to? And after
this he would know the face.
"That will do," cut in the cold voice. "Not a word
from you, about that one, or about this one! Eat and
rest, sleep, get strong as you can, as soon as you can!
Men have come here, as yonder madman says, who did
not go out again!"


CHAPTER XVI
MIXED COMPANY
THE savage fluting of the pipes ceased—Chris-
tine had found her way to her father's room.
The old man suffered himself to be led to the
table in the main room.
Of the five men who sat at board, the adventurer,
Stikeen Harry, was the most voluble. He spoke largely
for the hearing of the breed girl Annette, telling ever
of his own deeds these fifteen years in Alaska and the
Yukon Territory, on the head of the Stewart and the
Black, the White, and the Shusitna, the Tanana, the
Atlin and the earlier Caribou. Nowhere he had not
been, and rarely in any but heroic role, leave it to him.
His "Eh, Johnnie?" or "That's the truth, what, John-
nie?" always brought a silent nod of confirmation from
his Indian henchman, between whom and his master
seemed to exist some sort of understanding.
"I've prospected and hunted from back of the Mala-
spina to the willow flats of the Yukon, and both sides
the Yukon to the top of every decent divide," he ven-
tured. "Not a strike where I haven't cashed in, nor a
135


THE SHIP OF SOULS
big camp I don't know. But Alaska's on the toboggan
now, and a job with a shovel on a dredge is not for me.
This new thing on the Gravel river, gas or oil, is going
to bring a richer bunch in by boat next summer than the
cheechakos of '97, poor fools. And where's money, I'll
take my chance to get my fair and reasonable share.
"Oh, yes, gentlemen, I've tried all the games in all
the places. Never doubt, I've been near here, and in
fur, too. I spent two winters trapping and trading
independent on the Stewart, and a jolly good killing I
made, two scow loads of prime. Oh, gold, fur, oil-
it's one to me. I'll take my chances.
"And a rare lot of fur—in that other room!” he
nodded to Garth. “What price?”
Garth's beard curled. "What! Ye think I'd sell
Company fur to any outside man? Silence about that,
sir !"
"It is Company fur?”
"No. It belongs to my son-in-law. Happen he gave
it to his wife.”
"I've not seen so much silver, and so prime, in twenty
years,” said Stikeen. "And where did it come from?”
"What matter?" answered Barnes. “But, since it is
no matter—from south of here a hundred miles. Two
Americans."
"Americans? What names? Never Hensley, Dur-
gin?"
136


THE SHIP OF SOULS
Barnes pushed back his chair.
"What!" exclaimed Angus Garth. "Do ye mean to
say the Mounted, or the law, or the Domeenion her-
self'll look into any act of the Company's factor at
McTevish?"
Stikeen made no reply, but the glitter of his eye
might have served. The old man only growled into his
tea. Stikeen bided his time.
The meal, eaten half in anger, half in sullenness,
ended at last, none so happily as it might. Churchill
as well as Barnes was silent. The emotions of Annette
alone seemed to have vocality or expression in motion.
She hummed an air, rolling her dancing eyes at Church-
ill, Barnes, Stikeen, now and again bursting out into
giggles, with turnings, pausings, lookings over shoul-
der, her head a little to one side or back as she served
at table. She met Christine in the kitchen now and
again, and so loosed a bit of venom.
"To-night, music? Much music! Heap sing with
Major, huh? How many men you'll want, eh? Such
good girl like you!"
Meantime the mail sack for McTavish had been
brought up from the sledges, together with the robes
and other packages belonging to the patrol. One of the
packages, a small black box, Churchill himself un-
wrapped and jealously kept by him as if it were a
treasure. Then, exhausted as he was, he busied him-
138


MIXED COMPANY
self writing his report on the patrol. Garth prowled
through the very limited newspaper mail allowed, his
letters requiring but small time, for his world began
and ended at McTavish. For Barnes, naturally, there
was no word at all. He had utterly dropped out of the
world. He kept apart, moody and uneasy, not speak-
ing further with Churchill.
"Well, well, sir," smiled the latter to Angus Garth,
pausing in his labors later in the day. "I'm sure I'm
glad enough just to be here alive, by the fire of old Mc-
Tavish again, and full of the Company chow too.
If you don't mind, I'll put away my heavy black box
now. Where? Oh, I know the place—back of the old
melodeon in Christine's room. Is it still here? And
does Christine still sing?"
"Fine she sings, aye. Better. Christine!"
In answer the girl came once more from the kitchen,
dish towel in hand.
"Take this man and his traveling case here to the
far room. Set it back of the melodeon, safe, Christine.
And when the two of ye have done that, sing again for
me as once ye did. Christine, your teacher has come
back from the grave!"
Obedient as always, Christine stepped to the door of
the passage leading to the room where she and Lang-
ley Barnes had met that morning. Churchill joined
her, carrying his small but heavy package.
139


THE SHIP OF SOULS
to follow us, what? We'll get plenty dogs right here."
"No seeum fur yet,” grunted the Indian.
“No, but we will. Come dark we'll use that loft
ladder at the outside window. No locks on any Com-
pany windows, eh? Well, that might have done once!
Times have changed, and the old fool don't know it.
"Now here. To-night we give that loft the once-
over. We sneak down the best fox—to our sleds, and
get it snug under the lacings, because there's a beaten
path to there, and we'd be tracked anywhere else.
We've got to keep in the woodpile trail, back of the
house now. We can set the foot of the ladder in it,
and it won't show."
"To-night?" grunted Johnnie.
“Aye-except one thing."
"Hah? Dat gal?”
“Yes. God, she's got in my blood! I hate to go
away and leave her, now! And for some reason, that
girl's hostile to the Yankee—that sour ball, what do
you call him ?-Barnes.”
Johnnie engaged in deep thought for a time. “Take
gal along !” said he at length. “Her heap Injun. You
heap talk. Heap hug-um. She come. Plenty mad on
other man.” By which jerky speech Johnnie proved
himself none so bad a rapid fire psychologist in north-
ern half-breed sex.
"Her look!" he added presently, though whether
142


BETWEEN FRIENDS
he meant that Annette had looked at Stikeen, at Barnes,
or some one else, Johnnie did not make plain. Stikeen
was willing to use yet another interpretation.
“Look? Looks? I'll say she has! There's a girl to
go along, up here, Johnnie. Fast work, eh? Well,
we've always had to work fast, eh? If I can get her
alone"
Johnnie kindled. “Two team! Her drive !"
"And with a sled of silver and black-eh, what?
'And a girl like that? And a camp like Gravel River
promises to be? Johnnie, boy, we've done worse."
"To-night,” said Johnnie, "you heap hug-um. Me,
I go up ladder. Dam' fools sing, dam' fools sleep, dam'
fools hug-um. We load. To-morrow night, us three
go-gal, me, you!"
“You mean, me, gal, you! Well Johnnie, I'll say
you've got a head.”
"Pretty soon, old man lose it,” said Johnnie indif-
ferently.
“Die? Oh, yes. He's nutty now. But we can't
wait. No, Johnnie, this job is made to order for us
-fast workers, quick clean up-get away while they're
studying over how it happened.”
“Ah-hah. But we got be careful, now. Young
man.”
“You mean the Yankee?”
“Ah-hah. Him bad, no rub-um smooth.”
143


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"I'll rub no man smooth beyond the time I don't
want to!" scowled Stikeen. “I seize the fur and get
to the courts—I'll make a case of debt against it. Let
him whistle. And they've all got to catch us first.
"All right-to-night!" His jaw shut like a trap,
his eyes narrowed. “I'll see if I can get that girl one
side. Maybe she'll throw in with us. There's some-
thing on her mind about something. Now what?"


CHAPTER XVIII
THE NEWS FROM PALM BEACH
WHEN Stikeen Harry pulled the latch of the
factor's room, the air was vibrant with sound
—music of two voices from the room be-
yond.
Langley Barnes sat, his eyes on the door that led to
the passageway. On his lap lay pages of the newspapers
from Dawson, unread, save for the leading article
announcing the invention of a new radio telephone
sponsored by the Transatlantic Radio Phone Co.—the
firm of which his brother-in-law, Ogden, was manager.
"Pardon—would you mind?" began Stikeen, as he
seated himself also at the cleared table, and reached a
hand toward the tumbled sheets.
Barnes made no reply. The newcomer ventured fur-
ther.
"Some singers, in there, what? I'll say they can
sing a bit, eh? You see, as the major told me, he used
to teach that girl music when he was stationed here at
McTavish. A bit thick, eh? But of course, that's all
over now."
145


THE SHIP OF SOULS
The maliciousness of this was not susceptible of chal-
lenge. Barnes gave no note, except that the color red-
dened above his beard.
"Pictures, eh?" went on Stikeen, coolly, scanning the
sheets he had taken up. "Well, thank God! the in-
spector has a heart—he lets the rotogravure pages come
through in the Dawson winter mail, for sure the men
up here don't ever get to see a white woman unless it is
in pictures. No teaching a kid to-day a lady's feet are
sewed on the bottom of her skirt, huh? I'll say not.
Lookit here!"
Gloating, his eyes ran over one page after another.
"Palm Beach—where's that? Warm, I reckon."
He chuckled. "Well, I've seen the dance halls at Nome
and Ruby and Fairbanks, and Dawson afore 'em. But
then, and again, as the fellow said—but then!"
He had thrust one of the sepia ink pages toward
Barnes leeringly, male registering for male interest
confidently. "Why bother about the South Seas? But
a great comfort to us up here 1"
Barnes turned impatiently, a word on his lips that
was arrested, because in spite of himself his eyes had
caught a glimpse of something in the section that
made him look again.
"Bathing Beauties at the Beach.—Snappy Snaps of
Fair Society Stars in the Costumes of the Season.—
Latest Limelights"; and so forth.
146


THE NEWS FROM PALM BEACH
Enough of little enough was in the portraits to arrest
the eye of almost any man, but especially was this true
of one half page showing two youngish women, shar-
ing a barrel as a seat, done in the audacity of their select
set, limbs bare, feet bare, arms bare, jersey for the
scant remainder.
At their feet lay in the sand two young men also in
bathing costume, laughing, smoking, one offering the
end of his cigar in threat to the upturned great toe of
the younger woman, who, cigarette in mouth, her hair
done back by a tight band, her slender figure defined
for all it at least was worth, laughed down at him in
turn.
The bill of specifications did not lack: "Left to
Right, the Beautiful New Yorker, Mrs. Langley
Barnes; Mrs. Cutter-Mills. At bottom, Major Arthur
Courtenay Churchill, distinguished officer of the Royal
Flying Corps, Great Britain; Mr. H. D. Somers, New
York, well known cotton broker now wintering in
Florida." And such other details as were required
fully to elucidate these and other portraits on the same
page of the section—one of the most successful pages
of the sort put out that winter by any metropolitan
journal. It now had found its way across a continent,
up a long and winter bound coast, across a mountain
range, down an icy river—to Dawson; and thence had
carried, on the wings of occasion, across those snow-
147


THE NEWS FROM PALM BEACH
day, now, sweeping from corner to corner of the world.
New means, swift means, of mind passing to mind,
body to body—for what? Why, for the old story of
the igloo and the palm. One thing remaining, old as
the temples of Greece, the cathedrals of England, or
the igloo of the Eskimo! For if man survive not in
his species, despite hunger, war or pestilence, the works
of man are as of no avail. Escape woman here? How
could he do that, since he could not escape the picture
of his wife, come so far to find him?
"'Sail right, all right," said the avid, glutinous voice
of Stikeen, bending over the page at Barnes' elbow.
"This one, left hand, is prettiest. Some shape, eh?
But to my mind her legs is a little too thin. Now—"
He escaped the blow of the crumpled sheet which
would have caught him in the face, by pulling back in
the nick of time. But Barnes did not follow it up.
Instead, he turned, his face toward the door of the
passageway.
The duet in the room beyond had ceased. The
silence now seemed to cry aloud in the imploring per-
petual lack of the Northland, which has so little, so
very little to surrender. The air was starved, now that
those two magnificent voices had ceased to rise to the
throne of peace. Now footsteps; the door opened.
Churchill and Christine entered the room. Some-
thing about her was leaving her glorified. Barnes was
149


THE SHIP OF SOULS
not so cheap as to deny that. Why not? Had not he,
Langley Barnes, that very morning said to that very
girl in that very room that her voice belonged to the
world, though she did not belong to him? And if he
loved her, why rob her of the one great joy and com-
fort which life ever would be like to offer her—music?
Did it not open up to her an utterly new world? And
had she not been living here in no world at all, dor-
mant, in chrysalis, between two cycles of existence?
"Christine!" The voice of Langley Barnes was
quiet but imperative. He pointed, motioned Churchill
also to look where he pointed.
"Christine," he said—and he spoke to both—"you
have tried to have me tell you of that other woman.
You have asked me what silk stockings must be like,
so thin. Well, here you may see that other woman
with no stockings at all. And here—at her feet—
you may see a certain man."
"There are the names," he added, wearily.


CHAPTER XIX
PROPINQUITY
IT was within expectation that Annette, restless as
a robin, running staccato in broken bursts, halt-
ing and peering all over the shop, should learn
of most things then happening at McTavish. But in
truth, events suddenly had outrun Annette. Some-
thing was afoot in which she had not been taken into
confidence. She had a vague feeling of inadequacy,
a sense that here were things in which she had been
adjudged too small for participation. And Annette,
even by implication rated as woman scorned, was a
fiery, vibrant, vital agent of mischief.
Stikeen encountered her as she made a vague circle
of the buildings, restlessly on the move. "Well, young
lady, whither away, now?" he demanded, and losing
no time, gayly caught her by the wrists, halting her.
His swift eye saw again how ripe and full her young
body was, how somber her dark eyes. Cynical phi-
losopher enough, he knew Annette was not happy.
"You weren't looking for me, eh?" Stikeen's voice
and eye were not too bad.
151


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"No. I never heard of you before. Let go. I must
gather wood."
"No? Well, you'll hear of me again. The only
trouble is, there's no real road from the Yukon to the
Mackenzie. But look here, seems like I've read in a
book somewheres about how fate brung me across the
pathless waste just to meet you, face to face!"
Annette giggled appropriately. The clasp of a man's
hand was nothing to bring especial fear to her. More-
over, this was a man of her own level. Not like those
solemn people in the big room, who looked at the
newspaper and said nothing. Here was a man who
spoke her tongue. She spoke his, a language as old
as that of Harold Harfager, say, in early lands of ice
and snow and maids and men.
"Now listen, my dear," begian the snow-runner.
"Life is short. We've got to live it as it goes, eh?
Well, who's here for you to care a cuss for? That
moonias, Barnes? He's gone on Christine, like any
new married man, of course. But now, she's maybe
minding her old days with the major, here years ago,
what? They were off together, Christine and the
major, talking music. Moonias, he's lonesome. He's
sour and sore.
"Now, your old man's loose in the nut—you needn't
tell me. That bag-piping around ain't normal for no
H. B. factor, no. There's hell to pay here at McTavish,
152


PROPINQUITY
and I know it—it's only taken me a couple hours to
spot that out.
"And it didn't take me two minutes to spot you out,
little girl, now did it?"
"You think you do fast work, you?" Annette still
felt her wrists in his hands.
"Well, why not? We come, and go. Now, I only
came here by accident, but it's a good accident. But
I'm bound for the big strike at Gravel River. I can
smell money a thousand miles. I've made it and I've
spent it, a dozen times, and I always shall. I'm a
maker and a spender. A man might as well be shot
with his shirt off on the snow as try to live without
company."
"I don't care. What you talk about? Let go, I get
wood."
"Wait. Annette, yon man don't love you, though
you're so much prettier than Christine there's no nam-
ing you in the same breath. I've never seen a girl like
you."
"What do you mean? Me?"
"Yes, you! This is no place for you. You need
diamonds, silks, made-up furs, flowers, champagne,
money! What have you got here? I'll bet you never
saw a silk stocking in all your life."
"I'll bet so too I didn't!"
"But you should wear silk. You're a plumb beauty.
153


THE SHIP OF SOULS
You're one of ten thousand, if all the women was
picked. But you need a man to take care of you, and
say, 'There, little girl, I done all this for you, and it's
yours!' That's what you need."
The toe of Annette's moccasin was making a iittle
circle in the snow. Her eyes were cast down, some-
times looking at this man's hands, still holding her
wrists.
"I could start a game at Gravel City and we'd break
the cheeckakos for every dollar they had—and they'll
have plenty. You're nothing here. You'll be an or-
phan before spring. If Gravel City booms, the Com-
pany'll never run another boat this far north—they'll
do it next summer, mark my words."
"This post? No!"
"I say yes. Well, let them. You and I don't care.
I can take care of myself here, or at Gravel City or
anywhere. And with you—ah!"
"Oh, ho! So! What you mean?"
"Well, all I mean is to give you something to do a
little studying over. If things don't break right for
you next summer, or any time, you send word to me. If
McTavish is discontinued, it ain't the only place in the
world. Neither is the moonias the only man in the
world."
"Pretty soon! You talk big."
"Pretty soon, yes—that's me. I'd take you as you
154


THE SHIP OF SOULS
down at Gravel, yes. Shouldn't be surprised if they'd
build a cathedral there, build anything. Shouldn't be
surprised if we'd go to Ottawa, some day, rich, and
you'd be presented there; orphan daughter of old
Angus Garth, the oldest factor of the Company, fifty
years in service, and left you rich—and beautiful.
Beautiful, Annette. I say, little one. I swear—"
She wrenched back from him. "I'm prettier than
Christine!" said she.
"A hundred times. Christine? Pouf!"
"But s'pose they find out what you said about the
fur?"
"Let them. For twenty years I've not minded what
men said or what the law said. It's what I say goes,
with me. What I want you to do is to get me the key
to that outside door of the loft to-night. To-morrow
night I want you to be ready with the dogs and with
my war bag packed. We'll leave this place, Johnnie
and I. All I wish is you could go too. What is there
here for you?"
"I've lived here all my life. I am scared." Tears
were in Annette's eyes, suddenly. She too was woman
after all.
"All right. Then stick. There'll be no McTavish
here a year from now. The old man won't live till
spring. You'll have no chance with Barnes.
Churchill'd laugh at you. Where'll you go—back to
156


PROPINQUITY
the Loucheux? Be a woman on a Husky boat? Try
it at Horsehell, where the whalers come? What's left
for you? Who'll you marry? Well, if you can't do
better, come down to me, a man that can tell the world
to go to hell, and we'll have the priest marry us in the
cathedral of Good Hope, with Father Clute's frescoes
all around us, and a choir. Which is best for you, girl
—that, or a life of a cast-out dog, starving among the
tribes between here and Rampart on the Porcupine,
living on rabbits when you can get them? You're not
all white, but I'm playing it as though you was, for
I swear you're the prettiest girl I ever saw. Me, I'm
all white man and all man. If you don't think so, feel
my arm; look into my eyes, Annette!"
She looked into his eyes, bold, dark; in her own dark
eyes for an instant so much of the gazelle, frightened,
that almost he had remorse. Not quite.
"To-night, then; slip me the key, when you can.
Keep up all the dogs, if you can around eleven or twelve
—keep them from barking. My man, Johnnie, 'll do
the outside work. About the furs downstairs, in your
room, Christine's, we'll have to wait till the chance
comes. Where's the loft key?"
"Old man, he's got it; key in his room."
"Well, get it. Don't tell me you don't know how—•
get it, that's all. Now kiss me, little girl! No?"
157


CHAPTER XX
THE CONSPIRACY IN FUR
N the assembly room sat now four persons; Garth,
Barnes, Churchill and Christine. They were in
utter silence, had so sat for an hour save for the
sarcastic grumblings of old Angus, in his half mad
soliloquies, as he sat, head drooped, at the feeble blaze
of the fire.
He turned at last, with a trace of his old imperious-
ness.
“ 'Tis all right, Major Churchill, to bring through
His Majesty's mails, but I'll be thanking ye not to ask
the factor at McTevish to have at his table such a
Siwash as yon Stikeen and his other native. I told
them to eat with the natives."
"As you like, sir," replied Churchill, curtly.
“They're not my men."
"But even so," Garth added, with one of the revul-
sions in which his ailing mind now swung, “ye maun
be weary. I'd fair ask ye to go back to your music,
but ye're thin as a herring, and as red as ane, and as
dried out and mayhap with no more tongue. Sing,
10 mon
158


THE SHIP OF SOULS
She drew back, would have repeated the blow, would
have searched for deadlier weapon, but just then
clamorings of dogs broke out under the open window,
something in their note beyond their usual idle tongu-
ing. This, and the startled scream of Christine, brought
old Angus to the door. He pushed in, saw the two girls
close, caught blood on the face of one, and thinking it
must have come from a weapon at the open window,
sprang to the opening, thrust through his head. Very
naturally, he saw the legs of Johnnie Atlin, standing
on a ladder, working at the lock of the fur loft. This
sight, while it infuriated the factor, sobered and calmed
him. He did not lack decision.
"Quick, men!" he called as he sprang back through
the door. "The fur loft's being robbed!" And just
as he spoke, coolly, calmly, lighting a cigarette, Stikeen
Harry opened the front door and strolled in. Garth,
peering from the window, had not quite caught sight
of his heels around the corner.
"Yon's the man!" Garth sprang for his rifle over
the hearth. He could never have reached it had not
the swiftly whipped weapon of Barnes covered Stikeen
as he swung back his parka. Churchill was not far
behind. Stikeen stood trapped.
"What's the big idea, folks?" he began, his hand
almost to his weapon. "Ain't you excited? What's
160


THE SHIP OF SOULS
great fur loft, where annually a king's ransom lay
waiting for the world. Of course, he commanded the
lighted aperture of the loft window.
"Up you go!" said Langley Barnes. He caught so
full a grip at the collar and back belt of Stikeen that the
latter was rushed to the foot of the ladder before he
thought.
"Cover him, Garth. Come on, Churchill, follow me.
If you make a wrong move, you, one of us'll kill you."
A swift plan and a resolute, and like most such, one
that worked. Accordingly it was Stikeen's head which
first appeared at the window. Johnnie, very much ex-
cited, loosed off at it on general principles of dread,
but being like most Indians a very bad shot with a
pistol, missed his man and only drove the moss out of
a chink. A loud wail from Stikeen halted his hand.
"Hold on! Stop! Who you shooting at, you fool!
This is me, Johnnie. Don't shoot!"
Held helpless at the rear, and afraid to kick at the
man behind him, Stikeen bundled through the win-
dow. Barnes crawled low back of him, keeping him
as a shield—he now knew where the man was hid. In-
side, he straightened and waited for Churchill to come
in. Then he pushed his bullet shield swiftly to the
corner whence the shot had come, the prisoner all the
time adjuring Johnnie to come out and lay down his
arms.
162


THE SHIP OF SOULS
He hurried away and returned with the handcuffs
which always were part of a patrol's luggage. He
slipped them on the wrists of the two men, slapped
them all over again for hidden weapons, then marched
them into the house. Fault of better, he locked Sti-
keen to a stove leg, and Johnnie to a bolt end, project-
ing from a log, whose nut he screwed off, then on
again. Then he ordered their bed rolls spread down
on the floor, so that they might feel the cold less as
they lay there.
"Sorry, men," said he, at last. "You brought me
through. But this sort of thing, breaking open the
Company fur loft, isn't being done. That's our ver-
dict."
"Verdict?" exclaimed Stikeen. "Are you the court
and all? Let me tell you, you've not got us out to any
court yet. If you ever did, what case have you got?"
"Breaking and entering; attempt to use weapon."
"Breaking and entering nothing! I had to enter
that loft, with a gun in my back. As for Johnnie, he
didn't break a thing—he opened the door fair with the
key, and the key was given him by the daughter of the
factor of this post. She said she wanted to store some
more fox up there, because it was in the road in her
room. All he was doing was to help her. It ain't our
ladder—it's the regular Company ladder and the Com-
pany key. Ay, and the Company fur. Besides, even
164


THE CONSPIRACY IN FUR
if it wasn't so, how do you get that way about me?
What have I done? I came in here to sit down at the
fire, open and above board, and you pull guns on me.
Yet, if it wasn't for me, you'd be froze stiff with them
others. You'd better go a d—d sight slower than all
this, my man, or you'll get into trouble."
"I'd not talk too much," said Churchill.
"I'll talk all I please," retorted the prisoner. "This
isn't any bally Klondike rush, with a few of you red
coats stalling around. I'll tell you now, I'll make
trouble for you. All you've got to make even a sus-
picion on is the fact that I have claimed a bunch of
fur of my own, and I did that on a surrender by the
factor of this post of all Company title to them. I'm
willing to stand trial on that, but I'm d—d if I'll stand
trial on this business. You're in wrong. What's the
matter with this place, anyhow? Are you all bug-
house, the lot of you?"
"Counsel you not to talk! It can be used against
you," said Churchill, professionally unmoved by this
long tirade. "Duty's duty, my man; so make the best
of it till we've time to look into this a bit."
"Take it from me, there's a lot of things at this
place that need a lot of looking into," grumbled Stikeen.
"Toss me a cig'rette. Or is smoking allowed in the
presence of ladies in this jail?"
Stikeen, undaunted, always philosophical, rear-
165


THE SHIP OF SOULS
ranged his blankets on the floor, opened the stove with
his manacled hands and shoved in a stick or so of
wood. "Shut that door, can't you?" he added, looking
over his shoulder. "Want to freeze a prisoner in
irons? Want to get rid of us? It's colder, on the
floor—you ought to know that, you blighting booby.
Wait till I get you on the trail again! I'll jolly well
let you freeze. You're one grateful pup, I must say."


WHOSE HANDS ARE CLEAN?
"Yet I understand you claim the unlatching right, in
spite of this." He waved a thumb at the picture of
Alicia Barnes.
"Now, no use, up here, for either of us to beat
about the bush, eh? We'll say the testimony's in. You
make much of Exhibit A. Why? Wasn't all that
public?"
"I can't say as to all of that."
"Well, as to that, I can't either, no matter how
things were. A gentleman may catch fruit of a
shaken tree, but he can't tell what the tree was, or
whose."
"Take off that damned coat!" said Barnes, savagely.
He laid his own over the chair back.
Churchill followed his lead. "Certainly," said he.
"But why? Can't we two at least know what we're
fighting about? Matter of clean hands in court, eh?
You say you are married to Christine!"
"I have not said it. Garth said it."
"You did not deny it in public. Neither did she.
That is a marriage. Well, I won't say it isn't as good
as many. But really, how many do you want—all of
them? Do you want Christine, Annette, Alicia?"
"Stop! That's my wife!"
"Is she? But you left her, deliberately. Last
December the divorce hadn't come through, but you
didn't know whether it had or not. You
169


THE SHIP OF SOULS
don't know now. Yet you console yourself once,
twice, here, as men seem to do. Well, don't we all?
Man, it's your affair, bigamy across the line—I've
plenty to worry me more. But what I don't see is,
why you and I, both men of the world, should cut up
rusty over a perfectly natural and simple proposition.
Women have been women since the world began. You
left the hollowest kind of a hollowness, your marriage,
down there in the States, and you confess to me you've
found a new answer here?"
"Not true! I've not found it," said Langley Barnes,
hoarsely. "I've given her up. I've told her all about
Alicia. That's done."
"Is it? That leaves Annette! But I'm d—d if
I get this at all."
"Men such as you have wiped out all the lines be-
tween moral and unmoral, between good and bad, since
the War."
"Such as I? Come now! Why not such as we?"
"Right! Such as we."
"Don't take it so hard, man! Come, why be a silly
ass about a perfectly simple thing? Let's give the
O. C. of the well known universe a chance. A wise
and weary world, rather. Nothing of the old left,
now, except—well, call it women, if you like. Deuced
little mystery about that, what? Why should you and
I fight over it, when you and I haven't had the least to
170


WHOSE HANDS ARE CLEAN?
do with it, one way or the other? You were an officer
in your army. I was an officer in mine. But I'd
rather we didn't quarrel, really I would, because sup-
pose you were left alone here, what could you do?
Suppose I'm left, if you like. Can I solve it, then?"
"You'd have free field then. Isn't that what you'd
like?"
"No! You're nasty because you think I took what
you threw away. Yet you've taken here what I never
did throw away. Christine loves you now. That sort
do not change. I know."
"Then you belie yourself. You know there are
such things as women worth while!"
"Sometimes I'm afraid so."
They sat for a time silent, across Christine's pitiful
little table. Barnes tried to hide the little wooden
oyster forks.
"You need not," said Churchill, quietly. "She told
me. I know. She told me how you both tried to lift
a soul over the red line into the white birthright. I'm
d—d if I don't think you've played it square with
her. Well, so've I. I found out four years ago that
Christine Garth has a voice—one of the world's great
voices, Mr. Barnes, as I believe, and my education
once was such that I ought to be able to guess close.
Well, I tried to educate her. Oh, yes, I was mad
enough about her, God knows, even then. I am now.
171


THE SHIP OF SOULS
But then I was a married man. Back home. Two
years older than myself. No descent. Both in the
War work. Well, I went through with the Royals.
She was in Biarritz, nurse, all that, you know. Well,
she died at home, after the War, in bed and of the
flu.
"So that was that, of course. I did not need a
divorce then. Thought I'd come back to Canada.
Rested a bit, in Florida, and came on up here rather
fast. But I got here too late."
Barnes stared at him.
"Not much to offer you, old chap,” said Churchill,
mending his cigarette. “But if you run out of soul,
I'll throw mine into the scales alongside. We two
don't matter. We've both had our chance and lost it.
Really something in this business—too deep for me.
Well, I'm not much of a student. So, I don't know
why we should stick it, both hating each other, but as
it is, I rather think we shall. Rather do believe in
that Destiny thing, after all. Must be something hid
back. It must be my starving, don't you think? Not
fit at all-talk like shell shock. Don't know that I
ever let go so much, at all, before. But this place is
so d-d strung-up, don't you think?
"Of course," he added apologetically, "you wouldn't
charge any white feather, any begging off, would you?
If I've done anything to give you a quarrel, very well
172


WHOSE HANDS ARE CLEAN?
«—I think quite likely I have. But since this d—d
spooky joint has got me going, like, I want you to
know two things. First, there isn't any possible
ground of divorce for you, as far as your wife is con-
cerned with me—not at all. Of course, I'd deny that
anyhow, but there wasn't. Next, there never was any-
thing between me and Christine. I give you my word
of honor.
"So there you are. Alicia neither loves you nor
me, nor any man. Christine does not love me, and she
does love you. I found out that much, almost at
once.
"Man, that sort 'll go through fire and water. A
woman like that will make herself over again, for the
man she loves. She doesn't love me, and now she
never will. Why she ever loved you, God knows! On
your own count you deceived her at first, till it was too
late, and she knew about you and Annette—she told
me all that, you know.
"I say, I'm talking a bit, don't you think? But if
we must fight, let's get it clear as we can what we're
fighting about, please!"
"I shall never fight you at all," said Langley Barnes,
slowly. "Now, or at any other time<- We are two
rotters together. Why should we fight?"
They were standing, back to back, mute, when a
sudden faint sound of tumult came through the hall
173


THE SHIP OF SOULS
deadened with hung furs and clothing. Christine
flung open the door.
She stood, her eyes wide, the blood of her cheek not
yet fully stanched, across it the livid red gash done by
the whip of Annette's hair.


CHAPTER XXII
TROUBLE AT MCTAVISH
YOUNDS of conflict came—Angus Garth's
voice, growling in rage; Annette's voice shrill-
ing; punctuating cracks of a whip lash. Barnes
and Churchill rushed to this mêlée.
What really had happened was this: When Churchill
was engaged in rescrewing the bolt-nut which held
Johnnie Atlin's leg irons to the wall, that worthy had,
in exercise of his ancient art, embraced the present
opportunity to abstract from the officer's coat pocket
the key to the shackles which bound him and his chief,
Stikeen Harry. When, later on, Annette had prowled
into the room cat-foot, Johnnie had tossed her the
keys, and Annette had done the rest.
There is, however, something penetrative in too much
silence. Angus Garth, in his room, suddenly felt that
something was wrong. He caught down a dog whip
from a nail and sprang into the room. What he saw
drove him to frenzy—Annette, Stikeen, standing close,
he whispering. With imprecations he began laying on
the pair impartially with the lash he well knew how to
175


THE SHIP OF SOULS
wield. Then, not failing to give Johnnie a cut across
the face, he pursued first one and then the other with
the lash, and had blood on the faces of them both,
before either could resist or flee. Oath after savage
oath came from his snarled lips.
Barnes, ahead, broke into the room just in time to
see Stikeen stoop, pick up his loosed irons from the
floor, and hurl them straight into the face of the old
man. Garth fell like a smitten animal, in a heap, the
blood pouring from a gash across his forehead. At
the instant a swinging blow from the heavy barrel of
Barnes' revolver caught Stikeen on the side of the head
and dropped him cold. So now there was silence again,
save for panting of men.
Churchill sprang to the flung irons and in a moment
had Stikeen hard by the heels again. Johnnie was not
yet freed.
"By God! if you'd move, I'd kill you,” growled
Churchill to his limp prisoner, Stikeen, and pushed a
toe into him for luck. Then he turned to find Barnes
trying to impound Annette, who fought like a cat,
precisely. Blood was flowing from her cheeks also,
cut by her father's lash, and both men thought
that she and Christine had suffered in the same way,
for they had not known of the encounter of those
two.
“What do you want, girl!” demanded Churchill.
176


THE SHIP OF SOULS
You d—d dollar-a-day Mountie, don't you never
doubt it. Fine pay I get for saving your life on the
crossing."
"Shut up!" rejoined Churchill. "Warn you, any-
thing you say'll be used against you. Wish you'd move
a hand, so I'd have the heart to kill you. What you
were planning, with this girl, was to rob this post, and
I know it."
Stikeen blew his nose. The lash of the dog whip
had laid it open. "You'll have plenty on your hands
unless you do kill us," said he. "If we ever do get to
a court, I'll have you broke for collusion in an attempt
to steal my furs, legally my debt."
"Annette," said Churchill, paying no attention to
him, "go to your room. Lock the door inside. Push
the key under the door, into the hall. Quick!"
Annette broke into unrestrained and passionate
weeping. "You blame me, for wanting away from
here, with any man? What is for me? You white
men think you can do anything with me. That's fine!
Let me go, even with him. Then I'll not bother."
"Fair enough!" broke in Stikeen. "And let you all
out of a lot of trouble."
Churchill made a peremptory motion. Annette, sul-
lenly sobbing, rose and left for her own room.
178


ANGUS GARTH ARGUES
annually to McTavish, even in York boat days. This
was Angus Garth's cathedral. Here he brought his
savage religion.
The enclosed space held one gravestone, white and
cold and chaste as the snow surrounding it—a grave-
stone brought two thousand miles at an infinite cost in
labor. The gravestone bore but one word. It carried
none the less an unfailing hungry prayer. It carried
the story of a life, two lives; carried contrition, rev-
erence, confession, acceptance of a just and eternal
punishment. But it carried no renunciation of the
savage love of Angus Garth for the one lily he had
seen in all his wild life—his love for Alice, the white
woman who years ago had sold her soul because of
her pitying love for him, so lonely, so mad, so hope-
less without her aid.
It was the one hallowed spot at the wild trading
post. Like some gargoyle crouched, guarding, Angus
Garth for a quarter century had kept every eye but his
own off the one word on that stone. He did not even
ask God to forgive him. He knew he could never be
forgiven. His confiteor asked no mercy. He had
never given mercy. He had lived by death of helpless
creatures, slain for luxury of other women far away.
But this woman had been his own—this slender white
form which his own hands had buried here. He could
see her now, calm and peaceful in her sleep, under the
181


THE SHIP OF SOULS
Eye that watches the sparrow's fall. Angus Garth
asked no mercy. He did not know mercy. Only, for
two and twenty years, he had offered up to what-
ever gods there be his life, his soul, for sake of
the rest and shriving of the one thing he had ever
loved.
He did not know of the two who stood watching him
now from a distance; did not know that Langley Barnes
also had removed his head covering—indeed, Barnes
did not know he had done that. But he turned, at
length, and came straight back to them when he saw
them, the white frost hanging on his beard like spicules
on the muzzle of a giant moose.
“Come! Both!” He swung an arm. They fol-
lowed him, stood at the edge of the little enclosure,
silent. Garth again was saying his Covenanter con-
fiteor. Nor could Langley Barnes escape the feeling
that he stood in some vast edifice.
The other man as he stood cast up an eye. It seemed
to him he saw, swept before his eyes, the whole pano-
rama of his own life; its rottenness, its emptiness, its
opportunities, its success so-called, its vast actual fail-
ures. The extraneous, the unessential, the useless—all
these melted away in the white fire of the Arctic ice.
The passing laughing chorus of the twenty paddlers.
had left him here alone, naked, face to face with fate
at one stage of the old, old voyage-finished.
182


ANGUS GARTH ARGUES
What needle for the eternal galley of the damned,
those who wander forever and make no port at all?
His fellows. His companions. Those with whom de-
liberately he had taken ship? . . . was not that true?
Yes, it was true. He could not deceive himself here
in this cathedral. He knew now that once—once, only,
and at first—he had come back to kiss Annette, to live
with her, to throw away his heritage of the white man.
But he knew too that since he had seen Christine in
her strivings to reach what he had thrown away—the
white man's heritage—the face of Annette had passed,
the hot lips of Annette had cooled. That madness at
least was done.
Yes, two men stood here at the fence; and each was
damned; and each said in his heart, "Lord, punish me,
but spare the white woman whom I pity against my-
self! Lord, I have sinned!"
The mourning, sighing wind, like the chanting of
paddlers, passed away, faint above the far black level
of the northern forest.
"Ye heard it? Didna ye hear it?" The old man
turned to Barnes. Barnes nodded.
"Aye! The Chasse Galere! The damned souls!"
Again the other nodded.
"Ye came in it. Ye've sold your soul for sake of
her, a good woman, innocent?"
183


THE SHIP OF SOULS
Barnes shut his lips under his beard and nodded
again. "Yes."
"But ye started back again. To escape from her?"
"No! To save her, as I think."
"Then why came ye back here? Annette!"
"I suppose so, once, at first. I kissed her once, at
first, when I got back. Yes. Christine saw it."
"There's places in hell for all that, I dinna doot."
"No doubt. But I've given the last kiss for Annette.
If a native wife is needful for me in the post find an-
other man for the new factor. Not me."
"Ye love Christine?"
"I'm trying with all my soul not to love Christine!
I'll give my life and soul to save Christine."
He felt the girl's hand slip from his arm where it
had lain. Suddenly he seemed dizzy, on some brink;
just without her hand on his arm.
"Then what shall we do?"
"God knows, Angus Garth. For me, I care nothing.
But I have no wisdom about it. Do you think you and
I could lie to her? We did, but what good? Only the
truth will do with Christine. I've told her the truth,
all of it, so help me God, Whom I have denied."
"About yon woman ye marrit agone? That's among
the dead things of a man's life. Didna I tell ye I
absolved ye from all that, seeing the need here for a
strong young man, white? It was no sin to cast off
184


ANGUS GARTH ARGUES
that. Have I not lived here? Do I not know the in
and out of marrying? Dinna I, Angus Garth, give
the one or the other of my ain flesh and blood to ye,
and take your ain soul in pay? Didna ye agree to
that? Was not that our bargain—the last bargain? I
drove it for the Company—and for Christine!"
He was shivering, as much of emotion as of cold,
with the physical look of a strong ague. He held in
his own great hand the white one of his daughter.
Christine was raising the collar of his coat, pulling a
scarf from his pocket to cast over his bare gray head.
Her face was like some ancient picture, calm, yet a
grievous thing to see.
"There's but one woman in the world for me now,
Angus Garth," said Langley Barnes. "So help me
God! It is Christine."
"Aye."
"But her I can never have. Christine at least
knows a lie, if you and I do not. She knows I still am
married. Do you suppose she'd look at me now? She
never will."
"But didna ye love my girl, Langley Barnes?"
"Sir, yes! I can not speak of that here and now,
sir. I now can be faithful to her all my life. I can
give my body to spare hers and my soul to save hers—
why, yes, of course. But it comes to nothing. Chris-
tine is Christine. We can not deceive—and we can
185


THE SHIP OF SOULS
not change her. Her eyes see where yours and mine
can not see, Mr. Garth. She's the white woman-
good. We two are—men!”
“Kirstie, my darling, and do ye love this thief and
scoundrel man, as ye do your ain thief and scoundrel
feyther? Oh, Kirstie! Kirstie, my ewe lamb! I'm
sae alone! I'm sae alone! She's gone! God's peety,
I'm sae alone !"
His voice fell to whisper, to whimper. “I, Angus
Garth, forty and five years factor of McTevish, I
dinna know what to do! 'Tis no believable. Christine,
do ye love this man? Tell me !"
Christine looked at him in her straight way. “It
were nae right, feyther,” said she, quietly.
“ 'Twere nae right! What has right or wrong to
do with love? Was't right I should love yon white
soul? Was't right I should bring ye into the world?
Child, by your accounting of right and wrong ye'd be a
love child, a bastard, nae more. Yet I ken God wills
that clean souls like yours be born. My ewe lamb!
Kirstie, O Kirstie, my child, my ain!”
He caught her suddenly, looking straight into her
eyes out of his own savage old eyes, pushing back the
ruff of heavy tawny hair from her forehead, too digni-
fied even now to kiss her, as he had been all his life,
but hungry that she might at last know his heart.
"In your wisdom, child,” said Angus Garth at last,
186


CHAPTER XXIV
THE MAW OF THE NORTH
NOT far from the edge of the bluff, close to
the portage path which led up from the land-
ing, and directly at the corner of the log
building which served as one of the McTavish storage
rooms for furs, stood the gaunt frame of a singular
machine whose counterpart is not known in the com-
merce of civilization—the old fur press, where the
bales of furs were made and lashed for shipment as
"packets" for the far off, unknown outside world.
Through this had flowed all the furs of the McTavish
district, that lying just below the Arctic ice; the last
stronghold of fur. Hundreds and many hundreds of
thousands of dollars had old Angus Garth baled here
for his Company. Through here the lives of untold
thousands of small creatures had passed. It was the
guillotine of the wilderness. To it, innocence was
nothing. It had no mind, no soul.
It did not ill resemble a guillotine as it stood, with
four instead of two upright arms, set in the earth,
bound firm at their topi Inside this lay a movable


THE MAW OF THE NORTH
floor, carrying a racking frame, of pickets, into which
the loose furs were cast before the compressing force
of the leverage brought bottom and top together, the
open slats then allowing the lashing of the packet, by
now a small object weighing almost ninety pounds,
which a sweating breed might carry up a sandy hill or
over wet spruce roots on any portage without too much
delay.
At one side of this upright shaping-frame extended
the long arm which gave it all its power, a log of
spruce, thirty feet or so in length, thicker than a
woman's waist at the inner end of the lever. The hinge
was a heavy pin let into the frame close to the larger
end. The arm extended thence with such out-board
length and sweep as gave an enormous leverage when
the detaining clutch was slipped and the free end of the
great log fell through its arc. The crushing and cramp-
ing force of tons lay in the lever of the fur press. It
was simple, effective, crude, powerful, irresistible,
merciless.
The press of McTavish was the delight of the heart
of Angus Garth. Even when it stood gaunt and naked
in the off-season, he would go lean against it, run a
hand along the great beam lovingly, look at the voided
rack as though he could even then see it heaping up,
skin on cased skin, laid carefully, one hundred dollars
on top of another hundred dollars, a fifty side by side
189


THE SHIP OF SOULS
with a fifty, and little twenties and tens between.
Silver fox to thousands worth, the rarer black to half
as much, uncounted bales of the great Arctic mink,
more yet for the snowy Arctic fox or the black barred
pelts of the cross-fox; wolverine and priceless fisher—
all these, each to its bale, Angus Garth could see here,
long after last season's catch was out and on its jour-
ney to the world.
Angus always especially loved to see, piled up twelve,
fifteen feet high near by the frame, the snowy Arctic
fox. McTavish was the North post. Here was the
heart of the white fox ground. The Eskimos, sailing
up the river from the ocean in their priceless whale
boats bought by labor of a family through years,
brought in thousands of the white fox furs, so that at
times they stood a snowy mountain, passing through
the press, while the steamer waited below, and while
laughing half-breed boys brought more and more furs
from the log houses, in the harvest time of the North-
ern year. Then, the plateau at the top of the bluff
would be covered with running figures; men trotting
down the path under packets, trotting up again for
more; Indians in for next year's "debt," chasing a
ragged footfall out in the bared space; tall breeds
smoking aloof; perhaps a white man or so up from the
boat; the gay colors of the tribesfolk, male or female,
passing in a stirring picture—indeed all the hectic
190


THE MAW OF THE NORTH
was sure that there was some side play. An inch, a
half inch, here, would mean a foot at the other end—
say, where the confining pin held the arm on its slanted
shoulder.
Slowly, methodically, with the same resistless move-
ment which always made him seem inevitable and ele-
mental even in his little deeds, Angus Garth walked
apart, searching for something. He found it, a smooth,
peeled spruce pole, ten feet long, used sometimes in the
baling.
He picked it up, brushing off the snow, so it would
not melt on his hands ... so that it would not
melt? . . .
He took this pole in his right hand and set the foot
of it against the foot of one of the uprights. Half
supported by the pole, he climbed up till the toes of his
moccasins were supported by the first cross bar of the
cage.
He reached out across the upper edge of the cage,
his fingers finding hold, so that at short-arm he could
draw toward himself. His head was across the top of
a short slat where the first tie was shot on the made
packet.
There were now three leverages in the fur press of
McTavish—that of the long arm, that of the pole
whose side rested now against the inner end of the
long arm, and that of Angus Garth's two arms. If he
193


THE SHIP OF SOULS
pulled against the rigid cage wall with his left arm,
and pushed forward with his bent and shortened right
arm, he could himself exert a powerful mechanical lev-
erage of the muscles of his body . . . which would
release lever number two; and free lever number three.
In which case . . . ah, why ask if the snow would
melt under warmth of his hands?
No one saw Angus Garth, who scorned firearms but
trusted traps, in his last proving of his ancient and
beloved fur press. No one in the house heard the clang
of the uprushing inner end, the thump of the outer end
on the ground, just free enough to rest a foot above
the ground when a packet was made in the cage—
closer up to the roof of the cage when the beam was idle.
It was idle now. Its work was done for ever, so far
as Angus Garth was concerned.
The howl of dogs, premonitory, suddenly rose in the
blue night. The body of Angus Garth, held up by the
imprisoned head, swung against the side of the baling
cage. . . .
Yes, the work of McTavish press was done. It had
never failed. And because he understood it; because
he had himself made it and so it could not fail; be-
cause, once his mind had formed a fancy, naught
human could change it and nothing of his nature af-
fect it once made, old Angus gave his body to the Com-
pany, and his soul to the Chasse Galere.
194


CHAPTER XXV
THE TEMPESTS THAT TORMENT
OF all those who heard or might have heard the
wailing dogs, Annette alone caught the omen.
By some primitive instinct, sudden terror
came to her, as she sat on her blanket bed, a prisoner
in her room. She sprang to the door, beat upon it,
called out at top of her voice. "Ah-h-h! Open it!
Let me out! Ah-h-h!" Her own tones, hoarse, half
inarticulate, held something of the quality of a creature
caught in a house that is on fire.
The two moody men in the outer room, guarding
two prisoners who snored asleep on the floor, heard
her outcry and started up. Christine heard it, sat
startled, listening. Churchill went to the door, un-
locked it. "What is it you want?" he demanded.
"Let me out! Let me out! Hear it—don't you
hear it?"
"What? I hear the huskies, yes."
"They know. It's something. It's—"
"It's what?"
"Death! There's some one dead! They never fail
195


THE SHIP OF SOULS
—they know. Where's the old man ? Listen—there
they go!"
The chorus swept around the end of the house, to
ward the bluff front, a howling so bloodcurdling as
might have set the hair of any man tingling at the
roots.
“Run!” said the girl. “Go find what it is !"
Churchill hurried to the outer house, passing the
shackled men, just rousing to the noise. “Watch
them,” said he to Barnes. He was out in the night
almost as Christine, hurrying through, called out from
her father's room, “He's gone!" Barnes and she
followed.
They all could see toward the bluff edge the dark
mass of the gathered dogs, the full pack of McTavish,
twenty or so. They sat ringed, muzzles aloft, and ut-
tered a wail that no man forgets who once has heard it
in the North, where many barriers are broken between
man and nature.
"What's it all about ?" Churchill dropped Annette's
arms. Barnes and he both started toward the dogs,
across the open plateau between the post house and the
warerooms, where stood the fur press.
Over the heads of the pack they saw something
hanging
Old Marie, who for the most part might as well
196


THE TEMPESTS THAT TORMENT
have been dead these years, so rarely was she seen out-
side her own little cabin, came into the room where
her chief lay on his bed, surrounded by these others.
Tears were on the broad and wrinkled cheeks of Marie.
She laid her forefinger on the top of the low spruce bed
post and with a blow of the butcher knife she always
wore cut off the finger at the middle joint. It was the
red woman's way of saying she never would look on
any other master now that this one was gone. Thereto
she gashed her arm across, and then, grasping a hand-
ful of her heavy hair, not yet gray, tore it out, and
without murmur laid it on the breast of the man who
had been her lord, her deity. More, God wot, than
most white widows do.
Annette was wailing now. The voices of her and
her mother rose in tribal fashion, Annette now more
like to her mother than to the dead man here. Chris-
tine stood, white, dry-eyed and silent, wringing her
hands together. Churchill was impassive before a
dead man, fresh back from seeing many dead men,
who do not come to much, once one is wonted to the
sight. Barnes seemed years older.
The weight of a sudden problem now was on them
all. Who now was head of McTavish? Langley
Barnes knew that iron soul too well to call him coward
or evader. He knew that in some way Angus Garth
had it reasoned out that only by forcing the hand of
197


THE TEMPESTS THAT TORMENT
that I am in charge until a successor is put in by the
Company."
"How do you figure that?"
"By this will of Angus Garth appointing his son-in-
law, Langley Barnes, as his immediate successor. It
makes Langley Barnes his executor. He gives his
breed children to the Dominion, his property to Chris-
tine."
"But that will has not been probated."
"And can not be, here. Until probated or refused
probate, its provisions can not be set aside. I am the
executor, without bond."
"But we both know you are not Angus Garth's son-
in-law."
"No. But I am Langley Barnes."
"And quite possibly the will may be set aside as
that of a man non compos, eh?"
"It may be. Who shall bring that contest?"
Churchill colored. "Oh, no. Search would have to
be made for any kin in the Old Country. So far as
known, he had none. He seems to have dropped out
of the world altogether. I never heard anything about
him except the rumor of his being the natural son of a
certain British nobleman. But of course, British law
reaches here, and it will take its course. I'll have to
take the property over. For instance, the furs."
"You'll do nothing of the sort, British law or no
199


THE SHIP OF SOULS
Garth had had his way! No. I brought myself and
my old life in with me, clinging to my clothes—reek-
ing of it as you do of yours. But I swear I'd have
been glad to live and die here, with a girl like that."
"Girl like that—rather hard to find anywhere, eh?
Not to mention a voice like that. Does she belong
here now?"
"No. Nor can she and I both live here now."
"But—" he broke out suddenly, facing the other
man—"I'm acting factor of McTavish! I am the law
north of the Circle! Listen, man—we can't avoid each
other now. You yourself are the key to this. It's
you who shall marry. And you shall marry Alicia."
"I say!"
"Yes, when I'm legally free of her, I shall be glad
to see her hung legally around your neck, so you'll get
enough of her, as a dog does of a chicken that he's
killed."
"Suppose I don't?"
"I don't suppose you won't. You're more alike than
she and I are."
The two looked quietly into one another's eyes.
"At least, coming to business matters, about the new
fur, of this winter," began Churchill, leaving the main
issue. "The hunters are over at the native village, in
for the trade. What'll we do?"
"I'll trade the fur."
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THE TEMPESTS THAT TORMENT
"Who'll interpret?"
"Alex."
"How about Annette?"
"The new factor will handle Annette, if he has to
put her in irons."
"The new factor comes on well! Your capacity as
Divine Providence does not yet fail you, then?" Rather
sneeringly. "And where are you going after you are
relieved here as Divine Providence?"
"To hunt any man who leaves any single remaining
duty undone as to Christine! Then, if there's a wilder-
ness left in all the world, I'll go to that. I thought I'd
found one here. I wanted to get away from women."
"We can't," said Arthur Churchill, simply.
"No. I wanted to curse God and die. We can't.
The law follows us. It's women make it and unmake it
for fools and cowards like you and me."
"Oh, thanks!"
"Nothing can save McTavish—except Christine. It
will cost her her life and happiness, because of dishon-
orable men, like you and me, and her father, and her
father's father. We're not as good as the Loucheux.
They pay their debt. We don't pay ours. And then
we find it never can be paid. So? Then we join the
Lost Souls. Very well. I'm ready. It's only just."
"You should go into holy orders, what!" Barnes
smiled.
203


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"Well, I hope you and Alicia will be very happy,"
sardonically. "She is an excellent hostess."
Churchill smiled, filling his pipe. "I've always taken
'em as they come," said he. "All rot, studying them
out. But if you're bent on the wilderness and the
elemental, Cro-Magnon lady, why not Annette?"
"Hush!" Barnes raised his hand. Far off, faint by
the doors and fur hung walls, came the sound of a
voice; a voice in supplication.
"Ave Maria! Ave Maria!"
They both stepped to the door. The prisoners were
sitting up on their beds.
"Who's that a-singin'?" exclaimed Stikeen. "God!"
"I want to tell you fellows," said Churchill, to his
two prisoners, "if you make any more breaks such as
you did a while ago, its going to be Ave Maria for you,
all righto. If I catch either of you ten feet away from
where I leave you, I'm going to shoot."
"Aw, go to hell!" said Stikeen Harry, contemptu-
ously. "You Mounties make me tired. You couldn't
hit anything if you did shoot. If you was good for
anything, you'd not be working for a dollar a day haul-
ing fish for dogs to eat. I'm thinking, one good
Western sheriff could run the whole of you off the
map."
"I don't doubt it," replied Churchill cheerfully, as he
204


THE TEMPESTS THAT TORMENT
filled his pipe. "But then, it's a long way to any West-
ern sheriff. I wouldn't start anything, if I were you,
for it might not go through."
He spoke confidently. A keen hearer might have
suspected he had something up his sleeve.


CHAPTER XXVI
BOTH THE WOMEN
ANGLEY Barnes moved away, towards Chris-
tine's room. He knew he had on hand a harder
ordeal than facing two desperate men. He
faced two women, half sisters, one with a long red weal
across the white of her cheek. More than one man
has pondered over a great painting called "Sacred and
Profane Love"; theme never yet absent from the
world. Surely Annette, mutinous, riotous, desperate,
inflamed, never had been more glorious in her devil-
beauty than she was now, even with eyes still wet with
tears. The dark olive of her cheek was fluid fire en-
meshed. Her flood of black hair was loosed in mourn-
ing. Her eyes, large and dark, now were not hard in
wrath, but wet and luminously soft. No man living
worth a man's name could have escaped the compelling
femaleness of this unhappy product of two races.
Magnificent woman of her sort Annette certainly
was, and armed with the most unfailing weapon of all
at woman's command. Restless, glowing, electric, alive
to her toes, she would not rest, kept pacing. Now and

206


BOTH THE WOMEN
again she shot a glance at Barnes, the corners of her
little red mouth curved up—but now lamenting death,
now suggesting life, the mouth whose hot sweetness she
knew well once had made this man's mouth cling.
Would it not again? At her sister she did not glance
at all. She was only the other woman, to Annette.
Christine, fully aware of the crisis in which her
father's death had left them all, gazed calmly, ab-
sorbedly, at both these others. She herself was now in
black. She had found an old, old black stuff frock that
once had been her own mother's. This she had shaped
and relieved with white bands at neck and wrists. Be-
cause the material was old and insecure, the neck, cut
away, fell low enough to define a figure which after all
need ask no odds of Annette. The garment had no
confining brooch.
In all her life Christine never had seen a gem or any
article of jewelry, except the pinchbeck trade stuff.
Her father had flung her mother's little rings and
brooches into the river when she died, that he might
forget and have less torment. Her tawny hair was
rolled high, back from her white forehead. All her
skin was milk white. She was the White Woman, the
Nordic female. Of such as her have come very much
of the law and truth and justice of the world.
The Scotch fairness of her skin went well with her
tawny hair, as rich and deep as Annette's own. Her
207


THE SHIP OF SOULS
eyes, though not so dark as Annette's, were brooding
and secret-holding in their own somber calm. She was
seated, poised, unagitated, did not nervously pace up
and down. She had read about life. Now, here was
life.
Under the Arctic snow she had slept, the sun of
spring had come. May the flower call back its petals
when they have begun to unfold? Can woman, her
love beginning to go out to man, call back her mysteri-
ous yearnings and bid them for ever rest again beneath
the snow? It is not so.
Barnes spread down on the table the creased pages of
the Sunday pictorial sheet, which he had brought with
him. As he did so he displaced one of Christine's
little oyster forks. He replaced it tenderly. Annette
snickered. "Make it careful!" said she. "Kirstie is
very precious with this table! All time fooling with
it!"
Frowning, not replying to Annette, he pointed.
"Christine," said he, "this came in the Dawson mail.
I wanted to show it again to you—both. Your father's
gone. Some one must take the lead here now. You
both know he planned for me to do that. His will
covers that—we've just found it in his desk. But there
are some things must be known by us all."
Both girls were bending over the pictured sheet, a
sort of thing neither had ever seen in all her life.
208


BOTH THE WOMEN
"Look!" cried Annette.
"Yes!" said Barnes. "That was what I wanted you
both to see, Christine."
Pale as her face had been, it was paler now, as she
bent over the picture of Alicia Barnes and Arthur
Churchill, both conventionally naked and neither
ashamed. Had it been glyph of some rock cave, any
savage woman could have read it easily enough.
"Yes!" said Langley Barnes. "That's the other
woman, Christine. Alicia, my wife!"
Annette burst into a shriek of laughter. "What
funny little legs!"
"But that's not here!" she added. "Long way off—
where the goose come from, sir?"
"Yes. Six or seven thousand miles, maybe."
Christine was folding over the page that she might
not see it. "It is Major Churchill—and your wife?"
"Yes. Now do you guess anything more?"
Annette interrupted with her ironic laughter. "Well,
I can guess! I guess some white men want plenty
wives. But such funny little legs!"
Barnes went on, evenly. "Christine, before I left
home to lose myself up here, I was done with this
woman. She had nothing to give me that could make
either of us happy, nor could I make her happy. We
had taken our gamble and had lost. I made over to
her all my property, and I came up here. I planned
209


THE SHIP OF SOULS
to have it reported that I was dead. You know pretty
much all the rest."
“But he, the Major? He never told me"
"I fancy not. He didn't tell me, either. I don't
think he loved her. But I knew she cared for him,
not me. Why should they not do as they pleased, if
I was gone? And was I not gone?”
Christine drew herself up. Her eyes held scorn,
though she did not speak scornfully as Annette had,
only in wonder. "What a strange, small soul she must
have had !”
"You need not fear her,” said Langley Barnes.
“Look!” exclaimed Annette, pulling away the pages.
“Horses! We have never seen a horse. There are
two, at Smith, at the Crossing to the Slave river, the
factor said.” She always had called her father "the
factor" when she spoke of him.
"And dogs—such funny dogs!” She babbled on,
pointing to certain fashionable Italian greyhounds.
"I guess they're dogs—or squirrels? What could he
pull? And this, and this? Sleds with no horses."
"They are motor cars, Annette. There are thou-
sands and thousands. They run without horses. And
here are the houses where those funny women live.
Stone, you see, Christine. And these are carvings in
stone. And what you see-these things in among these
trees, are statues—figures done in marble."
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BOTH THE WOMEN
"I know," said Christine. "Do you not know, I
have read of all of this for years! It is the world—
outside."
"Well, that's a funny country, outside," said An-
nette. "See! Naked—but they have on fur! That's
a fox—black. See his white tip on his tail. One our
foxes, maybe so?" she laughed in glee.
"And the trees, with ropes on them," she went on,
pointing. "What for? Hang up clothes?"
"No. Those are the telephone wires in the city, An-
nette."
She looked at him. "Not understand."
"You put a little cup at your ear. A voice sounds
in it. You talk in a cup. Your voice sounds back."
"And is it true," demanded Christine, "that men in
the War went below water in boats? I've seen our
Eskimos turn a kayak over end for end in the water;
but of course, they couldn't stay under."
"Christine, men have crossed the entire great ocean
in such a boat. They have flown across the ocean in
the air, on wings. They have talked across the ocean
to London—where our furs go to the Company—with-
out even wires, though once the marvel of the world
was that one wire went all the way across, under the
sea. This is that world, Christine, out of which I
came. Out of it also Major Churchill came."
"Would God you had never come," said Christine
211


THE SHIP OF SOULS
I
suddenly. "Why did you come? To mock us?" She
sank back into the seat, trembling.
"No! To use us!" said Annette, with her devil
laughter that made the blood of Langley Barnes chill
now instead of glow hot. "Well, all right. You kiss
strong, sir! Well, all right. This our country. It is
much better. Bah!" She spat on the pictured page,
and pirouetted away, out of the room. It seemed to
her that her man and her sister made slow work of
kissing.
But Langley Barnes turned dully once more to the
other. "You have seen her now, my wife," said he.
"I've told you about all there is. No comparison be-
tween her and you."
"No," said Christine Garth, coldly. "The compari-
son is between you and the man I thought you were.
"You see," she added, bleakly, "I'd been reading
of men! They were—heroes. I'd been reading and
seeing pictures of—of everything! Ah, why did you
ever come!"
"To take care of you, Christine Garth!" said Lang-
ley Barnes, slowly after a time. "To pay what your
father said we both must pay for your soul."
Haggard, he walked up and down a bit before he
dared speak further. He swiftly turned and touched
the livid weal on the girl's cheek, in pity—the first time
he ever had touched her flesh beyond a hand clasp—
212


THE SHIP OF SOULS
more. Here is love, Christine! I'm not good, I'm not
worth it, and we must part. But look in my eyes now.
I love you, and I always shall.”
But since he could still keep back his hands, his
arms, she could also. “It is fine you say it, sir-”.
she even tried to smile a little, bravely—“now that you
go!"
"You knew it anyhow, Christine. Well, I have told
him, Churchill, that since he wants her, my wife, he
shall have her—till his soul is sick of the orchid taste
of her! So I'm taking away even your music teacher
from you, Christine. I'm closing even that world to
you. I'm robbing you of every last thing in all the
world you had. I hope you've only read of love-it
would be horrible if really you felt it for a renegade
and ruffian and thief like me. God defend that you
have.”
"But I have !"
“But I have !"- The words of the quiet, self-con-
tained girl cut into the brain of Langley Barnes like
ice dropped from great height. He bowed his head
on the little table, on his hands, clenched.
She did not move, did not speak; had not spoken
then until after a long pause; deliberately.
"But I have !” Her voice sounded detached, as of
some one very far away. Barnes raised his face, his
heart craving her for every multifold sort of reason
214


BOTH THE WOMEN
that lies under every sort of love. But not now for him
the burden of her body in his arms, the taste of her red
lips on his. No. Nor ever. He knew that.
"Then, if that's true," said he, "may God damn me
to suffering for ever and for ever to pay for that! I
am the worst and wickedest man in all the world."
"You came too soon. You leave too late," said the
voice of his judge. "You lied to me at the start and
now you will not have mercy and lie yet more to me.
You go—and take my heart. You go—and take my
voice. You take my life, my comfort, my hope—
worse, my imaginings. A girl's dreams! Ah, I did
not need to read of them. I had them. Here, even in
the snow, a girl dreams. Oh! Oh!" She choked, her
courage at last inadequate.
"I have done all that, yes," said he at last. "And I
do not think it is capable of any remedy. I know you'll
take no other man to help you. You're ruined."
"Oh, yes, sir. Far more than Annette is ruined.
She can forget. I can not. I shall be quite alone. I
do not know what I shall do. I can not leave here—
there is no place in all the world for me to go. I can
not stay here alone—not with Annette. Who knows
what the Company will do? I can not—I can not!—
go back to the old ways of my father's life. He can not
pass that on to you and me, not even if you could stay
on here."
215


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"No, Christine. I must go away, for that's the only
way for either of us to start again."
She spoke at last, in her reasoning, detached way.
"I think I'd have liked to be happy—just only for a
little time. I do not believe a man's love lasts when he
is away. Why is it we love men, sir? Could love be,
if two were apart?"
"Not as love should be, Christine."
"Then I must go back to my books. We've been
very faithful, my family, to the Company, to the
Dominion. Would they not care for Annette and
me?"
"They might for Annette, my dear. She is half-
blood. The Dominion does such things, or did. But
this is Annette's country."
"Yes. But I have no country."
"No, Christine."
"I'm like my mother. She had none."
"Yes, Christine! I do not know which shall be
accounted most unhappy of you two, she who did not
pause, or you who do. No, nor which has earned the
deepest place in hell, your father who did not pause, or
I who do, after it is too late. I don't know what is
right. I only know what's hardest, and that's to leave
you. I'm no good at renunciation, Christine—I'm not
that sort of man. But I do believe, from now on, I'm
done with women. I never before knew what it was
216


BOTH THE WOMEN
to be in love. Don't say it's because I'm up here, so
far away. I'm trying to be honest, at last."
"I'm glad you do not promise. Major Churchill al-
ways promised.
"But,” she added, turning to him, “if I thought
you'd ever go back to Annette, now, I think I'd die.”
“I promise you I never shall. Now I must go.”
She nodded. He strode to the door. What was it
turned him there? Was there some sound, some low
inarticulate sound? He wheeled again.
She sat, on her face a strange expression he had
never seen on any face, a half smile, quizzical, amused !
He could no more avoid going back to her than had
she drawn him with cords.
She arose deliberately and met him. "I'll e'en take
my bond!” said she, in some new tone, half laughing.
She had changed her speech also, as sometimes she did.
"Stand ye there, Langley Barnes. Dinna ye move
hand or hair. Dinna ye dare touch hair or hand o'
mine. Ye think me sae soft! Ye think I'll tak' it all
and smile aboot it? Suffer?—I'll gar ye suffer, man!
I'll tak’ my bond secure against Annette, or all the
world! Stand ye firm, an' haud your airms down,
Langley Barnes !”
He saw approach him the shining eyes, the splendid
glowing face of a woman he had never seen! . . . She
came and almost took him in her arms, approached her
217


CHAPTER XXVII
THE INVISIBLE
RAP came at the door. Churchill looked in
with a suddenly amused smile as he saw the
two occupants of the room.
"Beg pardon, I'm sure," said he. “I just wanted to
intrude for a moment-little package, part of my lug-
gage—we put it in back of your melodeon, didn't we,
Christine ?"
“Yes,” said Christine, composedly. “The little black
box with the handles. I pushed it back.”
She reached behind the instrument and lifted out
the parcel he had described.
"It has not been disturbed," said she. “Would you
have hot water, sir?” She was entirely calm.
“No, thanks. This isn't a toilet case," smiled
Churchill. “They'd not allow us so much on sled
travel.”
But he did not explain. Barnes went out with him.
Christine, at last left alone, cast herself on the couch
where Langley Barnes had lain, and pressed his pillow
to her lips, wetting it with a rain of tears now wholly
unrestrained.
219


THE INVISIBLE
"Quite so, yes."
"We've got to have a mast, haven't we? There's
the flag staff."
"We'll not need it. That's all old. All we need is a
practical aerial line. We can get that by stringing a
hundred feet of wire horizontal, like a bally clothes-
line. Few yards above the ground will do here, for
you see the whole top of the bluff is open. Couldn't be
a better place in Canada to try her out. We'll know,
to-day.
"Well, let's string our aerial from the staff to that
stub on the bank, right near the bench there—we'll put
the machine on the bench itself. That'll give us over
a hundred feet in the clear for our air wire. Of
course, we've got to get on cleats for the antenna wire.
Porcelain."
He unlocked and flung open the black case which
held so much; drew out wires, bits of appliances, a few
simple tools.
"I'll get the ladder our friends were using at the
fur loft, the other day," he resumed. "Please run this
wire across on the ground, between the uprights, from
the staff to the bare tree trunk yonder. Back in a
jiffy." He did return with the short ladder, which
he leaned against the flag staff.
"Steady her, please," said he. "I'll go up and
screw on our insulators—those white cleats, porcelain
221


THE SHIP OF SOULS
—right-o. They hold the wire safe from shooting up
the shop, you know. Thanks."
Working at arm's length above his head, he rapidly
fastened the porcelain cleat in place against the staff;
reached down, and looped through it the antenna wire
which Barnes passed up to him.
"Now, the cleat on the other end," he chattered on,
excitedly, nervously. "Please bring the box. I'll
carry the ladder."
They repeated the process at the bare stub near
the lookout bench at the edge of the bluff so that
presently the horizontal antenna wire reached across
well-nigh half the open space.
"Of course, we've got to have our lead wire, from
our antenna to the receiving set," said Churchill.
"That shorter piece, copper, please. Will she run
from the end of the antenna to the box on the bench?
Yes? That's fine!"
"Now we'll rig on," he added, when he had come
down the ladder after fastening the last insulator and
attaching the lead wire.
"It's only fair I should explain a bit," he began,
after lighting his pipe. "If you're not familiar with
this thing, it's the same as magic is to an Indian.
Really, it's simple as two and two.
"Now, we've got our lead wire attached to the set.
Of course, we've got to have our ground wire. See
222


THE INVISIBLE
here—I brought along an old malleable iron tent peg
for that. A bolt of any sort would do. Drive her
down in the ground to the top. . . . Thanks. . . .
Now wrap on the ground wire. Thanks.
"She's set, now, as for the main things. Please
hand me—there is the case—the ear muffs for the tele-
phone lady. 'Num,' please! That's the head phone,
down on each ear. Have to take a fellow's cap off.
Ears may freeze, but cheap at that if she goes. . . .
And that's that. You get it all?"
"Good Lord!" said Langley Barnes. "Will it work?"
"The only thing where our magic may fall down is
in the batteries. Heavy things, those. Dragged them
all the way from Dawson. Just common storage bat-
teries. Put her under the front seat of the new electric
motor dog sled, what! The other's a group of what
they call B batteries—six dry cells; say three-by-four-
by-five inches. Not so big, eh? Not so heavy? Well,
if it killed our dogs—and poor Calkins—well, at least
here we are.
"That's about all there is to it. Except, of course,
the attunement."
He cast a swift glance at Barnes, whose face re-
mained immobile. "Rather cold, just now?"
"Not at all," said Barnes. "Show me more."
"The tuning is done altogether by twisting these
dials. Do it in a few minutes. Shall I?"
223


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"Yes."
"Quite so. Little cold, is all. Well, here goes.
"You see," he added, after a time, "this is the mani-
festation of the magic. Say a thousand miles away,
two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that
beat as one! That sort of thing. Heard the Chaplain
at the hangar, once, at Soissons, talk about attune-
ment with the Infinite—what! Well. ... I say,
pretty cold, outside, eh?"
He had been turning the dials, rapidly. Now, care-
lessly, he laid the headpiece on the bench, and began
threshing his arms. Barnes turned up the collar of his
coat. Something seemed curious to him. He did not
urge, was willing to make conversation, covering some
vague suspicion which he by no means could formu-
late.
"Well, after this," he began, "we don't need wonder
about the voyageurs' Chasse Galere any more."
"You've heard them, those noises?" Churchill
turned to him curiously. /
"Yes, or have thought I did. I could have sworn,
the first trip I made alone, up river, I'd heard the
Chasse Galere itself—twice! Once I knew it was the
laughing geese. But the other time, dead of winter, it
would have been geese going the wrong way. So I
don't know what it was."
The other nodded. "When you've spent a dozen
224


THE INVISIBLE
years or so up here, you get to taking on a lot of
things—second sight, werewolf stuff, all sorts. The
old man himself always swore he had the second
sight! I've known him tell of the Inspector's death at
Smith's, fifteen hundred miles away, the day it hap-
pened—and the boat brought the news four months
later. He swore he knew what was happening. And
I've known him say soberly that he was in camp once
with the Dog Ribs, and a man got up by the fire, and
laid off his belt and gave a howl and ran off—and he
was a wolf! Old as Europe. But if werewolves lived
there, they may here. I jolly well don't care.
"All the same, I have in my own work in the
Mounted known three different cases of the Eskimos'
ankticook—that's the native second sight. The wreck
of the H. B. boat at Fort Churchill—namesake of mine,
post on the Bay—was told of at Great Bear water-
head the day it happened. The ship off Herschell drove
the Kogwolloks crazy one month before any possible
news could have reached them. The loss of the Daw-
son patrol, in 1911, was known and reported at Ram-
part four months before any one got there who knew.
Oh, you get used to those simple things. What I don't
know is, what makes these strange streaks of sound,
these passing waves that go over the forest. Ever
hear of the like?"
Barnes nodded. "Sure. Lewis and Clark's journals
225


THE SHIP OF SOULS
tell of mysterious noises reported by Indians from the
Black Hills—they were hundreds of miles east of there
at the time. And Captain Lewis himself heard such
noises at the Great Falls of the Missouri, and set it
down; more than a hundred years ago. And geologists
report strange sound-rips, like electric waves, near Yel-
lowstone Lake, even now. That's recent. I swear,
you'll have me believing there is a Chasse Galere!"
"Why not? You know what the fellows said at
Mons in the big war—that spirits rose over No Man's
Land at night. They saw 'em, jolly well. Plenty of
men's families knew the night they died. Oh, yes, I'm
sure the Shakespeare chap wasn't off his nut when he
spoke of things in heaven and earth we've not yet got
square in our philosophy, something of the sort.
"It's like the wireless," he added, musingly. "What
is it? We don't know. It rips up from a mast, loud
enough, the old sort—hear it all over the shop. Well,
suppose the ripping got up into some air stratum where
it would be fluided, tuned, adjusted to some medium,
what? Might go a long way. Might be heard almost
anywhere.
"Who knows, since the War, what we're up against?
I'm sure, for one thing, that the printed page will be
a thing of the past in fifty years—and the sled dog in
less than ten. Now, you ask, what noises go over these
forests? I don't know. But I don't know a lot of
226


THE SHIP OF SOULS
back. Took outfit on, you see. Just before I came
out here, the papers had it that this Arctic chap, what's
his name, Amundsen, was going to send in radios,
daily, all the way up to the Pole. Shouldn't wonder.
Going in by aero, talking back by radio! Rum things,
eh? Not much left of the North now, I'm thinking—
nor of anywhere else. Pretty soon every jolly Kaffir'll
be giving his girl a forty-watt for Christmas, and she'll
be talking with the Eskimo ladies about their latest
styles in galoshes. Well, I don't bother my head. Take
life as it comes, I say. Plenty to worry over. The
day's work's enough for me.
"But now, since you've forced my hand about that,
I don't mind saying I was going to have a go for
Gravel River. I want to ask them to send a man or so
to help me with my prisoners. Tidy idea, anyhow."
Barnes distinctly saw him turn two of the panel
dials, apparently absent-mindedly. Then he faced
Barnes again, composedly.
"Show you thing or two, maybe. I don't care if you
listen in. Take the first shot, if you like. I'll watch
the d—d battery. If she peters, we're done. Call
'Gravel! Gravel!' Of course, I don't know they've
any set, at all."
Barnes put the head phones in place. His eye was on
the dial. He began to call.
228


THE SHIP OF SOULS
speaking. New York, U. S. A. U. S. A. . . . You
told me to try for you. Is it you?"
"Yes, New York! New York. Who's speaking.
Who wants Fort McTavish, Northwest Territory
Company. . . . Who wants McTavish?"
"But Arthur! You said. . . . Crack, Crack, Crack,
Snap. . . . Why don't you tell me! I'm Alicia, Alicia,
Alicia. Don't you hear?"
Now the voice was a wail, a shriek. It came like a
hot needle point, eight thousand miles. >
"Why, you took it in, you said. You said you'd put
it up for me, for me! That we'd not be separated,
Arthur! That we'd talk no matter what! ... It was
for me. . . . It's wonderful. . . . It's a marvel . . .
to know, to know—Arthur! Arthur! Arthur! Is it
you. . . . Arthur Churchill, Major Arthur Churchill,
Major Arthur Churchill wanted! Who's speaking
there?"
Can suspicion carry eight thousand miles? Is a
woman's intuition wireless? Is guilt a thing that
can not be hid either in the positive or the subjective
world?
The voice went on, finally, weakly. "Arthur Church-
ill wanted! Major Arthur Churchill!"
He could hear a sob, of a woman overstrained. A
month? . . . Well.
"Mrs. Alicia Barnes, New York, U. S. A. Is it you,
234


McTAVISH SPEAKING
is it you, Alicia? Alicia Barnes, New York! Alicia?
Alicia? Alicia?"
"Yes, yes! Oh, God! Arthur! Is it you! Speak!
Quick—who are you?”
The energy of high strung query came through.
And over eight thousand miles of land and water
which once it took two years to cross, came back to her
now, within the seconds:
"I am Langley Barnes.”


CHAPTER XXIX
THE IMPOSSIBLE
THE figure on Angus Garth's observation bench
at Fort McTavish, under the Arctic Circle,
still sat rigid. It was several moments before
he tore off the head piece. He flung up an arm in
signal.
The transmission had ceased abruptly. Barnes
looked at the box on the bench. He had time to think,
as he saw Churchill come out of the door and hurry
across the open space, his face eager. Obviously he
had been watching Barnes comfortably from the warm
room.
"Anything? Get anything? Does she work?" he
demanded. At once he had off his cap, the clamps on
his ears.
He knelt in the wet snow, his lips to the transmission
cone. "Hello! Hello! Hello! Gravel River. New
York. Who? Hello! Hello!"
He turned. Langley Barnes sat astride the bench.
In his hand, the butt steadied on the plank, was the
heavy automatic whose muzzle covered Churchill's
breast. Barnes saw the flicker of his eyelids.
236


THE IMPOSSIBLE
"Go on!" said Barnes. "I've heard enough to satisfy
me. Talk! Tell the truth to her and to me. I'm your
judge now. There's no law but this between us. Go
on."
"Yes, New York. New York. Who is it, is it, is
it?" Trailing off.
At last Churchill rose to his feet.
"Dead!" said he. "There's nothing in on this
attunement. You must have been mistaken. Just
rumblings, cracklings. She's fizzed out. Nothing
doing."
The pistol muzzle kept him covered as he stood.
The cold eye of Barnes looked into his own, and he
stared back, trying to guess—with his life depending
on it—what had been heard here just now before he
came.
"Oh, well," he said, presently. "I suppose one ought
not to expect miracles. We all knew the static up
here is something awful. You are sure you heard a
* "iff
voice?
"Would I have called you if I had not been sure?"
"You had Gravel River? Come now, you never had
them? They've got a plant there, then? They did fix
that, the last boat, last season? Or did those boys that
flew in? You got them, you think?" He was more or
less babbling.
"I got New York! I don't think. I know!"
237


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"What do you know?" asked Churchill, after a time.
"Why did they cut off? It's impossible!"
"Yes, you meant it to be. I saw you turn the dials.
I turned them back! The parties may come on again,
after a time."
"I'll stand watch a time," said Churchill, coolly, with
a courage, at least, magnificent.
"They've been calling a month, in New York," said
Barnes. "Five hours daily. Of course, they didn't
know just when you'd get here, if ever, or when you'd
get installed. You had let them know of what you in-
tended to do with the radio experiment. It was only
a tentative date? Well, in another month we may get
on again!" Barnes spoke quietly enough.
Seven-two-three—A. B. C. A. B. C. A. B. C.
Transatlantic Radio. . . . Atlantic Radio, New York,
New York, New York?
Churchill had picked up the headpiece once more,
and now was speaking, calling, using code. He knew
the pistol still covered him. He knew he dared not
make a move toward his own. "Yes? Yes? Yes?"
he kept speaking into the phone. At last, eagerly,
"New York? That you? Yes! Churchill. Mc-
Tavish, Northwest Mounted. Yes?—"
"By God! She's broken again! You were right.
We've had New York, Barnes. It was the central
office of the Transatlantic Radiophone Company!"
238


THE IMPOSSIBLE
"Yes. I know that."
"Their manager was—well, you know?"
"Yes. B. D. Ogden. A brother of my wife. You
knew him?"
"Oh, yes."
"You arranged with him?"
"Oh, yes. You see, we wanted to try out the thing.
Sake of the Mounted Service, you know. I needed a
big power station, to make sure."
"I wouldn't lie."
Churchill drew a long breath. "Well then, what did
you hear? What do you want to do?"
"I heard New York. I'm rather sure the Trans-
atlantic will call again. You are to listen here, until
they do."
"Oh, no—that's not practicable."
"It is absolutely practicable. Sit down, here on the
board. Your right hand up, please. Unbuckle your
belt, with your left hand—So. Thank you. Now get
into position. Listen till you get New York, if it's a
month. Then call me."
"What's that? You'll do this with an officer of His
Majesty's forces? I'll not."
"His Majesty is very far away. I'm factor at Mc-
Tavish. Drop your gun, or I'll kill you.
"I warn you that anything you say may be used
against you!" he added, with a grim smile.
239


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"But where are you going?" Barnes had an auto-
matic now in either hand, was turning, as Churchill
spoke.
"It may be a long time," said he. "It may be two
or three hours, I don't know. But New York is pretty
sure to call McTavish again. Till it does, if it's a week
or a month or a year, you'll sit here under guard. No.
I like this place. We won't move the set into the
house—I'm operator enough to know it wouldn't work
in there. It does work here on the bluff. By God! sir,
if I have to install you at the top of the flag mast here,
you'll listen now till you get New York—and then
you'll call me."
Churchill's eye could not escape an amused gleam,
which Barnes caught perfectly well.
"And as the bourgeois at McTavish runs no errands,"
said he, "I'm going to take my ease and sit where it
is warm. But I'll not make the mistake you did about
that. I'm going in to set loose your two prisoners,
Stikeen and Johnnie. They'll bring you your blankets,
and have their own—and a rifle each.
"I'll lock you fast to this bench, instead of the stove
leg, Major Churchill. At the first connection, you'll
call for me. Stikeen's no fool. If there's funny busi-
ness, he'll kill you—he'll have my instructions to do
that."
"Why, good God! man, he'll kill me anyhow! You'd
240


THE SHIP OF SOULS
ernment equipment in a way questionable in an officer
and a gentleman. I don't think you can get the back-
ing. Don't try."
"Men don't take the law in their own hands up here
and get away with it."
"This isn't a case of any broken law. And we're not
going to be disorderly with you. If you play in and
out, you'll be killed and buried in the most orderly way
of anything you ever helped put through."
The face of Churchill, hardy, strong, red, was
changed to a mask of rage. But it was impotent rage.
"I forgot to tell you," said Barnes, "that I'm an ex-
cellent shot with these things. Don't try to run. If
you did, I've good trackers now to pick you up, and
you've no outfit. You'd not get far, on foot, eh?"
"But I say," he concluded wearily, "why make a row
about it? I've no jealousy, you know. Just be a sen-
sible chap, why don't you?"
"By God! you've heard through! No use my trying
to shield her. She called through!"
But the weary, cold, haggard and impassive face be-
fore him gave no sign of assent or dissent. Shrugging
in a sudden resolve, Churchill picked up the headpiece
once more.


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"It's none of your business. I'll be in the house,
where I can cover you through the window. But look
here, Stikeen. It's possible I'll not put you back in
irons again. You're a bad lot, you two. But will you
give me, an American, your word to stick about, and
make no break? If so, it may work out better for
you."
"You'd not take my word."
"Yes. I'll take your word."
Stikeen sat silent for a time. At last: "I'll promise
you!" he said.
Whether at risk or not, Barnes believed him. He
himself brought out the two men's capotes and bed rolls.
Then, with a heavy fur coat in hand, he started out to
the edge of the bluff.
He did not need to iron his man. Perhaps he would
have taken his parole, in the circumstances. As he
approached, Churchill threw up his arm in signal,
caught off the headpiece, kept calling, "Wait! Wait!
Minute, please! Coming. Wait!"
"New York, sir," said he, quietly, coldly, and handed
over the headpiece. Barnes motioned him to the far
end of the bench. Stikeen cocked his rifle. But the
tableau remained set.
"Yes? Yes. New York. McTavish. H. B.
Northwest. Langley Barnes speaking. In charge here.
Yes? What is it?"
244


THE NEWS FROM OUTSIDE
Then Churchill saw his face go rigid, frowning,
grave—all in a few seconds. He heard him say into
the mouthpiece, “Yes, Major Arthur Churchill's here.
You wish to speak to him? I'll call him. Repeat what
you told me to him, absolutely. Yes, he's here. Wait !"
He handed the head phone to Churchill. “It seems
faint,” said he. “Not so clear.”
“Yes?” began Churchill. “Seven-two-three. A. B.
C. Is A. B. C. there? What? What's that? Not
there-she was calling just now—she's—what?
What's that? Wait—something wrong! Don't get
you. This d-d static! What?”
"Crack. Crack. Burrr.” A purring, fading blur of
vague sound. Then silence, absolute silence. He might
as well have held a gourd to his ear.
“Dead !” said Churchill, savagely. “Right when we
needed it. A year, now! And I don't suppose there's
another plant anywhere in the Mackenzie basin. A
year! Curse it all, the whole damned business! I wish
I'd never come here."
“What was it got through when you were on?” he
demanded now of the silent man who sat opposite him.
"Who was it? What did you hear ?"
"You mean at first, or just now?”
"Both, please."
“At first I heard my wife, Alicia Barnes, calling
eight thousand miles to keep an appointment with a
245


THE SHIP OF SOULS
man whom she called Arthur. I gather that you had
planned to try this, that you brought the outfit on that
chance, that you had a code. Yes?"
"Yes, sir! I did!"
"At least you don't lie now."
"Well, it is what I planned, and what she planned.
I deny nothing. But the set's dead now. We're done!
What's the odds now?"
"Yes. What's the odds now?"
"But what did she say? On my honor I'd not ask,
if there were any other chance," Churchill added. "In-
deed, it was to me she spoke, sir."
"But a husband holds his rights till the law is pleased.
He may eavesdrop."
"Tell me, man! This last time—it was not her
voice?"
"No, it was the voice of her brother—Ogden, New
York, general manager of the Transatlantic Radio. He
was talking to me. He told me—what we both may
hear." He stopped.
"Dead!" Langley Barnes rose at last and smote his
hands together. "Yes, the spark gone at last! God
help us all—and her! She's dead!"
"Tell me—what do you mean! You said it was her
own voice."
"This, sir: The shock of hearing her husband's
voice, from the ends of the earth, where for a month
246


THE SHIP OF SOULS
"Now here. We're men out, off, on a desert island.
We'd as well recognize the business of getting along
together until we get off the island."
"Enter the Admirable Crichton!" Churchill smiled
sardonically.
"No. Enter the factor of this H. B. post. I don't
think the Dominion law gives you any right to com-
mandeer. You can't take possession of this post. Bet-
ter try comity than arrogance. That's the Company's
policy. By now you ought to know I'll not have arro-
gance from you, here nor anywhere else. Neither shall
I give you any. We're down to cases, now.
"Here's what I suggest. I'll outfit these two men
and send them out to Gravel River. They had started
there, when they picked you up and helped you through
to McTavish—with all your outfit, much of which
wasn't dog food.
"The Company men at Gravel can send up some one
to take charge here—maybe before the ice goes out; if
not, by boat when it does."
"But man!" broke in Churchill. "Those men will
cut stick, of course, as soon as they get out of sight."
"They would not in my country—not if they prom-
ised me," said Barnes. "As I said, there's honor among
us thieves. They're a bad pair, yes, and we all know
that. But they can do as they like. They're free.
There's no charge against them, now."
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AVERAGE MEN
"What? What's that? I jolly well promise you
there is!" Churchill was so soon on his official dig-
nity.
"No. I've thought it over. It's all too little," said
Langley Barnes. "Too much has happened, since.
There's nothing lost. They killed no man. They saved
your life. They brought through the radio. That
brought me the news. Shall I give no amnesty when
the war is done?"
"You're crazy! I can send out a native."
"You are not sending any one. You are not in
charge. It is a very delicate situation here, for a num-
ber of human beings. The law can't save it. Only
common sense, starting from the ground up, can save
it."
"We'll go," growled Stikeen, who had heard all this.
"Give us a few skins if you've not much cash. We're
pretty well broke. We'll tote fair—now. I just didn't
know but I could make that bluff stick, about that fur
belonging to me, see? Well, all right, no hard feelings.
But this man"—nodding to the officer—"had better
stay back, off the trail."
"He will," said Langley Barnes.
"There are some things for you and me to thrash
out, Churchill," he added. "I think we agree that, in
view of the aid these men gave the Mounted—and the
extra load you insisted on bringing through—and in
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AVERAGE MEN
"If you'd stay on, and run this post," broke in
Stikeen, "Johnnie and I'd cut the oil boom, and hunt
for McTavish, down in the Durgin and Hensley range.
Is that a go?"
"No," replied Barnes. "We'll see the new factor
here about you."
The face of the desperado almost colored. "Well,
you see, that girl's alone up here."
"Annette?"
"Yes."
"Annette and her brother Alex are going to be put
in charge of the man the inspector sends to McTavish.
This is their country."
"How about the other girl?" demanded Stikeen.
"That is none of your damned business."
"Well," went on the unabashed ruffian, "a voice like
her'n don't belong here, no ways on earth. I've been
around some, and sing? Say, once I heard that in a
choir, in 'Frisco—that thing she was singing. Well,
that's why them leg irons is there," he grinned, point-
ing to the shackles under the stove. "She sung 'em off.
Tell me!"
"Go get some wood, you," said Barnes. "Saw up a
lot while you're at it. Get your dogs picked and teamed
in and fed up. I don't want you here while the village
is full, and we've got to trade. You'll start south to-
morrow."
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
"All right, boss!" grinned the incorrigible. "Not
saying we'll stay south, for we're apt to go where we
please and move when we don't like it. Wish you was
going along. I'd show you a good time. But come on,
Johnnie, wood chopping beats polishing the floor with
your hip bones." The two moved out, grinning.
The men remaining faced each other now.
"Well, what do you think?" began Barnes, flinging
himself into a chair. "No use rowing. Let's be sen-
sible."
"As good a plan as any, maybe," admitted Churchill.
"Only, the hard part's left."
"Yes."
"There's a question, first, of whether Alicia's—pass-
ing out of the game, you know—leaves you any ground
for wanting personal satisfaction from me. I don't
deny anything at all."
"You can't very well deny. If she were still my
wife, it would have to be cleaned up. She wouldn't
have followed on that way if she hadn't been false to
me, in her neurotic way—she didn't have much sensu-
ousness, and that maybe kept her innocent, as the term
goes. I'll not say how many things you were false to
—a good many, no doubt. Well, maybe, the War took
your personal principles. Maybe the times took them.
Maybe you're just a bad lot. Maybe you lived up to
the standards of your sort. That last is what I think."
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AVERAGE MEN
"I say, don't comb it too rough! Good God! man,
why should we quarrel? It's over. It was over before
you started north last year. You ran away from
her."
"No! I ran away from life."
"Comes to the same, eh?"
"Oh, yes, I meant to leave her free. I supposed she
would file papers at once."
"She did!"
"Oh, you know?"
"As it happens. Not that I cared. I never would
have married her."
Barnes nodded, slowly and coldly. "I think you
speak the truth, at least across her grave. To-day, I
smelt the tuberoses she will have about her. And
orchids. Well, genuine love was not in either of you.
So, I don't know that I have much grounds either to
challenge you as a man or kill you as a cur. Either
would be easy if I had any jealousy left—for her.
But that's not the question."
"No," laughed Churchill, evilly. "What to do about
the other woman! Not like Africa!"
"I don't think we'll mention her name again, sir."
"Most noble judge! Then, what in hell do you want
of me? Why don't you marry the girl, as soon as you
can, or call it a marriage now? It would be, now,
since this news, if it were done over again. As factor
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
of McTavish, Admirable Crichton and Divine Provi-
dence, why not publish your own banns?"
"I shall never marry her. She never would marry
me."
"Might try it on? You can't tell."
"Yes, I can. I know. We're to begin some other
theory for her. I want you here, as long as I am here.
I want your slurring tongue here, your low-down heart
here, where I can watch them both."
"By God! I'll not endure that! Give me my gun!"
"You'll endure all I want to say to you. You'll be
safer without your gun. So far as I know, I'll say no
more than the truth. I have not said more. And I'm
no better than you are, on the record.
"No, Major Arthur Churchill, we've met about one
woman before, we'll meet about one now so soon—
a better one, a more unhappy one, I can say that
much. If you can take her also away from me, do so.
Indeed, that might be the very best thing for us
all. . . .
"Her voice, as I believe, is a very great possession."
He spoke musingly, pulling together with a sigh.
"Yes," Churchill spoke positively. "It belongs to the
world. She should sing in the Scala in four years,
three. She will be known the world over in six, five,
four."
"Have you fortune to enable that?"
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AVERAGE MEN
“You are direct! Of course I have not. Do you
suppose I'd be piffling here?”
"You should have married my wife! She had two
million and a half-I gave her that. We had no chil-
dren. If she left no will going so suddenly, it is
doubtful whether she did a part of that now comes
back to me legally, I suppose. If it does, there's the
chance for Christine. I've never done any good in the
world in all my life--like yourself, I've been such a
rotter !”
"Who hasn't? Well, so then you'd stake Christine
and turn her and her fortune and her future over to me
-knowing what we both know to-day over the phone?
Rather not! You'll do nothing of the sort."
"Nothing of that exact sort, no. But I'll think it all
over for five months. I'll watch her--and you. If
only you were a decent, honest man, how simple it then
would be. But where'd we find one? Not me, surely.
I'm bad as you are every whit as bad. She knows
that.”
Churchill looked at him curiously. "I say, you're an
odd sort. I don't think fellows say that of themselves.
Mostly, we let the world run and not try to change it,
eh? Isn't it easier, better?"
“Commoner?”
"Call it so. But I swear-well, those others have
cort of given parole, what? You believe Stikeen. Will
257


CHAPTER XXXII
THE SHIP OF SOULS
THE double season of the North began its an-
nual apology for spring. Hours of still
brooding came in the lengthening day, pre-
monitory of the swift leap into life of full-fledged sum-
mer. The snow sank. Dark spots showed on the ice
of the river. The tips of the willow boughs were
thicker. Always the sun became more confident, the
night lessening, the day in waxing ascendency, until
the reversal was accomplished and both snow and ice
were gone and the swift green came.
In the native village which had made its annual as-
semblage near the trading post, the women now made
fires out of doors, raised the edges of the skin covers
of the hovels in which they miserably had huddled,
took in the rabbit snares and found the nets for fishing.
The strange colony at McTavish, shaken down per-
force into some sort of adjustment not much above
that of the native villages, moved on, dully, half
apathetically, waiting for the spring.
Two figures daily occupied the lookout bench on
260


THE SHIP OF SOULS
might be necessary privately and secretly to make sacri-
fices to the old gods. Something, obviously, needed
appeasing. The white gods now were weak.
As to Annette and her brother Alex, born of the
wilderness, their instinct was in rapport with that of
other things. They saw the river pass from white to
gray, the tundra change from white to brown. Soon,
they said, the fowl would come. So, at last, through
the mists to the south they heard this irrefutable har-
binger. Annette was unusually silent and preoccupied,
but one day as they two sat silent the breed boy touched
her with an elbow, with a short single word.
They both heard the low soft murmur grow into
definite waves of sound, heard these separate and blend,
growing into a volume of music exceedingly sweet,
since it was announcing day and spring and flowers
and warmth once more. It was the cycle-marking
sound of the wild geese, going north, the one sound
of hope in all that mournful, melancholy land annually
resigned to despair and apathy.
Came, high above, the wild chatter of the white
geese, the maniac clamorings of the laughing geese, in-
visible in the pale white sky; but better they liked the
deeper and somberer music of the long dark harrows of
the honkers, coming north, weary, laboring, driven
eight thousand miles by love for life's own sake.
"They come!" spoke Annette, in her broken way,
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
one idea at a time. Alex nodded in his own acceptance
of the new season.
They turned to the post buildings, that sullen and
unhappy camp where silence had reigned so long. The
dogs, ears erect, noted the coming of the clamoring
fowl. But it was nothing to them, for they had in-
stincts of their own to tell them when winter had
passed.
But, before Annette was well within the door and
Alex gone beyond the building, the attention of every
one about McTavish, in and out of doors, and of the
Indian village as well, suddenly was arrested by the
concerted howling of the dogs. It rose, a vast, mourn-
ful, foreboding roar of savage apprehensiveness, all
along the bluff, on the beach below, over the forest
edge. The Loucheux shaman came into the open space
in all his savage priestly garments. The work of the
Anglican church for a century was gone. The instinct
of all the savage creatures of the North was now again
united. And it was united in the common emotion of
fear, fear of the unknown. . . . The dogs ought not
to be howling now.
After a long time, some moments of strained senses,
the keener ears of Annette, at the open door, caught the
sound. It was broken, came again; again rose, thick-
ened, fell—as though, so to speak, it physically con-
densed, solidified, on the far horizon. Whatever it
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
was, it advanced ominously, menacingly. Never in any
spring at old McTavish had the South sent North a
sound like this now in the air.
Annette turned back into the house, pale under the
olive of her skin. "It is the Chasse Galere!" she whis-
pered, and sank on a couch, to draw her blanket over
her head. For now, obviously, the Spirits had come to
take a victim and exact some punishment for all these
changed ways at the oldest post of the Far North.
"Chasse Galere?" Oh, yes, it all was true.
The far-off broken murmur became a steady drone,
as of some great insect. Smaller dogs ran into the
house and crawled into the dark. ... It changed into
a menacing scream, as of some giant bird. The largest
dogs, hair erect, followed in abject terror.
And now they could see the Thing itself, and it was
coming on, heading straight in. It was a great, wide-
winged creature of the air, of monstrous wings, of
giant body. It rose in long easy sweeps at times, to
settle down into a level and incredibly rapid flight which
each second brought it into clearer definition.
Barnes, Churchill, Alex, one or two natives and
breeds, crowded through the dogs into the open plateau,
regarding the advancing creature with emotions which
for the latter came to ash-visaged fright. Indeed, Alex,
being Indian, ran for cover when, in undeniable truth
and with his own eyes, he saw the Chasse Galere— .
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
your name in the Company service. You say—oh,
you're not the Yankee that was reported lost last year,
the one those men last month told us had taken charge
of McTavish?"
"Yes. Angus Garth is dead. You got my statement?
I came in last summer on the boat and stayed in, if that
is what you mean. I'm an American, what you call a
Yankee. From New York."
"Indeed? But how came you in the Company serv-
ice? We've no record of that!"
"I am not now in the service of any company or any
man, sir. It pleased Angus Garth to take me into con-
fidence in what he knew was his last illness. In his will
he gave me and one daughter all he had, and left me as
his executor and his successor. He named me as his
son-in-law and put me in charge pro tern, at least. All
that I shall explain. Of course, I give over charge to
you now, sir. We'll go over the books when we've
time."
"My word!" remarked Inspector Janes, succinctly.
"Then it all was true, the word you sent out by your
two men! We'd not believed it."
By now the entire group was working toward the
door of the post building, the tall, thin form of the
holy man in the rear given less attention than any other
figure there.
"Old Angus gone!" The inspector paused, hand on
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
the door frame, looking in. "Forty-five years! We'd
come to think of him as McTavish itself. Dead? I
did not believe it. Tell me."
So now Barnes told him, briefly, the whole grim
story, pushing toward him the Company books, with
the log, and with it the inventory of the season's trade.
The inspector nodded at the total. "Good!" said
he. "I am glad to know you, Factor Barnes. It's an
extraordinary situation. So far as I can see now,
you've handled it well. Why didn't you turn it all over
to the Mounted?"
"Because of Mr. Garth's will and of his wish. Be-
cause of other things which will be plainer after a time.
"Now we must follow custom."
And so, while the belated rattle of rifle salute, from
the scared breeds and natives now emerging from
cover, began in honor of the inspector's coming, they
drew toward the puncheon table where old Angus Garth
had eaten and drunk for more than forty years. The
arms of Inspector Janes rested in the smooth hollows
the arms of old Angus had worn in the table top. And
they drank of the first bottle of the last six of H. B.
Scotch which old Marie had remaining, hid beneath her
blanket bed.
It all did not wholly thaw the constraint. It did not
warm the thin white man in cassock under furs who
now sat silent at the fire of Angus Garth's hearth.
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
To him finally came Langley Barnes, since in the
confusion the visitors had not yet made all things and
persons plain. "You are Archdeacon Shoreham, they
told me? From below? How can I make you com-
fortable? You will not have a taste of spirits? The
journey must have left you terribly cold."
The old man reached out a thin and trembling hand,
drank abstemiously. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"I heard the word son-in-law. You?"
"It is a long tale, sir. I will say only now I am not
Angus Garth's son-in-law."
"There could have been no marriage here, that I
can attest!" said the acid voice of the old man. "No
mission here—he would not allow it, Garth. He was
a savage. He died in sin."
"It may be. I am not the first to cast a stone."
"He lived in iniquity, and so he died! A brood of
breed children he had—we know. Oh, I know a great
deal even now."
"You came here often in the past?"
"Never in my life have I been here! In twenty-five
years I've not been north of Old Augustus. Last year
I got far as Resolution, where once I was, many years,
ago. By sledge to Gravel City, where new ways bid
fair to come now. By airship here."
"And why? That was a great risk."
"Yes. My last risk. I knew it was my last year
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
in the service of the Church; doubtless my last of life.
Why? Well, I never had been here. But at the very
last I had to come. I could no longer wait. My duty
to my Church must at last be done, no matter what
risk. So when I heard that sinful man was gone, I
resolved to come to this spot of heathendom.
"I had to know, you see! Though it killed me, I
could do no more, no less. Strange things drive a
man, sir. And at the end of life we are not as we
were when young. No, nor in middle age." His liquor
thawed his tongue.
"You are alone?"
"All my life, sir. The Church has been my interest.
I tried to bring light among the heathen. I have not
done so. I have seen white men drop down into
heathendom."
"Yes. We very quickly revert," said Langley
Barnes. Something in his tone caused the holy man to
turn to him.
"I will tell you the truth, sir, since you have been
in charge here. I came with the Inspector with the
intent to establish a mission at McTavish, to put in
some man more in keeping with the wish of the Com-
pany to extend the Gospel into the North."
"The wish of the Company?"
"At least, the consent of the Company. But no man
may know what that has meant to me. 'Vengeance is
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
mine, saith the Lord.' I have come too late for that.
He can never know my triumph over him at last.
"Too late for everything!” he added, to himself,
trembling, his glass still in hand. “She died more
than twenty years ago. Both dead now. Vengeance
was His!"
Some subtle touch of the strange Far Northern inter-
communication of intelligence flashed into the soul of
Langley Barnes. He spoke gently:
"You mean the wife of Angus Garth?”'
"She was not his wife!"
The sudden shrill pitch of his voice cut into the
wassail of the near-by table. Barnes touched the old
man on the shoulder. They rose, passed into the
narrow log room that once had belonged to Angus
Garth. And there, at sight of what hung on the wall,
the old man clapped hands to his face and sank on the
bed where once had lain the owner of yonder face
framed on the wall; gone now these twenty years, as
this holy man had said.
"She was not his wife!” he cried out again at last.
"She never was. She was mine!"


CHAPTER XXXIII
THE KNEES OF THE GODS
WAS a long w-a-a-y to Tip-per-ar-e-e,"
roared Peachy McPherson, young eyes
shining, head back, —“A lo-o-ong way to
go! Long w-a-ay to Tipper-a-ree! But we got-
back there!"
Thibodeau, Janes, Churchill, now warmed by the
spirits, joined in the paraphrase, passing echo of the
great war now fading along the extremest marches of
the earth. But their chorus ceased suddenly when
Barnes, followed by Christine, came into the main
room from the passageway. The men at the table rose
as the young white woman of McTavish entered.
She did not smile, but bowed gravely. Hurriedly,
she followed Barnes across the room, into that one
which had belonged to her father, where now another
man, the first man of the Church Christine ever had
seen, now sat, his head bowed. Barnes left them.
"You are my daughter!" exclaimed the old man as
he looked up into the cold eyes of this calm young
woman who confronted him. “I am John Shoreham.”
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THE KNEES OF THE GODS
"I am not your daughter, sir," rejoined Christine.
"You know I am not. You know I am the daughter
if Angus Garth, who is dead, and of her!”
She nodded to the faded little picture on the wall.
“That was my mother. I do not remember her much
more than as a shadow. But I know that was my
mother."
“You should have been my daughter. That is Alice,
my wife.”
"Spare us, sir. I know the story. They both are
dead.”
The zealot in him rose. "You never have been bap-
tized!"
"No."
“You will not let me call you daughter?”
“No. I am not."
He sank back on the bed. “I am too late !"
“Yes. Everything is too late.”
“But you you do not look a savage. You speak
as an educated girl. Where? There's been no mission
here. There's never been one."
"I've never been fifty miles from McTavish. I've
never seen a school. I've not seen even the Catholic
church at Good Hope. I've read books only. My
father taught me, years ago; a little, more lately. I
know nothing. I am nothing."
She spread out her hands. "I am a lost soul, a soul
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
not born. I am futile, frustrate, I am a waif. Look
at me, minister. I am the most wretched woman in
the world. Why did you come here? It was no place
for you. By no means am I your child. They sinned,
yes. The world is naught but sin. Married ? No.
They were never married.”
“But you? He—that man, Barnes, yonder-said
something about a will, a son-in-law. Are you mar-
ried ?”
"For a time I thought I was. He said I was, my
father. Now, he who was to be my husband says no,
that we were not. I knew it was never marriage. I
am altogether as I was, sir."
"But-you have not come to love a man—that
man?”
“Yes. I have come to love him. But who are you
to ask?”
"God have mercy! I am John Shoreham. I was
mission minister at Resolution when my wife ran away
with that ruffian, your father.”
"You shall not speak so! He was not all ruffian.
He sinned. He is dead. I think she loved him. It is
an awful thing—to love."
She spoke with all her quiet deliberation; but the
blood was red in her cheeks now.
"You speak to a man grown old in the Church, my
child,” he said at length. “You may confide. Who
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THE KNEES OF THE GODS
er
am I to blame you, born innocent! Only, my dear, I
shall tell you that I left the wilderness then and there,
when your mother left me for that man. I remained
in orders, but here was the grave of my life. I came
back, at the very last—why, I did not know. Now I
know! It was to baptize into the Christian faith a--a
soul born in savagery!
“Come, my child,” he said-his calling fore-
most now, as ever-"you do not despise what your
mother would wish? Come! Where is water, a
chalice?"
They spoke for many, many moments. Then Chris-
tine led the way to her little sanctum, the strange pene-
tralia of McTavish post, where none ever came
This was, through every association, the most holy
place in Christine's world. And here the man did the
only thing which he could find in his own ashen soul
to do.
He pushed back the wooden prongs which to Chris-
tine had meant little forks. One of the porringers
which had served her for finger bowls in her make-
believe wedding table made chalice for him. ... And
after all, yearning for something we do not understand,
craving for something we never yet have got, the white
child of this wilderness bent her young head in hope,
as many a Viking daughter did to the New Faith in
still more ignorant days. And with his moistened
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ROSE O' THE WORLD
Smith's Crossing, and petrol there. At McMurray
you get the rails and wires, all you like. It's simple.
Sirs, when I think of the canoes from Montreal, the
York boats to the Rockies and the Arctics, I take off
my hat, I scarce know whether to the old days or these
new!
"As for getting you out, sir, I'll give you my seat
back. Without doubt, I'll be needed here for quite a
while."
"What about my two men, Stikeen and his Indian?"
asked Barnes. "They brought in Major Churchill.
They carried the news out to you. Ruffians and
thieves, I doubt not, murderers in their time, they
were. But they did not fear the North, and I think
they kept their word to me."
Janes looked at Churchill, but the latter was loyal
to his tacit promise to Barnes. "Ought to do some-
thing for them," he said. "They brought me in. If
it hadn't been for them, I'd have stayed out with
Calkins on the Dawson trail. Maybe they'll hang
around here on the lower river and hunt a season or
so. They're the sort can care for themselves, sir."
"Would that please you, Mr. Barnes?" asked the
inspector, "—if we just charged it off?"
Barnes nodded. "As good a pair of men as you
can find in the North. It takes hard men to go in front
of civilization. You know that."
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
"Trustworthy, I presume, if they give you their con-
fidence?"
"Absolutely," said Langley Barnes, and Churchill
did not gainsay him. "You know their sort. They
fear nothing. Trust them, and they'll stick. I don't
doubt they'd have robbed the post. But I don't think
they'll try it now."
"So much for them, then. I'm thinking of sending
up Denby, from Vermilion, for the time at least—one
season, or two—here at the old heathen post, as we
call it."
"You can put in your Anglican mission now." He
had turned to the old archdeacon. "And time enough,
I'm thinking. Of old Angus and his life I'll say noth-
ing, nor shall any man. Of course, the times and the
country governed all that. What's happened, we'll say
we none of us ever knew. The Company has always
kept its own secrets and held its own counsel in such
matters.
"And it has always paid its debts, too!" he added
proudly. "If we owe, we pay. Pro pelle, cutem!
That's our motto. Now, as to Annette, we'll send her
out to a good mission school, say Winnipeg. She's
wild as a hawk. Maybe something can be done for
her. I don't know. Alex? No use. The rifle and
dog team and trap for him. He can stay here."
"You now have left the most important matter and
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ROSE O' THE WORLD
the hardest, to the last," commented the archdeacon;
and both Barnes and Churchill nodded.
"The young lady, yes!" said the inspector. "I have
pleaded with Angus these years to let us send his daugh-
ter Christine out to school. He never would listen.
An obstinate man, and a difficult, but the greatest
handler of natives in the North, and the best collector
of fur the Company ever had. What shall we say for
her—Christine? Well enough we all know, she never
has belonged here. Still less now does she. But what
shall we do?
"I was in hopes, Churchill—" he turned to the offi-
cer—"that you and Christine would hit it off together!
Three or four years, singing lessons and all! How's
she done?"
Churchill flushed to the ears. "She is past me and
beyond me in every way," said he. "Hers is one of the
great voices of the world. I know enough to say that.
Let's not bring in anything else."
"Wasted here?"
"Worse. Any voice must be trained. She must
study. I say, she must!"
"Then this clause of the will about the son-in-law—"
Janes turned over the long papers he held in his hands
even then.
"There was nothing, as to that," said Langley
Barnes, quietly. "The man was unquestionably mad,
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
even then. There was no marriage. Please let's not
talk of this."
"I myself know there was no marriage," said the
archdeacon. "She has told me. That is best, if she is
to study voice. And I will also say her voice is one
of the miracles. It is attuned, gentlemen—attuned as
yonder radio was, but to far other things. As though
one day we might not all reach attunement! . . . Rose
o' the World, I baptized her with my own hands. And
you, inspector, know that twenty years ago—"
The stocky, bearded man raised a hand. "We know
nothing!" said he. "The Company knows nothing.
We ask nothing. The Company keeps its secrets. Let
the Church keep its own also.
"Would you take her out, either you or Mr. Barnes?"
he added, hesitatingly. "Give her her chance, you
know? See here: I'll buy the Hensley and Durgin fox
which Mr. Barnes has given her. It shall be at a price
that means a little fortune. Stake her for her whole
course—New York, Paris, Milan—anywhere. Only,
she's alone—there are so very many difficulties."
"I can send Christine Rosamond Garth to my own
family in London," broke in the man of orders. "I
am laying down my labors in the field this coming fall,
if I should live that long. I had thought I might go
back home. My work is done. One more sermon I
shall write, and only one. It is on Attunement. If
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ROSE O' THE WORLD
we would set our dials and try, no doubt we could get
the spark of Truth; yea, from the Infinite itself. That
is no more wonderful—"
Janes again raised his hand to check him. "In due
time, Dominie! But only two can go out. We want
you here.
"You'll have to get down to the new town at Gravel
River, on your work in the Northwest Territory, major,
of course—and a lot more work you'll have now than
ever you had before. The world's gone, as we old
timers knew it. We've got to have quicker inter-
change."
"It's Barnes should go," rejoined Churchill, quietly.
But neither of them told the real story of the dead
wire that now lay across the plaza of McTavish.
"Why not?" reasoned the practical man of affairs.
"Perhaps Mr. Barnes could see our protegee—I'm
going to call her that—on her way for a time? Quite
a wonderful world it will seem to her, at first sight,
I'm thinking! She's never seen anything, outside of
books. You'll take her out, see her started, that sort
* of thing? Will you do that, Mr. Barnes; for the
Company, for us all—for her?"
"If she thinks well of it, I shall be glad," said Lang-
ley Barnes after a long time. "I'll take her across to
the archdeacon's family in England and make all ar-
rangements in Europe for her schooling, if that is the
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
wish of all you gentlemen. Then I'll come back to
New York. That was my home, you know. I only
came up here—well, you know about it. And I've had
my fling."
"Well," concluded the spokesman, staring medita-
tively out over the wide country beyond the rim of
McTavish bluff, "suppose we all keep together here for
a few days, or a few weeks, and get better acquainted.
Perhaps we can think of some better solution of all
these matters. If not, perhaps the outline we now
have will work itself out. You know, in the Com-
pany, a century is nothing! So we've got time.
"Just now, it seems to me an excellent idea to go in
and ask old Marie if she can find another bottle of
Scotch. Poor old girl!"


CHAPTER XXXV
THE CUP
BUT Langley Barnes could not join them in the
old Company customs. His head bent, his
hands behind his back, he made his way be-
yond the passage door that led to what might be called
the women's quarters. He glanced, scarce seeing, into
the open door of Annette's room. Escaped for the
time from her last pursuers, she was as usual engaged
in work of silks and quills, her eyes cast demurely
down.
He knocked at the door of the room where he hoped
to find Christine, and opened at the call.
She was seated at the table and was reading, as was
her wont, her book flat on the cloth. She turned her
eyes upon him tranquilly, gravely, not asking him any
questions at all.
A sudden, unaccountable feeling of weariness, of
longing for peace, came to the troubled soul of the
man who hesitated, while she remained quite silent.
"Read to me!" he exclaimed, and cast himself full
length on the couch, his hands covering his eyes. It
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THE CUP
"No, I do not. How learned you are, Christine!
And what an odd range of books! Odd, for a girl to
be reading of the Holy Grail."
"Do not all men and women know the story of the
Holy Grail?"
"Not many, to-day! Read it again to me! I must
sleep, I warn you."
Without other word she began, apparently where
she had left off in her own reading. Her voice was,
as he had said, astonishingly pleasing in the spoken
word, and by some marvel of heredity she read with no
faltering and no ill pronunciation. She had learned
rudiments, but with no child mind. Once a thing was
in her mind, it was hers.
"It is about Perceval," she explained. "I know the
whole book. He was the best knight in the world. As
you know, it was he only who ever came to look on the
Grail. Not Gawain, for he forgot. Not Lancelot, for
he loved the queen, King Arthur's wife—Guinevere.
That wa9 wrong.
"It says, 'But Arthur and the Queen say that never
until now had any knight gone into such jeopardy as
Perceval. He and Gawain and Lancelot all go on to-
gether now, and a damsel was with them.
"'So far have they wandered that they come into
the plain country, before the forest. So they looked
before them and saw a castle that was seated in a plain,
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THE CUP
line, "Perceval had trials all his life. Always he was
fighting. But because he was good and clean, and
would fight, at last, after journeys and voyages-oh,
far-he came at last to where the Holy Grail was.
And he alone was held good enough to see it—what no
other man had seen—not even Lancelot, not even
Gawain the Courteous.
“And when they argued, Perceval said, 'Sir, gra-
mercy, but no knighthood is there so fair as that which
is undertaken to set forward the law-'A good man he
was, yet bold, and fearing nothing, and never holding
back from any danger, Sir Perceval. Why, a hero? I
don't see why he wasn't a good hero.
"And so, at the end of his life, after hundreds and
hundreds of adventures,” she explained, carefully, "and
many wounds and much labor, he came on an island,
far off. And the story tells that there they gave him a
white shield, taking his old one. I can't read all that.
Are you now asleep, sir? For here it says:
“ 'He hath taken leave, and so departeth. He enter-
eth into the ship and the sail is set. He leaveth the
land far behind, and the pilot steereth the ship, and Our
Lord God guideth and leadeth him. The ship runneth
a great speed, for far enough had she to run. But
God made her speed as He would, for He knew the
passing great goodness and worth of the knight that
was within.'"
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THE SHIP OF SOULS
"Read on, Christine. Read to me!" His voice was
choking in his throat.
"I can not read, sir I am crying. I think of his
going away, in a ship that runneth fast. But, oh! I
think he must have been a bonny man."
She turned her face, wet-eyed, unashamed, to him as
he suddenly swung about.
“It is sad, the partings in this book! That must
have been a ship of souls! Do you not think so ? And
why should my father buy this book for me? None
but a Perceval could rescue damsel like me, on my
island-on my island in the unknown sea! And far
away the ship-aye, it was sae far to gae, frae this
island !"
"There was but one Perceval in all the Knights of
the Round Table, Christine. He only was good. Look
at all the others."
“Aye. But ane such was in the heart o' every damsel
ever was, since then till noo!" Unconsciously, she was
falling into the intimate Scotch.
"But Christine, his shield was white."
"Aye. Tears and bluid hae washed a' the world
clean frae then till noo."
And then, Langley Barnes told her of all that had
happened that day; told her what happened on that
other day, weeks earlier, the news of Alicia. He tried
to explain the radio message that had come. She
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me.
290


THE CUP
waved it all aside, weeping only for the frail woman
who had died.
"Is it mair wonderfu' than the ship of souls in the
book, here?” she demanded. "But, oh! the puir soul.
Sae far, she was!"
"Christine," said he, after a long time. “She sent
her soul, her voice, through the very heavens them-
selves. But that was not to find me, but him-that
other man.”
A long silence. Then, “Could a woman do that?"
"Not a woman like you, Christine.”
“Would you sing?” he asked after a time. “'Ave
Maria'? A soul has passed.”
"Nay! I canna sing. Some time.
“Ye'll be going awa'?” she said, after a time.
“Not for some time. First I shall set your house
in order here for you. There will be time."
“ 'Twill be short. And then?”
Tears again welled from her eyes. And again she
would not stanch them.
"God have mercy on us all!” said Langley Barnes.
"I'm sick-sick in my heart, Christine. If only I had
not forgotten! If only I could now forget! If only-
if only!"
He flung himself face down, on the piled blankets of
the couch in Christine's wedding breakfast room,
ashamed at having given away so much. Here, surely
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