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Page 26
"Good, good, we're safe. We have pulled through."
Lloyd tore open her telegrams. One was signed "Bennett," the other
"Ferriss."
"Thank God!" exclaimed Mr. Campbell.
"Oh," cried Lloyd, a great sob shaking her from head to heel, a smile of
infinite happiness flashing from her face. "Oh--yes, thank God, we--we
_have_ pulled through."
"Am I going to get well, am I going to get well, Miss Searight?" Hattie,
once more conscious, raised her voice weak and faint.
Lloyd was on her knees beside her, her head bent over her.
"Hush; yes, dear, you are safe." Then the royal bronze-red hair bent
lower still. The dull-blue eyes were streaming now, the voice one low
quiver of sobs. Tenderly, gently Lloyd put an arm about the child, her
head bending lower and lower. Her cheek touched Hattie's. For a moment
the little girl, frail, worn, pitifully wasted, and the strong, vigorous
woman, with her imperious will and indomitable purpose, rested their
heads upon the same pillow, both broken with suffering, the one of the
body, the other of the mind.
"Safe; yes, dear, safe," whispered Lloyd, her face all but hidden.
"Safe, safe, and saved to me. Oh, dearest of all the world!"
And then to her ears the murmur of the City seemed to leap suddenly to
articulate words, the clanging thunder of the entire nation--the whole
round world thrilling with this great news that had come to it from out
the north in the small hours of this hot summer's night. And the
chanting cries of the street rolled to her like the tremendous diapason
of a gigantic organ:
"Rescued, rescued, rescued!"
IV.
On the day that Lloyd returned to the house on Calumet Square (Hattie's
recovery being long since assured), and while she was unpacking her
valise and settling herself again in her room, a messenger boy brought
her a note.
"Have just arrived in the City. When may I see you? BENNETT."
News of Ward Bennett and of Richard Ferriss had not been wanting during
the past fortnight or so. Their names and that of the ship herself, even
the names of Adler, Hansen, Clarke, and Dennison, even Muck Tu, even
that of Kamiska, the one surviving dog, filled the mouths and minds of
men to the exclusion of everything else.
The return of the expedition after its long imprisonment in the ice and
at a time when all hope of its safety had been abandoned was one of the
great events of that year. The fact that the expedition had failed to
reach the Pole, or to attain any unusual high latitude, was forgotten or
ignored. Nothing was remembered but the masterly retreat toward
Kolyuchin Bay, the wonderful march over the ice, the indomitable
courage, unshaken by hardship, perils, obstacles, and privations almost
beyond imagination. All this, together with a multitude of details, some
of them palpably fictitious, the press of the City where Bennett and
Ferriss both had their homes published and republished and published
again and again. News of the men, their whereabouts and intentions,
invaded the sick-room--where Lloyd watched over the convalescence of her
little patient--by the very chinks of the windows.
Lloyd learned how the ship had been "nipped;" how, after inconceivable
toil, the members of the expedition had gained the land; how they had
marched southward toward the Chuckch settlements; how, at the eleventh
hour, the survivors, exhausted and starving, had been rescued by the
steam whalers; how these whalers themselves had been caught in the ice,
and how the survivors of the Freja had been obliged to spend another
winter in the Arctic. She learned the details of their final return. In
the quiet, darkened room where Hattie lay she heard from without the
echo of the thunder of the nations; she saw how the figure of Bennett
towered suddenly magnificent in the world; how that the people were
brusquely made aware of a new hero. She learned that honours came
thronging about him unsought; that the King of the Belgians had
conferred a decoration upon him; that the geographical societies of
continental Europe had elected him to honourary membership; that the
President and the Secretary of War had sent telegrams of
congratulations.
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