Chapter 25

LOST IN A BLIZZARD.

So numbed was our poor lad by the shock of his discovery that, for a few moments, he stood motionless. Of course it would be of no use to continue his hopeless struggle. Even if he had come in the right direction he must ere this have passed the place where his companions were encamped. If he could only regain the timber there might be a slight chance of surviving the night; but even its location was lost to him, and a certain death stared him in the face. At any rate it would be a painless ending, for he had only to lie down to be quickly covered by a soft blanket of snow. Then he could go to sleep never again to waken. He was very weary, and already so drowsy that the thought of sleep was pleasant to him. Such a death would certainly not be so terrible as drowning after a hopeless struggle with black waters.

With this thought every incident of that awful night after the loss of the "Lavinia" flashed into his mind. How utterly hopeless had seemed his situation then and how desperately he had fought for his life. But he had fought, and had won the fight. What was the use of learning a lesson of that kind if he could not profit by it? Was not his life as well worth fighting for now as then? Of course it was; nor was his present position any more hopeless than that one had been. Then he had drifted with the wind, and now he would do the same thing. If he could hold out long enough he would fetch up somewhere sometime. It was merely a question of endurance. Even in that howling wilderness, with death on all sides, there were still three chances for life. The drift with the wind might take him to the igloo that Yim must have built ere this. How bright, and warm, and cosey its lamplighted interior would be. How glad they would be to see him, and how he would laugh at all his recent fears. But of course there was not one chance in a million of his finding the igloo. It was not at all unlikely, though, that the drift might take him to a belt of timber, into which the bitter wind could not penetrate; and where he could crawl under the thick, low-hanging branches of some tent-like spruce. Even such a shelter now seemed very desirable, and would be accepted with thankfulness. If he failed to reach timber, the wind might blow him to some region of cliffs and rocks that would shelter him from its cutting blasts. If he missed all these chances, and if worse came to worst, he could always go to sleep beneath the snow blanket, and it would be better to do that with the consciousness of having made a good fight than to yield now like a coward.

All these thoughts flashed through Cabot's mind within the space of a minute, and, having determined to fight until the battle was either won or lost, he flung away his now useless burden of firewood and started off down the wind. Tramping through that newly fallen snow, even with the support of racquets, was exhausting work, but the effort at least kept him warm, and, before he came to the end of his strength, some hours later, he had covered a number of miles. He had also come to the least promising of the three places he had hoped for, and found himself in a region of cliffs, precipices, and huge rocks, among which he could no longer make headway, even though he had not reached the limit of endurance.

But he had reached that limit, and now only sought a spot in which he might lie down and go to sleep. Of course the snow would quickly cover him, and doubtless he would be buried deep ere the fury of the storm was past. But he had a vague plan for putting his snowshoes over his head like an inverted V, and hoped in that way to be kept from smothering. At the same time he had little thought that he should ever see the light of another day.

"Only a bit further and then I can rest," he muttered, as he pushed into the blackness of a rift between two tall cliffs, and experienced a partial relief from the furious wind. It seemed as though he ought to penetrate this as far as possible, and so he struggled weakly forward. Then he stumbled over something that lay across his path and fell heavily. As he lay wondering whether an attempt to regain his feet would be worth while, he seemed to hear the distant but strenuous ringing of an electric bell, and almost smiled at the absurdity of such a fancy in such a place. The thought carried him back to the electrical laboratory of the Institute, and he began to dream that he was still a student of ohms, volts, and amperes.

In another moment his consciousness would have been wholly merged in dreams, but suddenly the place where he lay was filled with a blaze of light that apparently streamed from the solid rock on either side. So intense was this light that it penetrated even Cabot's closed eyes, and aroused him from the stupor into which he had fallen. He lifted his head, and, still bewildered, wondered why the laboratory was so brilliantly illuminated.

Then, through the glare, he saw the driving snow-flakes with their dancing shadows magnified a hundred fold, and, all at once, he remembered. Staggering to his feet, and groping with outstretched arms, he pushed forward along the narrow pathway outlined by the mysterious light. He no longer heard the sound of bells, but in its place came strains of music that blended weirdly with the shrieking wind, and irresistibly compelled him forward. The pathway sloped downward and then took a sharp turn. As Cabot passed this the light behind him was extinguished as suddenly as it had appeared, the wild music sounded louder than ever, and directly in front of him gleamed two squares of light like windows. Between them was a dark space, towards which he instinctively stumbled. It proved to be as he had hoped, a door massive and without any means of unclosing that his blind fumblings could discover. So he beat against it feebly and uttered a hoarse cry for help. In another moment it was opened, and Cabot, leaning heavily against it, fell into a room, small, warm, and brightly lighted.

For a few minutes he lay with closed eyes, barely conscious that his struggle for life had been successful, and that in some mysterious manner he had gained a place of safety. Gradually he became aware that some one was bending over him, and opening his eyes he gazed full into a face that he instantly recognised, though it had sadly changed since he last saw it. At that time it had expressed strength in every line, but now it was haggard and worn by suffering.

"The Man-wolf!" gasped Cabot, in a voice hardly above a whisper.

A slight smile flitted across the man's face, and then, without warning, he sank to the floor in a dead faint. His mighty strength had been turned to the weakness of water, and the iron will had at length relaxed its hold upon the enfeebled body. As the man-wolf fell, a stream of blood trickled from his mouth, and he choked for breath as though strangling.

There is nothing so effective in restoring spent strength as a demand upon it from one who is weaker, and at sight of the big man's helplessness Cabot was instantly nerved to renewed effort. He sat up, cut loose his snowshoes, closed the open door, and rid himself of his snow-laden outer garments. Then, by a supreme effort, he managed to drag the unconscious man to a bed that was piled with robes and lean him against it. His eyes had already lighted on a jug of water, and fetching this he bathed the sufferer's face, washed the blood from his mouth, and finally had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes unclose. Then he helped him on to the bed, and though during the operation the man's face expressed the most intense pain, he uttered no sound. But the movement was accompanied by another hemorrhage, so severe that it seemed to our distressed lad as though the man must surely bleed to death before it was checked. When it finally ceased the exhausted sufferer dropped asleep, and, for the first time since entering that place of mysteries, Cabot found an opportunity for looking about him.

Although the room was small it was comfortably furnished with a table, chairs--one of which was a rocker--a lounge, and the bed on which the man-wolf lay. There were no windows nor doors except those in front. The ceiling was of heavy canvas tightly stretched, while the walls were hung with the skins of fur-bearing animals, and the floor was covered with rugs of the same material. At first Cabot paid no attention to these details, for his eyes were fixed upon the most astonishing thing he had seen in all Labrador. It was a lamp that, depending from the ceiling, gave to the room an illumination as brilliant as daylight.

"Electric, as I live!" gasped the young engineer. "A regular incandescent, and those lights out on the trail must have been the same. That was an electric bell too. I know it now, though I couldn't believe my ears at the time. The light he scared the Indians with must have been an electric flash, worked by a storage battery. But it is all so incredible! I wonder if I am really awake or still dreaming?"

To assure himself on this point Cabot went to the light, and, as he did so, came upon another surprise greater than any that had preceded it. He had wondered at the comfortable temperature of the room, for there was nowhere a fire to be seen, and the blizzard still howled outside with unabated fury. Now, on drawing near to the lamp, he found himself also approaching some heretofore unobserved source of heat, which he discovered to be a drum of sheet iron. It stood by itself, unconnected with any chimney, and apparently had no receptacle for any form of fuel, solid, liquid, or gaseous.

"A Balfour electric heater," murmured Cabot, in an awe-stricken tone, "and I didn't even know they had been perfected. I don't suppose there are half-a-dozen in use in all the world, and yet here is one of them doing its full duty up here in the Labrador wilderness, a thousand miles from anywhere. It is fully equal to any tale of the Arabian Nights, and Mr. Homolupus must, as the natives say, be either a god or a devil. I do wonder who he is, where he came from, what has happened to him, where he gets his electricity, and a thousand other things. I wish he would wake up, and I wish he could talk."

Cabot's curiosity concerning the weird music that had drawn him to that place had been partially satisfied by the discovery of a violin on the floor beside the sick man's bed. Now, as he flung himself wearily down on the lounge for a bit of rest, he became conscious of the muffled b-r-r-r of a dynamo. That accounted in a measure for the electric lights, but still left our lad in a daze of wonder at the nature of his surroundings.