Bonanza

The officers and crew of the Carillon, our three selves, with Inspector Hanafin and men of the Firefly, made a landing into the country of perpetual day.

It was severely cold, and rain fell, each drop stinging like ice, when we came upon a beach of vivid white sand, everywhere strangely marked with black fragments of petrified wood, which at a distance closely resembled rocks. Some ragged bush spread away to the north, and to the south dreary shallows, where large-leaved plants floated. Before us a razor-back succession of sand-hills, overhung by a clammy mist, hid all that was beyond.

“We must push along,” said Inspector Hanafin, gathering his fur-lined cloak about his uniform. “This is a malarial fever coast. Keep the mosquitos off as much as you can.”

The Firefly was anchored in the natural harbour made by a long reef.

Upon landing from our boats, most of the men went down on their stomachs, and sucked up the unwholesome water. They were surly after their dissipation, and awed by the presence of the inspector and his two troopers, who had pursued Redpath across so many leagues of land and lake.

We had released the sailors directly the police had come aboard; and when we had taken some provisions, MacCaskill and I loading ourselves with our tools and our packs, we made haste to desert the poisonous mud-flats.

While we were making our way towards the sand-hills I looked for Olaffson, whom I had seen on the boat; but the Icelander had already disappeared, and I guessed he would work his way along the shore to satisfy himself that Redpath was dead. I made no comment, because I was glad to be rid of him.

We were on our way to find a camping-place outside the miasma of the shore. MacCaskill, who had been tramping beside Lennie, joined me, and whispered:

“Rupe, this is the beach Redpath was makin’ for.”

I ought to have been surprised, but somehow I wasn’t. I was tired and indifferent.

“All right,” I said wearily.

As we toiled up the loose sand, I saw the red tops of the willow bush peeping out of the “smoke.” We came over, descended through the curiously thick fog, and suddenly walked right out of it into a pure and clear atmosphere and a much warmer temperature. Beyond the sun was shining; below spread a large hollow, its carpet a startling green, its slopes covered with a luxuriant vine, which crossed and tangled confusedly. The shifting sand changed to firm ground, which produced a tall, stiff grass, the stems of darkest green, the points hard and sharp, and black as ebony. The slope we were on resembled the back of an immense porcupine.

We had not gone far before the men began to curse.

“Poison-grass,” said the inspector carelessly, as well he might, because his own legs were protected by riding-boots. “We shall soon be away from it. Walk straight, men, and tread it down firmly.”

“The devil of a country!” muttered MacCaskill.

“I don’t hold wi’ the bugs,” complained Pete, who was fairly capable, but still nervous after his knock-down. “I don’t worry over grass-bite, I don’t; but I hate to watch these yer black bugs.”

Long narrow insects writhed everywhere between the grass stems; they were so numerous that we could not walk without treading across one or more, and they were pulpy and unpleasant to crush.

“Never mind the bugs,” said Hanafin, who, I learnt, was a genuine specimen of an English gentleman. “See that speckled plant, hemlock? Everything seems more or less poisonous upon this bit of British territory. By Jove, look here!”

The ground fell away suddenly, and we arrived above a succession of pools, joined one to another by belts of swamp, the latter decorated by luxuriant white moss. The black water was absolutely stagnant and unreflecting; large bubbles rose continually, to burst, upon reaching the surface, with a perfectly audible report. Stranger than these bubbles were numerous solid-looking globes—a few opal-white, the majority a very dark blue, others a dirty grey, all curiously marked with shifting designs of every imaginable colour, though the blue tint always predominated. These globes bounded over the pools without marking the surface with the smallest ripple, just like rubber balls bounding over the ground. Immediately a jumping globe touched the moss it vanished; if it safely negotiated the morass, it bounded hilariously over the next pool; if it fell short in its next jump, it invariably paid the penalty of failure by becoming extinct.

“The hell of a country!” muttered MacCaskill.

“Not at all,” said Hanafin, who knew everything. “Nature discovered in her own laboratory. We are near the magnetic circle, and I suspect two of the earth’s currents meet at this hollow. Dip your hand into that pool,” he said, turning to me.

“Do not,” said Akshelah.

I did not like the look of the thick, unmoving water. The inspector drew aside his cloak, passed down before me, and dipped in his own hand. I saw his shoulders lift, and his arm jerked back, before he drew up smilingly, letting loose a long breath.

“This water ought to cure the sickest man on earth,” he said.

Curiosity tempted me, so I slid down and cautiously inserted my fingers. The water was glutinous and tepid, but nothing happened. The inspector looked at me with a faint smile.

“Keep your hand in, but come off the rock.”

I stepped off, and, when my feet touched the wet moss a strong shock thrilled through my system, forcing back my arm, and passed in and out of my body and across my shoulders, making me tingle all over.

“An electric pool,” said Hanafin, when I gave a gasp of relief to find that the water showed no inclination to imprison my hand. “To-night the little globes will resemble so many arc-lights, and the black pools will be like mirrors with the sun upon them.”

Coming down into the hollow, towards the fringe of bush where we intended to make our camp, we became stopped by a ridge of blood-red rock, which rose abruptly like a wall. We thought nothing of the obstacle, until we made the discovery that the barrier was not rock, but a kind of slimy clay, which melted in the warmth of the hand, and left the fingers stained scarlet. MacCaskill muttered yet another reference concerning the country, while Lennie, who was utterly played out, suggested camping where we were.

“When you can’t face your enemy, find a way round,” said the inspector. “Norman, go and explore.”

The trooper swung round, astounding me by his ready obedience. He was soon back to report that he had found the way round.

We reached the edge of the bush, made a clearing and a fire, and spread open our packs.

The inspector selected the best-sheltered spot, called, “Norman, wake me when breakfast is ready,” rolled up his fur-lined cloak for a pillow, spread a silk handkerchief over his face, and went to sleep.

Lennie and the inspector intended to return to the pestilential shore to drag the Carillon, if possible, off the poisonous mud-flat. The ship was owned jointly by the Northern Fishing, the Outside Limit Lumber, and the Hudson Bay Companies—all wealthy corporations.

Later on, I ventured to ask Hanafin what Redpath had done to deserve the vengeance of the law, but the inspector only looked at me smilingly over his cigarette, and propounded a question of his own:

“I suppose not even a young and agile man could hope to escape out of that quagmire?”

I expressed my doubts, and the soldier-policeman went on:

“In that case, we won’t discuss the man or his doings. We have a theory that it is ungenerous to speak evil of the dead, who can’t hear, and who don’t care. If the same sentiment were extended to the living, who can hear, and who generally do care, there would be less work for my profession.”

However, MacCaskill spoke differently.

“He ain’t dead, Rupe. Folks like him never do die. Anyhow, when you make dead sure such a one’s snuffed out, he always comes up again. If Redpath had got to work, and run off into clean bush, maybe he’d have fell some place, and bruke a leg, and starved, just ’cause no one would have ever looked for it. It don’t look possible for him to escape outer that mud before he chokes, and that’s just the reason why I look for him to turn up again. Now, where’s that little skunk of an Olaffson?”

“Gone to find Redpath,” I said; but MacCaskill laughed.

“He don’t give a darn about Redpath. He’s gone inland, in the direction we oughter be a-going now.”

“He doesn’t know the way.”

“Redpath told him, likely. If he ain’t, Olaffson will smell it out for himself. Say! You and me must get a move to-night, and slip away quiet when the boys are asleep.”

We had supper at the usual hour of six, and afterwards gathered round the fire, to smoke and talk before sleep.

Inspector Hanafin warned us to prepare for a local thunderstorm, with other electric manifestations in the hollow; but Sandy, who held himself weather-wise, asserted that the “night” would be clear. Said the inspector:

“You forget that this hollow is apparently directly influenced by the magnetic North Pole. The magnetic change occurs once every twenty-four hours, as a result of the free electric currents in the atmosphere above, and so, directly the aurora rises, we shall have some kind of an electric display. Wait until the sun pretends to set.”

The sun left us about one hour before midnight, and straightway the trouble began. There was, of course, no darkness, yet the ghastly effulgence down the hollow could not have been mistaken for honest light; the atmosphere became frequently flooded by a curious radiance, grading from the palest to the darkest shade of blue, sometimes cross-hatched by shadows, which I could not help thinking had no natural right to be present. The bush behind our camp was “naked,” that is to say, the foliage was all overhead; there was no undergrowth; the bare slim boles supporting the fungus-like masses made the bluff resemble a cave filled with stalactites; a lambent light quivered and played away into the distance, running softly about this nakedness, changing its direction, intensity, and tint many times in a minute, while a series of diminutive explosions cracked here and there above. The vines spread along the open side, and the long runners now appeared to be rising and falling, like the surface of the lake when ruffled by wind. A vibration passed periodically through the ground. When I stood up I could sometimes see the arc-globes, whenever they jumped higher than usual, in their mad, irresponsible dance over the pools.

The men were as frightened as they could be, and one of Hanafin’s troopers expressed his opinion that the mouth of the pit lay in the immediate neighbourhood. What he meant I could not tell; but Akshelah assured us that the Evil Spirit always chose such a spot to disport himself in with his associates. We should be safe, she said, so long as we kept away from the water, and if we sought shelter upon rock, directly we saw any unnatural shape. There were rocks hard by.

These rocks were of pure silica, and as it had been observed that the factor and myself carried mining implements, Lennie linked the circumstances, and questioned my partner. MacCaskill confessed that he had tired of an unremunerative employment, and decided to make a prospecting trip, “the boy spoilin’ to get away after the ole man hopped.” He would not own that we knew anything, but while he talked I made the discovery that Leblanc and Morrison had broken themselves from the circle, and were listening as closely as they dared. I caught also the inspector’s keen eyes fixed upon me, and I had the sense to know that the clever Englishman was forming his own deductions from my partner’s speech and my manner. But he asked no question.

“I always wonderful well wanted to look for the dirt,” admitted Lennie; “but minin’ luck’s too queer, an’ a man gen’rally quits poorer than he started. I used to read that Garden of Eden mines chapter outer me Bible when I was a younker—read it hundreds of times, I guess I did. Used to make me mouth run to read all about the gold and the diamonds a-lying around Eden; an’ I guess Adam just loafed around sorter careless, an’ let all the stuff lie.”

“Bet you Eve didn’t,” said the factor, having his own ideas concerning women. “She’d pick up a chunk o’ yaller, and set it against her arm, and hello to Adam, ‘Say! how’s that?’—”

He was knocked off by a mighty explosion. The air became dense and very hot, and permeated by a sour odour, while an intense blue light glared strongly out of the bluff, and made every face ghastly. Our camp fire blazed up as though a blast of wind acted under it. For a minute all was shouting and confusion.

“I’d just as soon be on the Carillon,” said Lennie. “I’m out of this.”

The cold-blooded inspector laughed. The light thrilled again, a darker blue. Hardly had it gone when Pete, whom we considered stupid after his late ill-treatment, wiped his mouth and exclaimed:

“Captain, there’s a ter’ble nasty sorter black beast on yon tree a-watchin’ of us.”

We looked, in the spirit of unbelief, and I suppose we all saw a dark object, something a little thicker and blacker than the shadows surrounding it, slide noiselessly down the smooth tree. I know we rushed at once for the rocks, and I confess that I was one of the first to reach the shelter which Akshelah believed to be infallible. It says a good deal for our credulity when I say that in less than a minute we were all clambering over the quartz, the men who could not obtain a first footing literally blubbering with fear, all except Hanafin, who never shifted a muscle, and his troopers, who were forbidden by their discipline to leave the officer. The shapeless black object lay at the bottom of the tree like a heap of mud.

“Say!” muttered one of the men; “think it’s him?”

“Course it is, you fool,” answered the chorus.

Hanafin got up, the lights flickering around him, and a warning cry was issued by the choir upon the rocks. The figure stirred, and hopped queerly over the ground, stopping by the fire, and there warmed itself. Hanafin held out a biscuit; the creature grabbed furiously, and finished it with gulps like a dog.

The inspector spoke, but received no reply.

“I saw it a-settin’ up above quite a time,” said Pete unhappily. “It was a-settin’ lonesome, a-lickin’ its paws an’ watchin’. ’Tis one o’ they pesky things what looks for men sleepin’ out, an’ sucks ’em dry.”

It was not easy to tell the creature’s exact size, because it remained bent, and its face and body were thickly covered with hair. When Hanafin called again the creature yapped, and put out a hand for more food. The inspector complied with the demand, then turned to us with the grave assurance that the visitor had once been a fellow-man.

“Lost, gone crazy, and become a beast,” he said.

Nobody believed him, and Akshelah scoffed openly when asked if she knew what he was.

At that time, while surrounded by all the strange sights of that weird hollow, I was convinced with the others that the supernatural was enjoying full sway, and that what then occurred to us was entirely due to the mysterious appearance of the hairy, speechless being. A description may sound grotesque, but to me at the time it was more a thing to shudder at than laugh over.

A thunderstorm had been in operation for some time, the lightning being apparently flung just over the trees out of the low clouds which separated the hollow from the outer country. The thunder took the form of constant explosions, entirely different from the customary long-drawn-out rumbles and echoes. In addition to this intensely local storm, erratic sheets of light constantly flooded the bush, and the peculiar sour odour never failed to follow.

An unusually brilliant blue current thrilled, just as Hanafin walked round the fire to interview the monkey-like monster. Instantly the inspector vanished, and with him the entire camp. The fire, the bluff, the ground, everything was wiped out, even the rock we stood on; we might have been suspended on the edge of a precipice, peering hopelessly into a thick sea fog; the world seemed to have floated away from us, leaving us standing erect in space.

Whether the other men had any sensation beyond fright, I cannot say; but for my own part I felt mightily exhilarated, and with the elation of the sudden strength that thrilled into my body, as scores of minute blue sparks broke from our persons, I had a mad desire to relieve my energies by snatching up each one of my companions—Akshelah, who held to me, excepted—and hurling them one by one into the apparent abyss.

What would have happened had I attempted to do so is again impossible to say, because the gulf which had been so remarkably fixed about us, which entirely divided us from the planet our world, which blinded and deafened us, and made us helpless castaways upon the invisible rock, was purely magnetic. Backward we could move, but not an inch forward. There did not appear to be any particular resistance; it was not at all like trying to force a solid body; we were simply unable to move. The magnetic barrier was non-conducting; sound would not travel through it any more than eyesight. For all the assistance we could have rendered Inspector Hanafin, and for all our knowledge of what was happening on the other side of the current, we might have been placed respectively at the opposite poles of the earth.

The resisting fluid swept away with all the suddenness of its coming; and at the withdrawal of the magnetic force, the men scurried away from the rocks like so many jack-rabbits worried by a dog.

MacCaskill whispered to me hurriedly, and as we both preferred to face the chance of fever on the shore, rather than the unknown powers of natural forces, we made straight for our tools and packs, caught them up and ran, Akshelah leading our flight, away up the slope from the lights and explosions of the hollow, through the vines that caught at our legs and arms, and thrilled us like so many electric wires; past the pools that were black no longer, but living and dazzling, and where the gleaming balls were leaping excitedly; through the poison-grass, quivering and stiff in the electric air, and emitting bright sparks when touched by our hurrying legs; over the sand-dunes, and so out under the aurora, where the wind moaned out of the lake, and brought the foul odour of malaria through the “night.”

We looked down from the summit of the sand-hills, and, as in the early morning, the hollow was concealed by its roof of cloud, which spread beneath our feet like a smoky floor. We could make a good guess as to what was taking place in the depths by the manner in which the clouds were continually bathed in blue light, by the distant, but faintly audible, explosions, and the sour odour arising, until we turned to face the far more noisome miasma ascending from the beach of the great Lake Peace.