"Battle-cruiser Pallas, on her way to join the British high-seas fleet," returned the officer gruffly. "Ah, I do not know her." Save for the rhythmic click of the lever sliding back and forth, there was silence for a long time, and then the man in uniform stirred in his seat. "Why do you keep moving your lips?" he demanded suddenly. The face of the outcast flushed. "Counting, to keep awake, sir," he muttered without turning his head. "If you even nod you shall be beaten, and perhaps worse," threatened the Ger man. But the renegade made no reply. Through the strip of glass before him he was watching, with straining eyes, something like a star which had been rising and falling, far out in the darkness, for an hour past. And out on the Pacific, under that heaving star on which the eyes of the renegade were fixed, an officer on the bridge of the battle-cruiser Pallas had, on sighting the Tafofu light, regarded its apparent eccentric flashings, first, with muttered expressions of displeasure, then of amazement, turning swiftly into action. Sharp orders fluttered about the ship and men flitted through the gloom in orderly confusion. Presently a stabbing ray of light, with the cruiser as its pivot, swept twice across the sky from right to left and then rested for a second on the Tafofu lighthouse, where the renegade, with pale, set face, his lips no longer moving, seemed but a part of the machinery as he moved the lever back and forth. The lieutenant shrank back as if he felt the beam was seeking him alone, then broke into fury. "Dolt! Fool!" he screamed as he struck the man at the lever in the face. "You have been asleep! Why did you not tell me the cruiser was in sight?" But the renegade had fainted even as the searchlight's ray disappeared and the perfume of a tropic dawn filled the air. V WHEN the outcast opened his eyes the Teuton was standing over him smiling grimly. "I told you that I should beat you if you slept," he said. "Perhaps I would have killed you if it hadn't happened just as the light was no longer required. However, the ship comes on to destruction, and all seems well save that I am troubled as to why her search-light swept the sky in the manner of a signal— but who could she signal?" "Who?" echoed the renegade in a hollow voice. "And the beam that entered this place," pursued the officer, "was as an eye prying into my heart; it roused me to anger. Perhaps it hurts your conscience to destroy a thousand men without giving them a sporting chance," suggested the beach-comber in a tone from which all trace of servility had strangely fled. "Hah! but what do you mean?" exclaimed the German, noting the change. "Remember who is master here." Then mockingly: "Speak for yourself, my renegade. This is war, and I fight for my country while you betray yours." "I have no country." "Ay, the words are easy to say, but in the heart of hearts there are memories— is it not so, my renegade? And the end is near; and what a blow it will be to your England when a little German gunboat destroys an 18,000-ton cruiser!" Rubbing his hands gleefully, the officer picked up his marine glasses. "Ach! I see her finely. She is slowing up but turning inward—not more than two miles out now, and abreast the harbor entrance soon she will attempt to enter the harbor, and then, my renegade, we shall see the great surprise at which you have assisted--a sight which it is given but few men to witness. I trust we are ready below-but, hah! what is this? Her crew at battle stations! Her decks cleared! Outside, renegade! I fear something has gone wrong!" And he dashed out on the platform. The light-tender followed. His carriage and the expression on his face was no longer that of Keoki the beach-comber, but of an earl of Blenton come into his glasses, he turned with pale face and despairing eyes to the light-tender. "Will she come in?" he asked almost beseechingly. "She will, but not just yet," returned the other, a stern note of triumph, a hint at hidden meaning in his voice. "But, unless they suspect, why not now?" exclaimed the German fearfully. "It is daylight, the fairway is clear, the harbor is renowned for its safety-why do they hesitate?" "Because," said the renegade gravely"because of the 'memories in the heart of hearts' to which you alluded awhile ago. There was the light, and my hand at the lever controlled the flashes which told in the code of the navy in which I once had the honor to hold a commission the tale of the trap. There is the rest of your answer." He motioned seaward. From the forward turret of the Pallas burst a cloud of smoke split with a tongue of flame. A giant projectile rumbled over the harbor and dropped in the ambuscade of trees at the river's mouth behind which the enemy lay. Followed an explosion and the cries of stricken men. "And you've betrayed us, swine of hell!" screamed the German, tugging at his pistol. "But not mine own country," said the fifth earl of Blenton, otherwise Keoki the beach-comber, and smiled as he grappled with the foeman. A brief struggle on the brink-then, locked together, they fell to the black volcanic rocks and the whispering palms far below. ON THE HEADWATERS OF A NARRATIVE OF A THOUSAND-MILE CANOE TRIP TO A LITTLE-KNOWN BY PAUL LELAND HAWORTH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR II. HUNTING NORTH OF THE LONG CANYON IX. WE TRY THE FOX RIVER RANGE NE of my main objects in making the long journey to the Finlay country was to get a chance at Northern caribou and mountain sheep. Our trip up the Quadacha, though it had resulted in the discovery of a great glacier, had been a distinct disappointment in the matter of finding either of these animals. Several times when in the Quadacha region we had obtained clear views of the range of mountains lying west of the Tochieca, or Fox, and we were impressed with a belief that this range would be a good huntingcountry for the animals we sought. The Fox River Range begins at the gap through which the Finlay enters the great intermontane valley from the west, and its most southern height is the bare, precipitous elevation called Prairie Mountain by McConnell's party. From this mountain the range runs northwestward, gradually increasing in altitude, and culminates in some extremely ragged peaks that bear snow the year round. Ever since we first obtained a view of this range Lavoie had been anxious that we should try it, declaring that the tops appeared to be covered with bunch grass and that the summit of the range was so smooth that, once we were there, we could travel up the range with comparatively little effort. From the Quadacha country the ridge did, indeed, look level and inviting. On our return to the canoe and cache, which we reached safely after sundry adventures, we made our way up the Finlay to beyond Fox River and established another cache at the foot of Prairie Mountain. Just below the Fox, which is an exceedingly swift and turbulent stream, we stopped for an hour at the huntingcamp of a party of Indians, the only human beings we saw in the country north of Fort Grahame. There were two grown men, one of them a son of Chief Pierre, two lads in their teens, and two klooches, or squaws. I took pictures of the male members of the party, but the squaws hid in the tents, and it was only by using the camera surreptitiously that I finally obtained the picture of one of them. She was a very aged creature but still spry of limb and tongue, and we judged that she rather ruled things about the camp. Later I learned from Fox at Grahame that when a young woman she had been left a widow with several children. However, she was a rustler, hunted moose and other game, and even trapped bears; in fact, "there was not a family in the tribe that was better provided for," said Fox. What a story her life and adventures would make! The slope of Prairie Mountain averages fully forty-five degrees, and we were unlucky enough to blunder into a nest of cliffs where climbing was really dangerous, but we managed to avoid any mishap and after several hours of the hardest kind of work reached the top with our heavy packs. From the top we enjoyed another magnificent view, which included the glacier that McConnell sets down on the north fork of the Quadacha. The much bigger glacier which we had seen on the headwaters of the east fork is not visible from Prairie Mountain, but we later caught a glimpse of it from much farther up the range. As we had expected, we found the summit and upper slopes of this range delightfully open and covered with a thick growth of bunch grass. For a considerable distance the ridge was fairly level and the going good. The range was, in fact, an ideal hunting-country, except in one important respect, namely, it was almost entirely destitute of game. In the course of the days that we travelled up the range we saw nothing except three miserable mountain goats, and a combination of ill luck and poor management prevented us from bagging even one of these. Furthermore, we by and by reached a point where the range became broken up into separate peaks, and progress could only be won by almost constant ascending and descending. From the Quadacha this part of the range had looked to be good travelling, for high lateral ridges had hidden from us the deep clefts that now troubled us. Progress ultimately became so slow and painful, and game prospects so discouraging, that late one afternoon we decided to change our plan and endeavor to find some hunting-grounds of which the prospectors we had met above Finlay Forks had given us a glowing account. To reach these hunting-grounds by the route they had taken it was necessary to start from the Long Canyon of the Finlay. This canyon lay to the west of us, and downward toward it we now turned. We camped that night in the gorge of a little creek, a gorge so rough and narrow that we had great difficulty in making a level spot large enough for our tent. Rain fell throughout the night and the next day, but our food supply was growing shorter every meal and we could not tarry on account of weather. After hours of terrific going, sometimes wading in the bed of the creek, sometimes creeping along the walls of the gorge, all of the time undergoing saturation from the rain and from dripping boughs of trees and bushes, at last, shivering and wet to the skin, we reached the brink of the Long Canyon. At this point the Finlay, for about twenty miles, flows between high, steep cliffs and the water is very turbulent. We did not know exactly at what point we had reached it, but next morning I was lucky enough to discover an immense boulder-"big as a house”—in the middle of the river some distance above our camp, and recognized the place from the description given by the prospectors. We soon found their camping-place and cache, and it then became a simple matter to locate the route they had taken to the hunting-grounds. As our food was reduced to not to exceed five days' supply, we were in a bit helper is not the man for a trip where there exists a prospect of the grub supply failing! AN OPPORTUNE MEETING WITH A BEAR FOR two days we travelled toward the hunting-grounds. On the way we had many interesting experiences and beheld some wonderful scenery, but scenery was beginning to pall on us; what we wanted was meat, and the only meat we had managed to secure was one "fool-hen," a sort of grouse, which Joe was lucky enough to shoot out of a jack-pine. of a quandary as to what course to pur- I confess that the prospect caused me considerable worry, not so much over the possibility of going hungry as of being once more obliged to turn back emptyhanded. Thus far the only trophy I could show for my long journey was the skin of my brown bear, and, as Joe had tacked this up on the side of the storehouse at Grahame much lower than I had asked him to do, I was not sure but that the Siwash dogs would have torn it down and that I would not even have it to show to my inquisitive friends at home. In every long trip of this sort there comes a time when one thinks to himself: "How foolish I have been to take such a wild-goose chase! If the good Lord will only get me out of this scrape I will never offend again." That I felt thus discouraged and depressed was due no doubt to my being weary, worn-out, and hungry. For several days, in order to save our scanty stock of food, I had been stinting myself—not a very satisfactory proceeding, for it seemed that the less I ate and the lighter our supplies became, the more Joe consumed. Great as are his merits as a canoeman, my French-Canadian Ten o'clock next day found us seated on a steep mountainside at the brink of a cliff that bounded a wide basin. We were not sure where we were, but we hoped that, when we reached the summit above, the hunting-grounds we had been seeking would lie revealed before us, though we had an uneasy feeling that perhaps they lay in a range we saw farther ahead-a range so distant that I knew in my heart that we would never reach it. The going up the mountain had been both steep and rough, and both of us were winded and weary. For days I had been travelling on will rather than physical strength, and even the will was about exhausted. I actually had begun to doubt whether my tortured leg muscles could be made to lift me to the yet distant summit. Before and beneath us there unfolded another magnificent panorama. Far away and much below us lay the Finlay and the gorge of the Long Canyon, while to our right we could see the pond-studded valley of Porcupine Creek, a stream flowing down from the north. Beyond the Finlay valley towered the many forbidding, snow-capped peaks of the range that I had come to call the "Kitchener Mountains." Even the basin closer at hand was a spectacle well worth beholding. At the head and on the sides it was hemmed in by cliffs, and it ended far below in a sea of green timber. Its floor was carpeted in places with grass, interspersed with heaps of slide rock and clumps of bushes. As we had been climbing along the edge of the basin for an hour or more, my interest in the spectacle had waned, and I was sitting in a sort of lethargy when Joe berry bushes, there was a black bear. He was busy eating berries and his glossy hair rippled beautifully in the wind. We slunk down on the cliff-top and lay watching him. We were both desperately anxious to kill that bear. We needed him! "How far is he?" I whispered. "Four or five hundred yards," said Joe. It was too far to take a chance when so much was at stake, and we looked round to find a way of getting closer. Farther up the rim of the basin a sort of cliff peninsula projected out some distance. We clambered down the cliff on which we lay and scrambled over slide rock to that point of vantage. We had hoped to find ourselves in good shooting distance, but when we peered over the edge he still seemed a long way off, four hundred yards at least. I took a look at him through my Lyman sights and the front bead just covered his whole body. seemed to be none. If we attempted to descend into the basin and sneak nearer, we would almost certainly be heard or seen. A detour to the top of the cliff below which the bear was feeding would require an hour or more and, besides, the wind was unfavorable. For a time, therefore, we did nothing and simply lay there on the cliff watching him and hoping he would come nearer. Though it was late in the day for a bear to be feeding, he still seemed to be very hungry; through my glasses I could see him gobbling down blueberries, stems and all, like a champion pie-eater at a county fair. By and by he apparently thinned out the supply on that slope and moved twenty or thirty yards toward us to another; evidently this proved disappointing, for he remained there only a minute or two and fed back toward the first. |