Allan and the Ice-Gods

ALLAN AND THE ICE-GODS

knew well how to do, in which hut they crouched all night to protect themselves from cold.

Next morning they found that the snow had ceased; also that now they were out of sight of the mountains that stood at the back of the beach which was their home, though they could still see snow-covered peaks on the headland to the east of them, very far away. Leaving the hut, they dragged the boat forward over the surface of the snow which had frozen, so that now it was easy to travel, and thus made good progress. All that day, resting from time to time, they went on thus, till, late in the afternoon, the snow began to grow soft and it was difficult to draw the boat through it. Therefore they stopped, being tired, and built themselves another snow hut outside which they lit a fire. On that fire they cooked some of the seal flesh and ate it thankfully, and then went into the hut and slept, for they were very weary.

Next morning they found that the snow was still soft and that, if they tried to walk on it, they sank in to their ankles, so that it was no longer possible to drag the boat forward.

“We cannot go forward and we cannot go back,” said Wi. “There is but one thing to do – to stay here, though where that may be I do not know, for the mountains on the headland have vanished.”

Now Tana broke into weeping and Moananga looked sad, but Aaka said:

“Yes, we stay here till we die; indeed, what other end could be looked for on such a journey, unless we have a witch among us who can teach us to fly like the swans?” and she glanced at Laleela.

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“That I cannot do,” answered Laleela, “and the journey was one that must be tried, or so we all thought. Nor need we die for a long while, seeing that here we have shelter in the snow hut and enough seal’s flesh to last for many days if we are sparing, and snow that we can melt to drink. Also I hope that always the ice is bearing us forward, and it seems to me that the air grows somewhat warmer.”

“Those are wise words,” said Pag. “Now let us make the hut bigger, and since we can do nothing more for ourselves, trust to the Ice-gods, or to those that Laleela and Wi worship, or to any others that there may be.”

So they did these things; also, while their fuel lasted they cooked the most of the seal flesh after a fashion and set it aside to eat cold together with the fat, which they swallowed raw.

That day Pag and Moananga spoke much with Laleela, questioning her as to her journey northward and how long it had taken; about her own land also, and where it lay – to which she answered as best she could. But Wi and Laleela talked little together, for whenever they did so Aaka watched them coldly, which seemed to tie their tongues.

Four more days and nights passed thus, and during this weary night there was no change, save one, namely, that always the air grew warmer, by which they knew they were being borne southward, so that at last the snow began to melt and the walls of their hut to drip. On the fourth day also they saw behind them, but somewhat to the west, a mountain of ice that they had not noted before. This mountain seemed to grow bigger and nearer, as though it were heading toward them, or they toward it, which told them that all the ice still travelled though they could not see or feel it move. During that night

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they heard terrible rending sounds and felt the ice shake beneath them but, although it was melting, they did not dare go out of the snow hut to look whence the sounds came, for a strong wind had begun to blow from the north, bringing with it clouds that covered the moon.

Toward dawn the wind fell, and presently the sun rose, shining brightly in a clear sky. Thrusting aside the block of snow that sealed the entrance hole of the hut, Pag crept out. Presently he returned and, finding Wi’s hand, without speaking, drew him from the hut, pushing back the snow block after him.

“Look,” he said as they rose from their knees, and pointed to the north.

Wi looked and would have fallen, had not Pag caught him. For there, not more than a hundred paces away, wedged into the thick floes whereon they floated, was that great ice mountain which they had seen before they slept, a tall pinnacle ending in a slope of rough ice. And lo! there, halfway up the slope, held up between blocks of ice and stone, stood the great Sleeper!

Oh! there could be no doubt, for the light of the rising sun struck full upon it. There stood the Sleeper as Wi had seen it for all his life through the veil of ice, only now its left foreleg was broken off below the knee. Moreover, this was not all, for among the stones and ice lay strange, silent shapes shrouded in a powder of snow.

“Here be old friends,” said Pag, “if it pleases you to go to look upon them, Wi, N’gae – no, not N’gae, for of him on whom the Sleeper fell little would be left; but Urk the Aged

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and Pitokiti and Hotoa and Whaka, though no longer will he croak of evil like a raven, and many others.”

“It does not please me,” said Wi. Then he heard a voice behind him, that of Aaka, who said:

“You thought you had left the old gods behind, but see, they have followed after you, Husband, which I think means no good to Pag and you, who were the first to look upon them whom both of you have rejected.”

“I do not know what it means, Wife,” said Wi, “nor do I ask. Still, the sight is strange.”

Then the others came. Moananga was silent, Tana lifted her hands and screamed, but Laleela said:

“The evil gods may follow, but we go before them, and never shall they come up with us.”

“That remains to be learned,” said Pag.

As he spoke, the ice peak on which they were looking, whereof the base had been melted by the warmer waters into which it had floated, began to tremble and to bow toward them. Thrice it bowed thus, then, with a slow and noble motion, it turned over. Bearing the Sleeper and its company with it, it vanished into the sea, and where its head had been appeared its foot, spotted all about with great rocks that it had brought with it from the land.

“Farewell to the Ice-gods!” said Laleela with a smile, but Wi cried:

“Back! Back! The wave comes!” and seizing Aaka by the hand he dragged her away.

They fled, all of them, and not too soon for after them followed a mingled flood of ice and water, cast up by the overturning of the berg. Near to their snow hut it stopped and

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began to recede. Yet the platform upon which that hut stood rocked and trembled.

In his fear and haste to escape, the lad Foh ran past the hut out on to the snow plain, whence presently he returned, crying:

“The ice has broken, and far away I see land. Come, Father, and look upon the land.”

They ran after him, wading through the snow for some two hundred paces, till before them they beheld a channel of water wide as the mouth of a great river, down which the current ran furiously, bearing with it great blocks of ice. This channel wended its way between two shores of ice, as a river winds between its banks, and seemed to end at last in a blue and open sea where there was no ice. Far away, at the edge of that sea, appeared the land of which Foh had spoken, green hills between which a large river ran into the sea, and valleys with woods on either side of them that grew upward from the plains lying at the foot of the hills, clothing their rounded sides. For a few minutes only they saw this green and pleasant land. Then a mist that seemed to arise from where the ice mountain had overturned drove down wind and hid it.

“Yonder is the shore of my country. I know that river and those hills,” said Laleela.

“Then, the sooner we come there, the better,” answered Pag, “for this ice which has borne us so far is breaking up beneath us.”

Breaking up it was indeed, having drifted into those warmer waters, of which once Laleela had spoken as bathing the coasts of her land. Rapidly it melted beneath their feet. Cracks

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appeared in it. One opened beneath the snow hut, which fell to a shapeless heap.

“To the boat!” cried Wi.

They ran back; they took hold of the canoe and dragged it forward toward the edge of the ice, that here and there began to yawn. They came to the edge, the women and Foh were thrust in, Moananga followed, and Pag also by the command of Wi, who held the stern of the boat to keep its bow straight in the stream, while Laleela and Moananga got out the paddles. Wi looked at it and saw that it was very heavy laden; saw that the water almost ran over the edge of the great hollowed log whereof it was fashioned, saw, too, that if another man entered into it and the wind blew a little harder, or if it were struck by one of the blocks of ice that floated past on the swift current, it would fill and overset so that all would be drowned.

“Come swiftly, Wi,” cried Aaka, and the others also cried, “Come!” for they found it hard to keep the boat steady.

“I come, I come,” answered Wi, and with all his strength thrust at the stern so that the boat darted out into the midst of the channel and there being seized by the fierce current, turned and sped away.

Wi went back a few paces and sat himself down upon a floe that was bedded in the sheet ice watching. As he went, he heard a splash and, turning, saw Pag swimming toward the ice. Being very strong, he reached it and by the help of Wi climbed on to its edge.

“Why do you come?” asked Wi.

“That hollow log is very full,” answered Pag, “and there are too many women in it, their chatter troubles me.”

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Now Wi looked at Pag, and Pag looked at Wi, but neither of them said anything. They sat upon the floe watching the canoe being borne down the race between the shores of ice, its head pointing first this way and then that as though the paddlers were trying to turn it round but could not. The mist grew thick about it. Then, just before it was swallowed up in that mist, they saw a tall woman’s shape stand up in the boat and plunge from it into the water.

“Which of them was it?” asked Wi of Pag in a hollow groaning voice.

“That we may learn presently,” answered Pag.

Then he threw himself down on the ice and shut his eyes like one who wishes to sleep.

Thus the vision ended.

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CHAPTER 20

THE SUM OF THE MATTER

I, Allan Quatermain, woke up, to notice that, as on the previous occasion when Lady Ragnall and I took the Taduki together, my trance must have been brief. Although I had forgotten to look at the time, as it chanced, I could measure its duration by another method. The Taduki herb, as I knew, soon burned itself away, yet, when I awoke, the last little vapour, so thin and faint that it could scarcely be discerned, was rising from its embers.

Good gracious! I thought to myself, how could all those things have happened in that unknown land and age in much less time than it takes the stump of a cigarette to die.

Then I remembered Good, for, although my head seemed rather heavy at first, my brain was clear enough, and looked at him, not without alarm, or rather anxiety, for if anything had happened to Good what would my position be?

There he was in his armchair, his head lying back, staring at me with his eyes half-opened, much as a cat does sometimes when it is pretending to be asleep, but is really very wide awake indeed. Also he resembled something else, a man who was drunk, an effect that was heightened presently by his trying to speak and producing only prolonged stutterings and a word that sounded like “whisky.”

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“No, you don’t,” I said. “It is far too soon to drink. Alcohol and Taduki might not agree.”

Then Good said a word that he should have left unsaid, sat up, shook himself, and remarked:

“I say, Wi – for you are Wi, aren’t you? – how in the name of the Holy Roman Empire – or of the Ice-gods and the Sleeper – did I get out of that canoe, and where’s Laleela?”

“Before I answer your questions, which seem absurd, might I ask you, Good, what you considered your name to be when you were in the canoe of which you speak?”

“Name? Why, Moananga, of course. Dash it all! Wi, you haven’t forgotten your own brother, have you, who stuck to you through thick and thin – well, like a brother in a book.”

“Then if you were Moananga, why do you not ask after Tana instead of Laleela?”

“I wonder,” said Good reflectively. “I suppose it was because she was out of the picture just then, lying at the bottom of the canoe overcome with the horrors, or seasickness, or something, you know, with that dear boy, Foh, sitting on her. Also, you needn’t be jealous, old chap, for, although I did try to cut in when you were doing the pious over that tomfool oath of yours and the rest of it, it wasn’t the slightest use. She just smiled me out of court, so to speak, and like you, made remarks about Tana. But where’s Laleela? You haven’t hidden her away anywhere, have you?” and he stared round the room in a foolish fashion.

“That’s just what I want to know,” I answered. “Indeed, to tell you the truth, I never remember wanting to know anything quite so much in all my life.”

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“Then I can’t tell you. The last I saw of her, she was in the canoe, trying to get the head of the crazy thing round with a paddle – which I didn’t know how to do.”

“Look here, Good,” I said. “This is a serious matter, so pull yourself together and tell me exactly what you remember just before you woke.”

“Only this. The canoe was bobbing about, being carried shoreward down that infernal tide race or current between the two banks of ice, at, I should say, not less than eight or nine knots. Moreover, it was rocking because that fiddle-head- ed dwarf, Pag, nearly overset it when he jumped out like a seal from a rock and began to swim toward the ice bank we had left, because he thought we were all going to be drowned, I suppose. So there remained only Aaka, Laleela, Tana, Foh, and myself. Laleela, as I have told you, was trying to get the craft round, Tana was wailing and sobbing, that plucky lad Foh was quite still – I can see his white face and big eyes now, and Aaka, sitting in the bottom of the canoe, gripping the thwarts with both her outstretched hands but still looking very dignified, was making unpleasant remarks to Laleela as to her having murdered you, Wi, Aaka’s husband and her lover, or something of the sort, to which Laleela returned no answer. Then, just as I was shoving away a cake of floating ice which cut my hand, everything went out like a candle, and here I am. For heaven’s sake, tell me, where is Laleela?”

“I am afraid, old fellow, we shall ask ourselves that question for the rest of our days yet never learn the answer,” I replied solemnly. “Listen, I saw a little more than you did. Pag reached the ice bank and I pulled him to my side. He said that he had jumped out of the canoe because it was too full and there were

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