have believed in you, firmly, truly, as your brother might. You are putting that belief to a hard test. If your enemy had told me that you had ever talked as you talk now, that you had ever looked as you look now, I would have turned my back on him as the utterer of a vile calumny against a just, a brave, an upright man. Oh! my friend, my friend, if ever I have deserved well of you, put away these thoughts from your heart! Face me again, with the stainless look of a man who has trampled under his feet the bloody superstitions of revenge, and knows them no more! Never, never, let the time come when I cannot offer you my hand as I offer it now, to the man I can still admire—to the brother I can still love!”
The heart that no other voice could touch felt that appeal. The fierce eyes, the hard voice, softened under Crayford’s influence. Richard Wardour’s head sank on his breast.
“You are kinder to me than I deserve,” he said. “Be kinder still, and forget what I have been talking about. No! no more about me; I am not worth it. We’ll change the subject, and never go back to it again. Let’s do something. Work, Crayford—that’s the true elixir of our life! Work, that stretches the muscles and sets the blood a-glowing. Work, that tires the body and rests the mind. Is there nothing in hand that I can do? Nothing to cut? nothing to carry?”
The door opened as he put the question. Bateson—appointed to chop Frank’s bed-place into firing—appeared punctually with his ax. Wardour, without a word of warning, snatched the ax out of the man’s hand.
“What was this wanted for?” he asked.
“To cut up Mr. Aldersley’s berth there into firing, sir.”
“I’ll do it for you! I’ll have it down in no time!” He turned to Crayford. “You needn’t be afraid about me, old friend. I am going to do the right thing. I am going to tire my body and rest my mind.”
The evil spirit in him was plainly subdued—for the time, at least. Crayford took his hand in silence; and then (followed by Bateson) left him to his work.
Chapter 10.
Ax in hand, Wardour approached Frank’s bed-place.
“If I could only cut the thoughts out of me,” he said to himself, “as I am going to cut the billets out of this wood!” He attacked the bed-place with the ax, like a man who well knew the use of his instrument. “Oh me!” he thought, sadly, “if I had only been born a carpenter instead of a gentleman! A good ax, Master Bateson—I wonder where you got it? Something like a grip, my man, on this handle. Poor Crayford! his words stick in my throat. A fine fellow! a noble fellow! No use thinking, no use regretting; what is said, is said. Work! work! work!”
Plank after plank fell out on the floor. He laughed over the easy task of destruction. “Aha! young Aldersley! It doesn’t take much to demolish your bed-place. I’ll have it down! I would have the whole hut down, if they would only give me the chance of chopping at it!”
A long strip of wood fell to his ax—long enough to require cutting in two. He turned it, and stooped over it. Something caught his eye—letters carved in the wood. He looked closer. The letters were very faintly and badly cut. He could only make out the first three of them; and even of those he was not quite certain. They looked like C L A— if they looked like anything. He threw down the strip of wood irritably.
“D—n the fellow (whoever he is) who cut this! Why should he carve
He paused, considering—then determined to go on again with his self-imposed labor. He was ashamed of his own outburst. He looked eagerly for the ax. “Work, work! Nothing for it but work.” He found the ax, and went on again.
He cut out another plank.
He stopped, and looked at it suspiciously.
There was carving again, on this plank. The letters F. and A. appeared on it.
He put down the ax. There were vague misgivings in him which he was not able to realize. The state of his own mind was fast becoming a puzzle to him.
“More carving,” he said to himself. “That’s the way these young idlers employ their long hours. F. A.? Those must be
He turned the piece of wood in his hand nearer to the light, and looked lower down it. More carving again, lower down! Under the initials F. A. were two more letters—C. B.
“C. B.?” he repeated to himself. “His sweet heart’s initials, I suppose? Of course—at his age—his sweetheart’s initials.”
He paused once more. A spasm of inner pain showed the shadow of its mysterious passage, outwardly on his face.
“
He waited, with the plank in his hand; repeating the name over and over again, as if it was a question he was putting to himself.
“Clara Burnham? Clara Burnham?”
He dropped the plank, and turned deadly pale in a moment. His eyes wandered furtively backward and forward between the strip of wood on the floor and the half-demolished berth. “Oh, God! what has come to me now?” he said to himself, in a whisper. He snatched up the ax, with a strange cry—something between rage and terror. He tried—fiercely, desperately tried—to go on with his work. No! strong as he was, he could not use the ax. His hands were helpless; they trembled incessantly. He went to the fire; he held his hands over it. They still trembled incessantly; they infected the rest of him. He shuddered all over. He knew fear. His own thoughts terrified him.
“Crayford!” he cried out. “Crayford! come here, and let’s go hunting.”
No friendly voice answered him. No friendly face showed itself at the door.
An interval passed; and there came over him another change. He recovered his self-possession almost as suddenly as he had lost it. A smile—a horrid, deforming, unnatural smile—spread slowly, stealthily, devilishly over his face. He left the fire; he put the ax away softly in a corner; he sat down in his old place, deliberately self- abandoned to a frenzy of vindictive joy. He had found the man! There, at the end of the world—there, at the last fight of the Arctic voyagers against starvation and death, he had found the man!
