A Man's Woman

"How long has this wind been blowing, Ferriss?"

"Since a week ago to-day," answered the other.

Bennett continued his writing.

… Incessant gales of wind for over a week. Impossible to move against them in our weakened condition. But to stay here is to perish. God help us. It is the end of everything.

Bennett drew a line across the page under the last entry, and, still holding the book in his hand, gazed slowly about the tent.

There were six of them left—five huddled together in that miserable tent—the sixth, Adler, being down on the shore gathering shrimps. In the strange and gloomy half-light that filled the tent these survivors of the Freja looked less like men than beasts. Their hair and beards were long, and seemed one with the fur covering of their bodies. Their faces were absolutely black with dirt, and their limbs were monstrously distended and fat—fat as things bloated and swollen are fat. It was the abnormal fatness of starvation, the irony of misery, the huge joke that arctic famine plays upon those whom it afterward destroys. The men moved about at times on their hands and knees; their tongues were distended, round, and slate-coloured, like the tongues of parrots, and when they spoke they bit them helplessly.

Near the flap of the tent lay the swollen dead body of Dennison. Two of the party dozed inert and stupefied in their sleeping-bags. Muck Tu was in the corner of the tent boiling his sealskin footnips over the sheet-iron cooker. Ferriss and Bennett sat on opposite sides of the tent, Bennett using his knee as a desk, Ferriss trying to free himself from the sleeping-bag with the stumps of his arms. Upon one of these stumps, the right one, a tin spoon had been lashed.

The tent was full of foul smells. The smell of drugs and of mouldy gunpowder, the smell of dirty rags, of unwashed bodies, the smell of stale smoke, of scorching sealskin, of soaked and rotting canvas that exhaled from the tent cover—every smell but that of food.

Outside the unleashed wind yelled incessantly, like a sabbath of witches, and spun about the pitiful shelter and went rioting past, leaping and somersaulting from rock to rock, tossing handfuls of dry, dust-like snow into the air; folly-stricken, insensate, an enormous, mad monster gambolling there in some hideous dance of death, capricious, headstrong, pitiless as a famished wolf.

In front of the tent and over a ridge of barren rocks was an arm of the sea dotted with blocks of ice moving silently and swiftly onward; while back from the coast, and back from the tent and to the south and to the west and to the east, stretched the illimitable waste of land, rugged, gray, harsh; snow and ice and rock, rock and ice and snow, stretching away there under the sombre sky forever and forever; gloomy, untamed, terrible, an empty region—the scarred battlefield of chaotic forces, the savage desolation of a prehistoric world.

"Where's Adler?" asked Ferriss.

"He's away after shrimps," responded Bennett.

Bennett's eyes returned to his journal and rested on the open page thoughtfully.

"Do you know what I've just written here, Ferriss?" he asked, adding without waiting for an answer: "I've written 'It's the end of everything.'"

"I suppose it is," admitted Ferriss, looking about the tent.

"Yes, the end of everything. It's come—at last.... Well." There was a long silence. One of the men in the sleeping-bags groaned and turned upon his face. Outside the wind lapsed suddenly to a prolonged sigh of infinite sadness, clamouring again upon the instant.

"Dick," said Bennett, returning his journal to the box of records, "it is the end of everything, and just because it is I want to talk to you—to ask you something."

Ferriss came nearer. The horrid shouting of the wind deadened the sound of their voices; the others could not hear, and by now it would have mattered very little to any of them if they had.

"Dick," began Bennett, "nothing makes much difference now. In a few hours we shall all be like Dennison here;" he tapped the body of the doctor, who had died during the night. It was already frozen so hard that his touch upon it resounded as if it had been a log of wood. "We shall be like this pretty soon. But before—well, while I can, I want to ask you something about Lloyd Searight. You've known her all your life, and you saw her later than I did before we left. You remember I had to come to the ship two days before you, about the bilge pumps."

While Bennett had been speaking Ferriss had been sitting very erect upon his sleeping-bag, drawing figures and vague patterns in the fur of his deer-skin coat with the tip of the tin spoon. Yes, Bennett was right; he, Ferriss, had known her all his life, and it was no doubt because of this very fact that she had come to be so dear to him. But he had not always known it, had never discovered his love for her until the time was at hand to say good-bye, to leave her for this mad dash for the Pole. It had been too late to speak then, and Ferriss had never told her. She was never to know that he too—like Bennett—cared.

"It seems rather foolish," continued Bennett clumsily, "but if I thought she had ever cared for me—in that way—why, it would make this that is coming to us seem—I don't know—easier to be borne perhaps. I say it very badly, but it would not be so hard to die if I thought she had ever loved me—a bit."

Ferriss was thinking very fast. Why was it he had never guessed something like this? But in Ferriss's mind the idea of the love of a woman had never associated itself with Bennett, that great, harsh man of colossal frame, so absorbed in his huge projects, so welded to his single aim, furthering his purposes to the exclusion of every other thought, desire, or emotion. Bennett was a man's man. But here Ferriss checked himself. Bennett himself had called her a man's woman, a grand, splendid man's woman. He was right; he was right. She was no less than that; small wonder, after all, that Bennett had been attracted to her. What a pair they were, strong, masterful both, insolent in the consciousness of their power!

"You have known her so well and for so long," continued Bennett, "that I am sure she must have said something to you about me. Tell me, did she ever say anything—or not that—but imply in her manner, give you to understand that she would have married me if I had asked her?"

Ferriss found time, even in such an hour, to wonder at the sudden and unexpected break in the uniform hardness of Bennett's character. Ferriss knew him well by now. Bennett was not a man to ask concessions, to catch at small favours. What he wanted he took with an iron hand, without ruth and without scruple. But in the unspeakable dissolution in which they were now involved did anything make a difference? The dreadful mill in which they had been ground had crushed from them all petty distinctions of personality, individuality. Humanity—the elements of character common to all men—only remained.

But Ferriss was puzzled as to how he should answer Bennett. On the one hand was the woman he loved, and on the other Bennett, his best friend, his chief, his hero. They, too, had lived together for so long, had fought out the fight with the Enemy shoulder to shoulder, had battled with the same dangers, had dared the same sufferings, had undergone the same defeats and disappointments.

Ferriss felt himself in grievous straits. Must he tell Bennett the truth? Must this final disillusion be added to that long train of others, the disasters, the failures, the disappointments, and deferred hopes of all those past months? Must Bennett die hugging to his heart this bitterness as well?

"I sometimes thought," observed Bennett with a weak smile, "that she did care a little. I've surely seen something like that in her eyes at certain moments. I wish I had spoken. Did she ever say anything to you? Do you think she would have married me if I had asked her?" He paused, waiting for an answer.

"Oh—yes," hazarded Ferriss, driven to make some sort of response, hoping to end the conversation; "yes, I think she would."

"You do?" said Bennett quickly. "You think she would? What did she say? Did she ever say anything to you?"

The thing was too cruel; Ferriss shrank from it. But suddenly an idea occurred to him. Did anything make any difference now? Why not tell his friend that which he wanted to hear, even if it were not the truth? After all that Bennett had suffered why could he not die content at least in this? What did it matter if he spoke? Did anything matter at such a time when they were all to die within the next twenty-four hours? Bennett was looking straight into his eyes; there was no time to think of consequences. Consequences? But there were to be no consequences. This was the end. Yet could Ferriss make Bennett receive such an untruth? Ferriss did not believe that Lloyd cared for Bennett; knew that she did not, in fact, and if she had cared, did Bennett think for an instant that she—of all women—would have confessed the fact, confessed it to him, Bennett's most intimate friend? Ferriss had known Lloyd well for a long time, had at last come to love her. But could he himself tell whether or no Lloyd cared for him? No, he could not, certainly he could not.

Meanwhile Bennett was waiting for his answer. Ferriss's mind was all confused. He could no longer distinguish right from wrong. If the lie would make Bennett happier in this last hour of his life, why not tell the lie?

"Yes," answered Ferriss, "she did say something once."

"She did?"

"Yes," continued Ferriss slowly, trying to invent the most plausible lie. "We had been speaking of the expedition and of you. I don't know how the subject was brought up, but it came in very naturally at length. She said—yes, I recall it. She said: 'You must bring him back to me. Remember he is everything to me—everything in the world.'"

"She—" Bennett cleared his throat, then tugged at his mustache; "she said that?"

Ferriss nodded.

"Ah!" said Bennett with a quick breath, then he added: "I'm glad of that; you haven't any idea how glad I am, Dick—in spite of everything."

"Oh, yes, I guess I have," murmured Ferriss.

"No, no, indeed, you haven't," returned the other. "One has to love a woman like that, Dick, and have her—and find out—and have things come right, to appreciate it. She would have been my wife after all. I don't know how to thank you, Dick. Congratulate me."

He rose, holding out his hand; Ferriss feebly rose, too, and instinctively extended his arm, but withdrew it suddenly. Bennett paused abruptly, letting his hand fall to his side, and the two men remained there an instant, looking at the stumps of Ferriss's arms, the tin spoon still lashed to the right wrist.

A few hours later Bennett noted that the gale had begun perceptibly to abate. By afternoon he was sure that the storm would be over. As he turned to re-enter the tent after reading the wind-gauge he noted that Kamiska, their one remaining dog, had come back, and was sitting on a projection of ice a little distance away, uncertain as to her reception after her absence. Bennett was persuaded that Kamiska had not run away. Of all the Ostiaks she had been the most faithful. Bennett chose to believe that she had wandered from the tent and had lost herself in the blinding snow. But here was food. Kamiska could be killed; life could be prolonged a day or two, perhaps three, while the strongest man of the party, carrying the greater portion of the dog meat on his shoulders, could push forward and, perhaps, after all, reach Kolyuchin Bay and the Chuckch settlements and return with aid. But who could go? Assuredly not Ferriss, so weak he could scarcely keep on his feet; not Adler, who at times was delirious, and who needed the discipline of a powerful leader to keep him to his work; Muck Tu, the Esquimau, could not be trusted with the lives of all of them, and the two remaining men were in all but a dying condition. Only one man of them all was equal to the task, only one of them who still retained his strength of body and mind; he himself, Bennett. Yes, but to abandon his men?

He crawled into the tent again to get the rifle with which to shoot the dog, but, suddenly possessed of an idea, paused for a moment, seated on the sleeping-bag, his head in his hands.

Beaten? Was he beaten at last? Had the Enemy conquered? Had the Ice enclosed him in its vast, remorseless grip? Then once more his determination grew big within him, for a last time that iron will rose up in mighty protest of defeat. No, no, no; he was not beaten; he would live; he, the strongest, the fittest, would survive. Was it not right that the mightiest should live? Was it not the great law of nature? He knew himself to be strong enough to move; to march, perhaps, for two whole days; and now food had come to them, to him. Yes, but to abandon his men?

He had left McPherson, it is true; but then the lives of all of them had been involved—one life against eleven. Now he was thinking only of himself. But Ferriss—no, he could not leave Ferriss. Ferriss would come with him. They would share the dog meat between them—the whole of it. He, with Ferriss, would push on. He would reach Kolyuchin Bay and the settlements. He would be saved; he would reach home; would come back—come back to Lloyd, who loved him. Yes, but to abandon his men?

Then Bennett's great fist closed, closed and smote heavily upon his knee.

"No," he said decisively.

He had spoken his thoughts aloud, and Ferriss, who had crawled into his sleeping-bag again, looked at him curiously. Even Muck Tu turned his head from the sickening mess reeking upon the cooker. There was a noise of feet at the flap of the tent.

"It's Adler," muttered Ferriss.

Adler tore open the flap.

Then he shouted to Bennett: "Three steam whalers off the foot of the floe, sir; boat putting off! What orders, sir?"