Chapter XI: Face to Face

Four days later.

A cold, cheerless morning with grey sky, drifting snow and a biting wind.

From Laxelven they had rowed the whole length of the wide Porsanger Fjord, first to Kistrand and then on to Kjelvik, the wretched little fishing station on the island of Magero, just behind the North Cape.

The _Mercur_ was due that day.

The fortnight of hard travel had fagged them both, and now, resting in a bare and rather uncleanly little hut belonging to a fisherman, the outlook over the grey narrow Magerosund, with the high, brown rocks, rising sheer on either side, was terribly dismal and dispiriting.

Henkela had gone forth, and with the searching eyes of the fisherman was scanning the horizon eastward for any sign of the steamer. But there was none.

A little cluster of miserable huts, together with the two or three drying-sheds, comprised the most northerly fishing station in Europe, being nearly one hundred kilometres north of Hammerfest.

The climate at that point, exposed to the open Polar ocean, was even worse than at Vardo, while the stench from the cod-liver boilery was dreadful. The dwellers there, the hardy toilers of the sea, most of them Lapps, knew not a bright day of sunshine as we of the south know it, nor had they ever in their lives seen either tree or even flower other than those upon the mosses of the tundra. Never a cornfield or an olive grove, a vineyard or a grass pasture had they ever gazed upon. They knew of nothing but those storm-tossed waters of the glacial sea, the floating ice, the bare rocky land, and the bird-covered bergs from which, even as the two Englishmen gazed, countless thousands of gulls, penguins and auks came forth darkening the sky in their flight.

Dick Jervoise, still in his big reindeer coat and with a fortnight’s growth of scrubby beard upon his chin, was sitting on an upturned barrel calmly smoking a cigarette.

The moment he had been dreading through all those days of travel since they had left Vadso was now approaching.

He was to meet Paul Grinevitch!

Owen Odd, with an air of nonchalance, very different from that calm attentive attitude he adopted in his shabby little surgery in Hammersmith, was seated on a box impatient for the arrival of the _Mercur_.

“By Jove, Dick!” he was saying. “I’ll be glad to get out of this stinking hole. It’s the worst place we’ve struck in the whole journey. Only fancy being doomed to live here and to work in the boilery yonder! Phew!” and he held his nose against the sickening stench.

“Yes,” laughed his friend. “This is, I admit, rather different from other places—the perfume factory at Grasse, and the otto-of-rose distillery at Kazanlik, for instance. Yet surely ours is an experience never to be forgotten, an experience of the hard conditions of life on the edge of civilisation.”

“This place, Henkela tells me, is one of the fishing stations belonging to that fat, red-faced old man Sundt whom we met at the Berentsen’s. He controls the fishing and boiling here, at Mehavn, Finkongkjeilen, and lots of other places.”

“And is reputed to be a millionaire—eh?” added Dick.

“They say so—and all out of cod-liver oil and stock-fish,” Owen laughed. “The more consumptives there are in the world, then the better for his pocket! Some men’s fortunes actually depend upon the spread of disease.”

“Doctors included,” remarked Dick, with a mischievous smile.

Whereat Odd laughed, and with impatience suggested they should go outside and join Henkela to scan the horizon for signs of the incoming _Mercur_.

The whole of the wretched little colony of undersized men, in furs and mitts, unclean men, with pale brown faces of Mongol type, with small, narrow eyes, short, scrubby beards, full lips, and blunt noses, was agog with expectation. The rare visits of the steamer which brought them stores and took away their barrels of oil and the great packages of dried cod down to Hamburg, was always a red-letter day. The few Norwegians and Russians who worked there looked for letters and newspapers from the civilised land they had known in their youth. The others, the half-savage Lapps, loved the excitement of drawing their big black boat alongside the steamer in the heavy sea, and shipping their black, greasy barrels on board.

The work was always very perilous, for the sea around that great frowning cliff, called the Helnes, was never calm, and the wind, straight from the ice, was always rough, bleak, and bitter. Many a life had been lost in the work of shipping the oil and the wind-dried fish, and many, alas! in the work of gathering the scaly harvest of the sea.

The shingly beach, whereon the great breakers of the Arctic were lashing themselves into a boiling foam, was strewn with thousands of cod-heads and offal, while from the boilery came forth a dark vapour, poisoning the atmosphere for miles around.

Some Lapps, in their grey, ragged furs, their dirty red-tasselled caps, and their fur boots, turned up at the toes, were busy packing the last bales of dried fish, shouting among themselves and hauling on the cords as they bound four or five hundred cod together. A Norwegian, one of Peter Sundt’s managers, in furs and mitts, stood by, directing operations.

Outside some of the huts the Lapps were mending nets, others tarring and repairing their boats, while the flat-faced women within were busy cooking meals and attending to their household duties.

Henkela, as they strolled along the shore, chatted here and there in his own soft tongue with the fur-clad fishermen, while as they passed the flag-staff the Norwegian flag was run up as signal of the approach of the steamer.

Away on the grey horizon could be seen the sharp, rocky point of the Svoerholtklubben, standing out from the land eastward, and from behind this Henkela pointed out, the _Mercur_ would first be distinguished.

That little colony, which, through those months of the great Arctic night, toiled and fished in a perpetual darkness, only broken by the occasional aurora borealis, and in snowstorms and blizzards almost continuous, was, Henkela declared, enjoying a “fine” day! “Fine” meant that there was no fog, no snow, and it was daylight.

The eyes of the colony were even upon that far-off, indistinct horizon, and were so for several hours, until nearly midday, when a shout from a group of Lapps attracted the two Englishmen; and they saw emerging from behind the long, misty headland a thin trail of black smoke.

The heart of Dick Jervoise fell. He bit his lip, uttering no word. Owen, however, set about packing their traps together and seeing that they were carried down to the boat which Henkela had engaged. They had paid off their faithful attendant, paid him well, and he had expressed his delight in many ways.

For the next four months there would be no steamer to take him back to Vadso; therefore he explained that he would return to Karasjok by the way they had come, wait there until the Tana was frozen, and then travel in a reindeer _pulk_ over the surface of the river, and so back to his own settlement.

Dick had scribbled a note to Mr. Ackerman, explaining how pleased they had been with the Lapp’s services, and there now remained nothing but to leave that damp, dreary, inhospitable land.

The two friends stood watching the rapid approach of the black, battered old steamer, with its high black funnel bearing the three narrow white bands, the vessel that had been their home for so many weeks, and was now to bear them back to the civilisation and hustle of modern life.

With the long trail from her smoke-stack, she steamed direct for the shore, until, when about three miles away, there sounded from the siren that well known warning note, the Morse code signal of long and short blasts, announcing its approach.

Ashore all was bustle in the little place. Men, women, and children ran down to the beach to watch the only link they possessed with Europe, that unknown country of the sun, the country whence came the flour without which they must die—the country about which the men who had seen it told such marvellous stories.

The Laplander is ever a child in his vivid imagination, and though he may be rough and uncouth he builds castles in the air and imagines that he has seen that wonderful city of which he had heard so much—the capital, Christiania, where lives King Haakon.

At last the _Mercur_ suddenly altered her course, dropping anchor about half-a-mile from land, whereupon the boats, already laden with barrels and bales of fish until they appeared top-heavy, put off, followed by the boat with the two Englishmen and their impedimenta, Henkela insisting upon coming in order to see his charges safely on board what he termed “the Hamburger.”

The crucial moment for Dick Jervoise had arrived. He knew that among the passengers on deck watching the arrival of the cargo would be Paul Grinevitch.

In a few moments, too, he would bow over the white hand of Thyra Berentsen, the girl with the grey, child-like eyes, that he so admired—the eyes that now ever haunted him.

The approach was difficult on account of the tremendous sea running, but at last Dick found himself on board, shaking hands with Captain Martin, who, smart in his well-kept uniform, was greeting the pair.

“Well, how did you get on? Had a good journey—eh?” he inquired.

“Excellent!” Owen declared. “It was all most interesting. And you?”

“Oh, pretty bad weather in the White Sea; quite unusual at this season,” responded the captain. “But,” he added, “we have on board our friends from Vardo, the captain, his daughter, and the Russian gentleman. They go down with us to Trondhjem for the wedding. You will land there and go on to Christiania by train, I suppose?” he asked of Jervoise.

“I—well, I really don’t know,” Dick replied, almost mechanically. “I may get off at Hammerfest or Tromso.”

“Better not,” advised the captain. “The summer season is over now, you know, and winter is setting in. Up here it is not place in winter for you people from the south.”

“Well,” declared Odd, “I’ll have to get back to Christiania and across to Hull as soon as I can, even though you stay here, Dick. I’ve my practice to return to, remember.”

“We’ll discuss it all later on,” Dick said; and as he turned he found a burly man in yachting cap and thick blue pilot-jacket standing behind him. It was Jorgen Berentsen, whose face beamed with good-humour as they grasped hands.

“I’m going down to Trondhjem,” he explained, “I go to be present at my daughter’s wedding. You land at Trondhjem, too, of course. I hope you and your friend the doctor will accept our invitation to the ceremony. You,” he added, addressing Owen, “have met Monsieur Grinevitch. You met him the night before you sailed.”

“Yes,” replied the young doctor. “But my friend Jervoise has not yet done so.”

“He’s on the upper deck, I believe, with Thyra. Of course they are inseparable!” he laughed merrily.

Inseparable! Would they be, thought Dick Jervoise, if father and daughter knew the shameful truth.

Above their heads rang out a peal of merry, girlish laughter.

She was leaning upon the rail just over them. He could hear the man’s voice—a voice which he had, alas! bitter cause to remember.

Her lover made a remark, whereat she laughed again.

Dick Jervoise overheard what the man had uttered. His brows contracted, and, smiling a hard, tight-lipped smile, he turned away.

Jorgen Berentsen held him, however, in conversation for a few moments longer, while Owen had already gone below to wash and make himself presentable.

Then, just as he turned to descend to his cabin, he came face to face with Thyra and her lover.

Dressed in neat blue serge, with a long seal jacket, a fine blue foxskin around her neck, and a small fur toque, she presented a delightfully dainty figure, as her grey eyes shone with delight at meeting the Englishman.

“Ah, Mr. Jervoise!” she cried, holding out to him her hand in its leather mitt. “Here you are at last! We’ve been wondering ever since we left Vardo whether you would get across here in time.”

“We arrived only this morning, Miss Thyra,” he answered, bending over her hand with his cosmopolitan courtliness. “It took us much longer to ascend the Tana than we had anticipated, and it seems we very nearly lost the steamer.”

“Oh, Captain Martin intended to wait twenty-four hours for you,” she declared. “We could never have left you and Doctor Odd in this awful place all the winter! Allow me to introduce Mr. Grinevitch, my future husband—Mr. Richard Jervoise.”

The Russian, in a suit of rough homespun, and wearing a thick, grey, half-military overcoat, reaching to his heels, and a golf cap, turned from gazing across at the land and faced him.

For a second the pair stared into one another’s eyes. There was defiance, even hatred, in the glance of both of them.

Thyra, however, did not detect Paul’s expression. Her usually quick intelligence had now become blinded by her intense and all-absorbing love for him.

She did not notice that quick flash of anger, so cold and metallic.

The two men bowed stiffly in silence. Neither uttered a word.

Dick Jervoise, with an excuse that he was unpresentable, passed by them and went straight downstairs.

The strife had begun. How would it end?