The Snow Driver/Chapter 14

HE little Confidentia lay stranded in a chaos of jutting ice fragments and rocks. A few cables' lengths farther out the admiral-ship rode at anchor, although so girdled with ice that it was wedged fast.

They were in a shallow bay, where the wind, sweeping in from the open sea, had driven ice floes into a solid pack. The shores were treeless.

Under the wind gusts the waist curtains, that had been put up to shelter the crews, shivered, and the long pennant of Sir Hugh's ship whipped around the mast. From the solid ice near the Confidentia a trail ran through the snow to disappear over the distant hillocks.

Thorne and Peter shouted joyfully and Kyrger clucked on his reindeer until they entered this trail and reached the shore. Without waiting for a hail or a sight of their shipmates, the two men crossed the frozen surface of the bay, climbing between the rocks, and reached the ship's ladder.

Peter was first under the waistcloth and Thorne found him standing by the bole of the mainmast, staring ait. The helmsman of the Confidentia faced them, on his knees, one arm crooked around the tiller. He had a ragged red cap cocked over one ear.

“God's mercy,” whispered the boatswain, “look at his skin!”

The seaman's whole face was purple, his lips, drawn back from the teeth, were no longer visible. Peter climbed the poop ladder and bent over the man; then he touched the fellow's arm.

“Stiff as a merlyn-spike,” he muttered.

Thorne had gone to the door on the quarter deck and thrust it open, his pulse quickening. For this was Durforth's ship.

In the dim light from the narrow ports the great cabin seemed deserted and he wondered if the officers were on shore.

Presently he stooped down and touched a misshapen form on the deck planking, a human body so bundled up in cloaks and blankets that it was hardly to be recognized. It was bent up in a knot as if gripped by intolerable agony.

With his hand on the man's shoulder he tried to turn him over, and was forced to pull with all his strength. The body did turn over, but the bent legs came up into the air without altering their position.

“That would be Dick Ingram, master's mate,” said Peter behind him in a strained voice, “his carcass, poor

Thorne released his hold and the coiled-up body fell over on its side again with a muffled thump.

“Save us!” cried the boatswain, his eyes starting from his head. “I've seen the workings of dropsy and scurvy and such, but here is a black plague. The black death itself hath fallen upon this ship.”

“Nay,” said Thorne slowly, “these twain are frozen.”

“Aye, they are now. But how did they die? Let us go for'ard.”

They searched the forecastle in vain, and descended from the hold to the galley which was nearly in darkness. But Peter stumbled over another body, and fumbled around on his hands and knees, breathing heavily.

“Here be a mort o' dead men,” he grunted. “What cheer, mates, who has a word for Peter Palmer that's come a weary way to have speech with ye? Who is living?”

Their ears strained, they listened for a space, then Peter gave a yell of fear, and, thrusting Thorne aside, sprang up the ladder. On the spar deck he wrenched down the waist curtain, staring out at the Bona Esperanza. His broad red face was streaming perspiration, as he cupped his hands and sent a quavering hail over the ice.

“Ahoy, the Esperanza! Nick Anthony, where be ye? Ho, Allen! Master Davison—Garge Blage”

When no response came from the admiral-ship, Peter choked and the blood drained from his face. Wagging his massive head from side to side he began to walk unsteadily toward the ladder.

“Feared I be, Master Ralph. Feared and boding—let be; by all the saints, let me go.”

“Then go,” assented Thorne, “and bid Kyrger make camp beyond sight of the ships. I will seek out Sir Hugh and his company.”

N HOUR later Thorne stood alone in the roundhouse of the Bona Esperanza, his brows knit in thought, his eyes heavy with grief. Alone he was, assuredly, except for the wide-winged gulls that circled over the masts, swerving away when the tip of the pennant flapped. Yet was the Esperanza fully manned, the stern cabins occupied. The cook was in his galley, curled up on the cold stove, Sir Hugh seated at his table by the stern casements.

Crew and officers were dead. Cadavers leered at the armiger from deck planks or berths, the eyes standing open as if gazing upon some devastating horror. All the faces were tinged with the same bluish cast. All the bodies were wrapped in odds and ends of garments, tabards and cloaks over all.

Some, apparently, had died while crawling to the lower portions of the ship; others, chiefly the merchant-adventurers, in their berths.

Thorne fought down a rising fear that impelled him to run after Peter and escape from this assemblage of the unspeaking dead. He had seen on the captain-general's table two folded pamphlets and judged that Sir Hugh had written therein. This message must be read.

With an effort, he made his way into the passage and so to the main cabin which was nearly dark, the ports being boarded over. And at once the skin of his head grew cold, a cry trembled in his throat. Before him and below him in the gloom two red eyes were fastened upon him.

He knew that they were eyes because they moved, and he was aware of a faint hissing. Before he could take a grip on himself, or reach for a weapon, the tiny fires glowed brighter. There was a scampering of little feet and something darted past him.

Turning swiftly he saw an ermine, a white creature kin to the weasel, void of fear and relentless as a ferret on the scent of prey.

“What a chucklehead I am,” he cried aloud, “to be frighted by a ferret.”

But his own voice, ringing hollow in the chill of the pent-in ship did not serve to reassure him. Passing into the presence of the dead leader, he forced himself to take up the papers under the open eyes of tall Sir Hugh.

He saw that both pamphlets were inscribed on the outside. One, marked The will and testament of Sir Hugh Willoughhie, Knight, he laid down again.

The other he made out to be a short journal of the voyage. This he pored through slowly, for he was fairly skilled at reading, weighing everything in his mind, as was his habit.

Sir Hugh had been driven far out of his course by the storm that had separated the ships, and had picked up the Confidentia when the weather cleared. They put back, but failed to fall in with the Wardhouse.

For a month they cruised in the Ice Sea, finding the coast barren, and, putting into this haven assailed by

At this point, on the eighteenth day of September, the journal of Sir Hugh Willoughby ended.

Thorne read over the line “the land lay not as the Globe made mention” to be sure that he was not mistaken. No, the words were clear and honest in their meaning.

Why had Durforth, who was in company with Sir Hugh, failed to pick up the Wardhouse? He knew its bearing. Why did the journal end, as it were, in the middle of a day, and that day long before the death of the captain general?

Now Thorne wished that his father, the Cosmographer, could have been at his side to answer these riddles. He was no navigator. But the thought came to him that his father would have gone to Durforth's cabin to look at the globe which had failed Sir Hugh. Durforth must have led the ships away from the Wardhouse to separate them from Chancellor.

Then the agent of Spain had put the ships upon the coast in a desolate region, swept by the winds that came off the pack ice. And, perhaps Sir Hugh had come to suspect Durforth, perhaps the journal had recorded his suspicions after this day in September and Durforth had removed the pages after the death of his commander.

That Durforth was still alive Thorne believed firmly, after he returned to the Confidentia and searched the master's cabin. Durforth's body was not to be seen. And, upon the table he found a candle burning, a mass of wax with a wick stuck in it, the whole floating in water in a tin basin. This was the only kind of candle Sir Hugh would permit to be lighted in the cabins, owing to the danger of fire. It might have been burning for two or three days.

And the fresh tracks from the ship to the shore had been made after the last storm. One man, possibly more, had left the ship within the last days. Thorne picked up the candle and looked at the globe. He had some skill at chart reading—having watched many a time the Cosmographer drawing the outlines of the earth—and he knew that this was a complete mappamundi. Both hemispheres and the northern and southern seas were traced on the great copper ball very clearly.

And he saw, running due east, from the island of the Wardhouse, a long body of water, a strait that extended to the mark of “Cathay.” But the natives said no such passage existed, and the journal of Sir Hugh bore them out.

Durforth's globe was false. It had been drawn to mislead Sir Hugh, even as Renard's agent had been sent to put an end to the voyage. This had been done, and the lives of two hundred men snuffed out like so many candle flames.

HORNE lifted his head, hearing, in the utter silence of the ship, a footfall in the main cabin. It was as light and ellusive [sic] as an animal's, yet he was certain that it drew closer to the door by which he was standing.

Drawing his sword and taking the mitten off his right hand, he put out the candle with a sweep of the blade. Waiting until his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, he lifted the latch with his left hand and opened the door with a thrust of his foot.

The half light of the outer cabin disclosed Kyrger.

“Ostiaks,” murmured the hunter, and glanced expectantly at the white man.

YRGER was as restless as one of his own reindeer in a pen. When he moved it was as if his feet slipped over thin ice. He kept one eye on the deck beams within inches of his skull. In all his life he had not stood within four walls, certainly never in the maw of a giant's ship such as this. One that went forward against the wind.

“Faith, here's a coil,” thought the armiger. “I'd best go with him to see what's in the wind.”

But Kyrger did not wish this. Motioning for Thorne to watch, he began the pantomime which all primitive races understand. First he impersonated the voyagers, sitting around the fire. Then he jumped up and grasped at his bow, sending an imaginary arrow at an enemy.

By degrees Thorne understood, that Ostiak tribesmen had attacked the camp; they had bound Joan and Peter and the reindeer. They had chased Kyrger nearly to the bay.

A very few of the Samoyed's words Thorne had picked up in the last months.

“Sinym ka-i-unam?” he asked quickly. “Has the little sister gone to the regions below?”

By shaking his head Kyrger signified that Joan was still alive. So was Peter, thanks to the mail jerkin the shipman wore.

Looking through a crack in one of the boarded-up ports, Thorne saw that the hunter had been telling the truth. On the shore a group of natives were descending toward the ice with two sledges drawn by dogs. Thorne counted eleven of them, armed with long spears and clubs.

He cast a glance aloft. The battle nettings that might have been slung from the quarterdeck rail to the forecastle, to keep out boarders, were not to be seen. Turning into the roundhouse, he looked at the racks where harquebuses and crossbows should have been stacked about the butt of the mizzen. None were there, and he found time to reflect that Durforth must have taken them from the ship.

But his eye fell upon a weapon more potent than any firelock, a murderer. Bolted to a pivot on the quarterdeck rail was one of the light cannon that could be trained at will upon any part of the waist or foredeck. Signing to Kyrger to watch the approaching Ostiaks, he dived below, searching until he found an open keg of powder in the hold.

Dipping up a good quantity in his cap, he climbed the after companion to the roundhouse, which served as the armory. Here he filled a small sack with bullets, nails and scraps of iron. Here, too, he found flint and steel and a slow match.

Back at the gun again he rammed home the loose powder, stuffed in wadding and his shot. Then he primed the touch hole and drew Kyrger back with him to the far angle of the roundhouse where they could not be seen by the natives climbing up the starboard ladder.

It did not take long to strike a spark that ignited the long fuse in his hand. Nursing the slow match he waited, listening to the chattering talk of the Ostiaks and smiling at the sudden silence that fell when the first of them saw the dead helmsman.

Then he walked out to the quarterdeck rail. Nine pairs of small, bleared eyes fastened on him instantly and a spear whirred through the air, striking the chest of his fur jacket. The heavy skin and the leather jerkin under it broke the bone point of the spear, which did no more than shake him.

For a second he looked down into flat, swollen faces, fringed by ragged and greasy hair. About each neck was coiled a string of something whitish, the entrails of deer, he discovered a moment later, which served the Ostiaks for food as well as ornament. Then he trained the gun and touched it off as two more spears flashed by his head.

Kyrger bounded his own height from the deck when the murderer roared. Coughing, as the dense powder fumes swirled back, the Samoyed saw that three of the nine Ostiaks who had come over the rail were stretched on the deck and that two others were limping around in the smoke, yelling with pain.

Never before had Kyrger heard a gun go off, and he was struck with the awfulness of his leader's magic. Perceiving that he himself was without hurt, he plucked up heart and glided to the side bulwark, from which point of vantage he shot one of the natives who had remained on the ice, before they recovered from their astonishment.

Meanwhile Thorne had descended to the waist, sword in hand. Four of the Ostiaks snarled at him, and rushed through the eddying smoke. They had thrown their spears and wielded knives or clubs, and Thorne ran the first one through the body before they realised the length of his sword.

Then a thin man came forward, armed with the shank-bone of some animal. He wore a woman's leather skirt and his long black hair hung to his shoulders, over a kind of crude armor—so Thorne judged it to be. A multitude of iron images were suspended on cords slung from neck and waist. These images were of dogs and sheep and birds, crudely wrought, but covering his emaciated body completely.

Thorne remembered that this leader of the Ostiaks had been in the very path of the cannon's discharge, but had come through unharmed.

“So you are for your long home, my iron rogue,” he gibed, for it was his way to talk when steel was out.

He stepped forward and thrust at the Ostiak's side. But his blade seemed to pass through air, or the loose tunic of the strange man, who screamed at him and struck with the bone club.

Thorne would have been brained if he had not ducked instinctively, the club smashing down on his shoulder blade.

He recovered for a second thrust, but the old native glided away from him, and disappeared under the waist cloth. The armiger sought for him along the rail, but saw him presently running over the ice.

Turning quickly, he was just in time to ward the knife of an Ostiak who had crept up from behind. Slashing at the throat of this newest antagonist, he sprang after the man of the iron apron, seeing that the few surviving tribesmen were fleeing in as many different directions.

“Shoot him!” he cried to Kyrger, who had been watching the annihilation of the remaining foemen with interest.

Believing that Thorne was aided by supernatural powers, it had not occurred to the Samoyed to join in the mêlée. Now he shook his head.

“Shaman menkva,” he grunted. “A wizard and a devil.”

It would have been quite useless to send an arrow after a wizard, Kyrger knew. Had not his friend and the wizard tried to slay each other and failed? How then could Kyrger be expected to slay the shaman?

Thorne swore under his breath and started in pursuit of the Ostiak. The lanky shaman seemed to float over ice ridges and rocks, his long hair flying out behind, his iron tunic rattling. Gaining the shore, he shrieked at his dogs and set to work to tie the second team by a leather thong to the first sled.

When this was done he hopped into the rear sled, cracked his whip and glided off as the beasts dug their claws into the trail and strained at the traces. The sleds picked up speed and presently whirled out of sight in a smother of snow, the shaman peering back at his pursuer, his pointed teeth gleaming between writhing lips.

Thinking of Joan and Peter bound in the camp, Thorne settled down grimly to the trail. His heavy boots made clumsy going on the hard surface and the cries of the wizard and the snapping of the whip drew farther away from him.

Kyrger had lingered on the Confidentia to visit each of the wounded Ostiaks and when he dropped from the ladder Durforth's ill fated ship had added to her crew of dead men.