Chapter 7

And so it came about that one calm evening towards the end of June, William Spike and I went into camp under the southerly shelter of that vast granite wall called the Hudson Mountains, there to await the promised “further instructions.”

It had been a tiresome trip by steamer to Anticosti, from there by schooner to Widgeon Bay, then down the coast and up the Cape Clear River to Port Porpoise. There we bought three pack-mules and started due north on the Great Fur Trail. The second day out we passed Fort Boisé, the last outpost of civilization, and on the sixth day we were travelling eastward under the granite mountain parapets.

On the evening of the sixth day out from Fort Boisé we went into camp for the last time before entering the unknown land.

I could see it already through my field-glasses, and while William was building the fire I climbed up among the rocks above and sat down, glasses levelled, to study the prospect.

There was nothing either extraordinary or forbidding in the landscape which stretched out beyond; to the right the solid palisade of granite cut off the view; to the left the palisade continued, an endless barrier of sheer cliffs crowned with pine and hemlock. But the interesting section of the landscape lay almost directly in front of me—a rent in the mountain-wall through which appeared to run a level, arid plain, miles wide, and as smooth and even as a highroad.

There could be no doubt concerning the significance of that rent in the solid mountain-wall; and, moreover, it was exactly as William Spike had described it. However, I called to him and he came up from the smoky camp-fire, axe on shoulder.

“Yep,” he said, squatting beside me; “the Graham Glacier used to meander through that there hole, but somethin’ went wrong with the earth’s in’ards an’ there was a bust-up.”

“And you saw it, William?” I said, with a sigh of envy.

“Hey? Seen it? Sure I seen it! I was to Spoutin’ Springs, twenty mile west, with a bale o’ blue fox an’ otter pelt. Fust I knew them geysers begun for to groan egregious like, an’ I seen the caribou gallopin’ hell-bent south. ‘This climate, ‘ sez I, ‘is too bracin’ for me, ‘ so I struck a back trail an’ landed onto a hill. Then them geysers blowed up, one arter the next, an’ I heard somethin’ kinder cave in between here an’ China. I disremember things what happened. Somethin’ throwed me down, but I couldn’t stay there, for the blamed ground was runnin’ like a river—all wavy-like, an’ the sky hit me on the back o’ me head.”

“And then?” I urged, in that new excitement which every repetition of the story revived. I had heard it all twenty times since we left New York, but mere repetition could not apparently satisfy me.

“Then,” continued William, “the whole world kinder went off like a fire-cracker, an’ I come too, an’ ran like—”

“I know,” said I, cutting him short, for I had become wearied of the invariable profanity which lent a lurid ending to his narrative.

“After that,” I continued, “you went through the rent in the mountains?”

“Sure.”

“And you saw a dingue and a creature that resembled a mammoth?”

“Sure,” he repeated, sulkily.

“And you saw something else?” I always asked this question; it fascinated me to see the sullen fright flicker in William’s eyes, and the mechanical backward glance, as though what he had seen might still be behind him.

He had never answered this third question but once, and that time he fairly snarled in my face as he growled: “I seen what no Christian oughter see.”

So when I repeated: “And you saw something else, William?” he gave me a wicked, frightened leer, and shuffled off to feed the mules. Flattery, entreaties, threats left him unmoved; he never told me what the third thing was that he had seen behind the Hudson Mountains.

William had retired to mix up with his mules; I resumed my binoculars and my silent inspection of the great, smooth path left by the Graham Glacier when something or other exploded that vast mass of ice into vapor.

The arid plain wound out from the unknown country like a river, and I thought then, and think now, that when the glacier was blown into vapor the vapor descended in the most terrific rain the world has ever seen, and poured through the newly blasted mountain-gateway, sweeping the earth to bed-rock. To corroborate this theory, miles to the southward I could see the débris winding out across the land towards Wellman Bay, but as the terminal moraine of the vanished glacier formerly ended there I could not be certain that my theory was correct. Owing to the formation of the mountains I could not see more than half a mile into the unknown country. What I could see appeared to be nothing but the continuation of the glacier’s path, scored out by the cloud-burst, and swept as smooth as a floor.

Sitting there, my heart beating heavily with excitement, I looked through the evening glow at the endless, pine-crowned mountain-wall with its giant’s gateway pierced for me! And I thought of all the explorers and the unknown heroes—trappers, Indians, humble naturalists, perhaps—who had attempted to scale that sheer barricade and had died there or failed, beaten back from those eternal cliffs. Eternal? No! For the Eternal Himself had struck the rock, and it had sprung asunder, thundering obedience.

In the still evening air the smoke from the fire below mounted in a straight, slender pillar, like the smoke from those ancient altars builded before the first blood had been shed on earth.

The evening wind stirred the pines; a tiny spring brook made thin harmony among the rocks; a murmur came from the quiet camp. It was William adjuring his mules. In the deepening twilight I descended the hillock, stepping cautiously among the rocks.

Then, suddenly, as I stood outside the reddening ring of firelight, far in the depths of the unknown country, far behind the mountain-wall, a sound grew on the quiet air. William heard it and turned his face to the mountains. The sound faded to a vibration which was felt, not heard. Then once more I began to divine a vibration in the air, gathering in distant volume until it became a sound, lasting the space of a spoken word, fading to vibration, then silence.

Was it a cry?

I looked at William inquiringly. He had quietly fainted away.

I got him to the little brook and poked his head into the icy water, and after a while he sat up pluckily.

To an indignant question he replied: “Naw, I ain’t a-cussin’ you. Lemme be or I’ll have fits.”

“Was it that sound that scared you?” I asked.

“Ya-as,” he replied with a dauntless shiver.