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Page 14
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.
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