The Frozen Deep Part 10

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 _his_ initials--Frank Aldersley. Who carved the letters on the other plank? Frank Aldersley, too?"

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 pa.s.sage, outwardly on his face.

"_Her_ cipher is C. B.," he said, in low, broken tones. "C. B.--Clara Burnham."

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, G.o.d! what has come to me now?"

he said to himself, in a whisper. He s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sed; 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!

The minutes pa.s.sed.

He became conscious, on a sudden, of a freezing stream of air pouring into the room.

He turned, and saw Crayford opening the door of the hut. A man was behind him. Wardour rose eagerly, and looked over Crayford's shoulder.

Was it--could it be--the man who had carved the letters on the plank?

Yes! Frank Aldersley!

Chapter 11.

"Still at work!" Crayford exclaimed, looking at the half-demolished bed-place. "Give yourself a little rest, Richard. The exploring party is ready to start. If you wish to take leave of your brother officers before they go, you have no time to lose."

He checked himself there, looking Wardour full in the face.

"Good Heavens!" he cried, "how pale you are! Has anything happened?"

Frank--searching in his locker for articles of clothing which he might require on the journey--looked round. He was startled, as Crayford had been startled, by the sudden change in Wardour since they had last seen him.

"Are you ill?" he asked. "I hear you have been doing Bateson's work for him. Have you hurt yourself?"

Wardour suddenly moved his head, so as to hide his face from both Crayford and Frank. He took out his handkerchief, and wound it clumsily round his left hand.

"Yes," he said; "I hurt myself with the ax. It's nothing. Never mind.

Pain always has a curious effect on me. I tell you it's nothing! Don't notice it!"

He turned his face toward them again as suddenly as he had turned it away. He advanced a few steps, and addressed himself with an uneasy familiarity to Frank.

"I didn't answer you civilly when you spoke to me some little time since. I mean when I first came in here along with the rest of them. I apologize. Shake hands! How are you? Ready for the march?"

Frank met the oddly abrupt advance which had been made to him with perfect good humor.

"I am glad to be friends with you, Mr. Wardour. I wish I was as well seasoned to fatigue as you are."

Wardour burst into a hard, joyless, unnatural laugh.

"Not strong, eh? You don't look it. The dice had better have sent me away, and kept you here. I never felt in better condition in my life."

He paused and added, with his eye on Frank and with a strong emphasis on the words: "We men of Kent are made of tough material."

Frank advanced a step on his side, with a new interest in Richard Wardour.

"You come from Kent?" he said.

"Yes. From East Kent." He waited a little once more, and looked hard at Frank. "Do you know that part of the country?" he asked.

"I ought to know something about East Kent," Frank answered. "Some dear friends of mine once lived there."

"Friends of yours?" Wardour repeated. "One of the county families, I suppose?"

As he put the question, he abruptly looked over his shoulder. He was standing between Crayford and Frank. Crayford, taking no part in the conversation, had been watching him, and listening to him more and more attentively as that conversation went on. Within the last moment or two Wardour had become instinctively conscious of this. He resented Crayford's conduct with needless irritability.

"Why are you staring at me?" he asked.

"Why are you looking unlike yourself?" Crayford answered, quietly.

Wardour made no reply. He renewed the conversation with Frank.

"One of the county families?" he resumed. "The Winterbys of Yew Grange, I dare say?"

"No," said Frank; "but friends of the Witherbys, very likely. The Burnhams."

Desperately as he struggled to maintain it, Wardour's self-control failed him. He started violently. The clumsily-wound handkerchief fell off his hand. Still looking at him attentively, Crayford picked it up.

"There is your handkerchief, Richard," he said. "Strange!"