CHAPTER XVII

THE EVERLASTING SNOW.

The

PITZBERGEN! SPITZBERGEN!" cry stirred the crew of the Arcturus into as much animation as if they had sighted their own land instead of peaks of eternal ice and fields of everlasting snow.

Bernie Jocelyn stood on the deck with the captain, a glass in his hand, curiously surveying the Polar land. He was brown and ruddy and magnificent-looking, with no traces of the evil blow dealt months before while he gazed after Winifred going up the path to Jocelyn Hall the night he had wedded her at Nurse Farly's cottage. He was in the boundless waste of Arctic ice at Spitzbergen, and she-where was Winifred, his wife? Bernie thought of her as he closed his glass, and, lifting his eyes slowly, met the sinister gaze of one of the sailors watching him curiously; it was John Devèy. He remembered the villainous countenance at once, and remembered, too, that of late he had several times encountered this man's watchful scrutiny centred upon himself.

"The fellow bears me an old grudge," he laughed, carelessly, when the captain, bluff and good-natured, but acute and observant, followed his glance inquiringly.

"Then look sharp for him, Mr. Jocelyn. There is no better place to pay off old grudges than these devilish tricky icebergs. He's a good sailor, but a bad countenance," rejoined the captain. "I'll keep an eye on him myself. We'll soon show you something of life, sir; as soon as we reach the whaling-station. We'll soon have a fall."

The captain strolled forward, and Bernie, watching the renewed activity of the men, caught the infection of their excitement. But for the mystery of his presence at all on the whaler, Bernie might have thrown his fearless energies and daring into the perilous pursuit, and loved it as the adventurous men around him loved it. Somehow, a cloud hung over him-a cloud of doubt and fear for Winifred.

"Ah, well," he said to himself, half scornfully, "he may bully and persecute the poor child, but she is my wife. Winifred is my wife. Nothing can take Winifred from me." And then Bernie would dismiss the subject, a trifle angry with himself for allowing his mind to brood over it, when Winifred, at least, was his own.

"I'll be sworn, Mr. Jocelyn, that you'll stay out the four years with us," the captain said, when they reached the whaling-station, and began to hail other ships. "Ay, sir, you don't live until you go a-whaling. Landsmen don't know what life is. Why, sir, they just walk through life, and have to live whether they want to or not; and here you're devilish lucky to live at all. You're in danger every minute of being sunk by an ice-pack, or pulled under by the whale himself, or cast away for good an' all, never to turn up anywhere. We've a jolly time, Mr. Jocelyn; one never knows when he'll flounder into the next world, and we don't care. You'll stay, sir. Ay, how are you, Monsieur Gabe? Still alive? Ay, sir, and want some grog, sir. Well, we have it aboard."

The captain turned from Bernie to a dark, weatherbeaten man, enveloped in a complete suit of furs, who came up the ship's side and approached the captain with the confident recognition of an old acquaintance. The stranger, even in the clumsily-fitting fur coat, was slender and graceful. His countenance had the rugged look of one inured to the biting Polar blasts; nevertheless, the features were clear-cut and delicate, with a certain aristocratic air, not effaced by the rough whaling-life. When

the fur cap was removed from his head it revealed a smooth, white forehead, and silken black hair, strongly mixed with gray.

"Ay, we'll take a stiff pull of grog to warm us up. Come, Mr. Jocelyn."

"Jocelyn" ejaculated the stranger, recoiling in shocked amazement. "Did you say Jocelyn ?"

"Ay, that I did. Mr. Jocelyn is a green hand at whaling, but he's shipped for the fun of it, and showed his sense and true grit, too," loquaciously explained the chief officer of the Arcturus.

"Jocelyn, Jocelyn," muttered the other in evident bewilderment. "I thought I would never hear that name again. I thought I had done with it. Jocelyn, Jocelyn, it has found me here, at the end of the world."

"I am sorry my name seems to offend you," Bernie said, half apologetically.

The stranger started. His eyes were riveted upon Bernie's splendid figure and handsome face. His thoughts were roaming to something and some one very foreign to the two men before him. He frowned, and tugged at his mustache in bitter moodiness, still gazing at Bernie.

"Ay, but it's a devilish good name," laughed the captain. "And this is Monsieur Gabe; we always call him that-cursed if I know any t'other name-and he's been here this fifteen year and better."

"Twenty years, sir," interrupted the stranger, in his deliberate tones-"twenty years since I turned my back on my native land; and in all that time I never heard the name of Jocelyn-Jocelyn-and I thought to have died without hearing it again. Ay, I wish I had died before I heard it again," he added, with a bitter smile.

"I don't see as it matters much," retorted the captain; "names don't count here at the Pole. Come and get your grog, sir. You're likely to be harpooned in afore your cargo's made up-anyhow, needn't wish to have gone any sooner. Try that grog, sir; I'll dare swear the Arcturus has the best grog aboard of her that's been to Spitzbergen in the whole twenty-year you have been here. Take a stiff pull, Monsieur Gabe; you'll be in better humor with this gentleman's name.

The stranger lifted his glass slowly, his gaze traveling back again and again to Bernie, as if some strange magnetism drew it thither.

"Are you sure your name is Jocelyn ?" he asked agair. "Did I comprehend, or was it one of my miserable fancies? Pardon, Mr.-Mr.-" he stopped abruptly, with a visible effort to pronounce the name. A pained, angry look darkened his countenance, as he avoided the name and went on: "Pardon, sir; when a man has lived in such solitude as I have for twenty years, it takes a small thing to startle him." The stranger quaffed the brandy with the deliberation of a connoisseur in liquors. "Very fine, captain; fit for a gentleman's palate," he complimented. "It's quite the best I've had for twenty years, and I used to be a judge. I was once a companion of bon vivants, twenty years ago-more than twenty years."

He shook his head gloomily, and folding his small, wellshaped hands around the glass, gazed into it in moody silence. The captain glanced at Bernie significantly.

"That's his way," he said, with utter disregard of the stranger's presence. "He will sit that way for half a day, when some bit of news disturbs him. Monsieur Gabe's a queer bit of hum inity, but it's the life he leads. He is every inch a gentleman, knows everything, and when he warms up he is the pleasantest talker I ever met. Where he came from, or what his history is, and why he lives here year after year, without ever going home, is one of the mysteries of the Spitzbergen."

Perhaps he has no means of returning to his home, wherever it may be," suggested Bernie.

'If you think that, you are deluded, like most other people afore they're posted. Monsieur Gabe owns two or three of the principal whaling vessels fishing in the Polar Sea. He has never lost a vessel. The sailors call him 'devil proof,' and have a superstitious faith in his luck. Ay, it's a strange story, I'll warrant you, that's at Monsieur Gabe's back," added the captain, lighting his pipe, while the individual being so freely discussed sat rigidly still, evidently seeing and hearing nothing around him. "He sends the largest cargoes from these waters, and never has had a bad season, or sent home an empty ship. His cargoes are shipped to London, but he never draws a penny of the money. His bankers pay the men. His bankers buy his small supplies and send them out to him. He's lavishly liberal to his ships' crews, and he is one of the richest men in the world. Yes, sir, it's a devilish queer thing that a millionaire lives at the North Pole, but it's no less a fact."

"Is there no one who knows his history or name?" inquired Bernie.

"No one that I ever came across," responded the captain. "His whalers don't. I judge, though, that he is from the United States, because he takes an interest in events there; but if you ask him, he'll tell you he's from Spitzbergen, and no more. I'll go on deck now; mayhap Monsieur Gabe will come around directly, and you'll find he's no fool;" and imparting that information, Captain Colman was soon overhead, giving orders in his cheery, clear voice.

"It is certainly Jocelyn," was the response, as Bernie lit a meerschaum. "Does smoking annoy you?" "Not at all. I used to smoke, twenty years ago.” Monsieur Gabe still fixed that curious scrutiny upon him while he spoke.

"You seem to have lived your life twenty years ago," observed Bernie, good-humoredly.

Monsieur Gabe sighed, then answered, a trifle fiercely: "What is that to you? I've lived my life within the last twenty years for aught you may know, Mr.—”

Again he stopped-again the misery in his swarthy countenance might have touched a heart of stone.

"Very true, monsieur," Bernie said, watching the blue smoke of the meerschaum curl upward—“very true, seeing that I never heard of you until ten minutes ago.”

"Yes, yes; I can't remember that. You are too young too young to have known," he half mused, and half addressed himself to Bernie. "But you are so very like -and, God! whatever else you may be-whatever else you may mean, you will in the end bring me evil. The Jocelyn is fatal to my peace, and you will be no exception."

"We will be the best of friends, I trust."

The stranger sprang to his feet, excitedly. His face had a vindictive rage in it; his teeth glittered under his black mustache.

"What do you mean by that? Do you mean the same treachery-the same perfidy, under the guise of friendship? Say-God! what a fool I am!" he suddenly corrected. "Your pardon, sir. What is your name? Is it can it be Hugh ?"

He waited breathlessly. His breast heaved in spasmodic gasps as Bernie removed the pipe deliberately, and said:

'Was my uncle your friend ?" inquired Bernie. The same white heat of rage shot into the stranger's countenance. He came close to Bernie.

"My friend !" he ejaculated, in a hissing whisper. 'Hugh Jocelyn was my deadly enemy. Of all men on God's earth, I have hated Hugh Jocelyn."

Monsieur Gabe took a turn to the other side of the cabin, then back, before Bernie, startled by his vehemence, inquired:

"Does your antagonism include his daughter ?" “He had no daughter," shortly answered the other. "He has a very charming daughter-beautiful Winifred Jocelyn," quietly asserted Bernie.

Monsieur Gabe faced him slowly.

"Winifred's mother may have died at Winifred's birth, but Winifred's mother was not Hugh Jocelyn's wife, for she died childless," he asserted, doggedly.

Bernie was smoking calmly. If it pleased the stranger to cling tenaciously to his own conclusions, Bernie had no mind to disturb them. Whatever Monsieur Gabe knew of events happening a score of years ago, he evidently meant should stand unchanged.

"Where did you know my uncle ?" he asked, quietly, dropping the disputed point.

The stranger took up his fur cap abruptly, then paused and listened. Instead of answering the inquiry, he stepped swiftly to the door, and flung it wide open.

"You were eavesdropping, you scoundrel !" he exclaimed, darting out, and seizing some one in a sudden flight.

There was a slight scuffle, and then Monsieur Gabe, lithe, slender and strong, dragged the offender to the cabin. The sinister eyes met Bernie's. The thoroughly bad countenance of the man some singular accident or design had sent to these dangerous realms with him was forced into the light.

John Devey had been detected in his stealthy, cunning espionage.

"The scoundrel was listening. How dare you do such a thing?" demanded Monsieur Gabe.

The sailor's hangdog look deepened into viciousness. "I was only goin' by, and hear'n some one a-talkin'—” That he deliberately lied was evident, and Monsieur Gabe told him so.

"It's a lie, sir! Now, get out, and don't be dogging me again."

The sailor's glance scowled upon Bernie with a sly, subtle menace.

"I wasn't a-doggin' you, sir,” he answered, as he slunk away, muttering curses under his breath.

"That fellow is a villain. Whose track is he on ?" sharply questioned the stranger.

"I pun

Bernie laughed lazily and heedlessly. "Mine, I suppose," he said, still smoking. ished his brutality rather severely some time ago, and he hasn't forgotten it."

"Nor forgiven it, I should say, by the way he looked at you. Be on your guard, Mr. -" and the stranger paused, too bitterly detesting the name to willingly syllable it. "It is as much as a man's life is worth to have an enemy at his side among the icebergs." For the second time that day Bernie had been warned of the ill-will this man bore him. "I'll return to my ship now-we sail tonight."

Monsieur Gabe replaced his fur cap, and opened the door. He was as smiling and courteous now as he had been moody and taciturn. Bernie's next question was destined to change his humor again.

"One moment," he said, crossing the floor. ask your dame?"

"May I

་ Certainly," ," was the brief answer, while the enigmatical face darkened stonily.

"What is it?".

"Gabe," retorted the other, shortly. "That is enough for you. There are no pedigrees or distinctions at the North Pole. Ask for Old Gabe, and they will send you to me; ask for me, and you will find Old Gabe. I am on the ship Hector, and shall be far away to-morrow. You are another Jocelyn, but some day you may come to the Hector."

"Thanks," laughed Bernie, amused at the odd mixture of courtesy and rudeness. "May I ask if the Hector returns to England this season ?"

"Yes, the Hector returns this season."

Bernie stood in the doorway, perplexed and surprised. He was looking after his fur-covered boots disappearing through the gangway, when an almost imperceptible sound attracted him. A face peered from behind a heavy stanchion, and was instantly withdrawn. The face was John Devey's. For the second time he had crept near enough to hear every word. For the second time his subtle watchfulness had been detected after his object had been attained.

"The devil take that fellow Devèy! What can he be after ?" was Bernie's careless comment.

HE whaleboat pulled off from the Arcturus across the green water toward the fields of ice. A whale had been sighted by the lookout. Bernie Jocelyn, with his handsome face and white hands, his brown hair curling around his splendid head like a shining fringe, its sealskincap seeming a trifle out of place among the rough old salts, straining every muscle to pull close enough for the skilled harpooner to take deadly aim. The magnificent landsman's eyes glowed with an excitement quite as intense as any whaler in the boat. The craft shot forward at lightning speed. Every man watched the widening circles of the eddying waters around the monster fish. Spouts of water were thrown into the air as

"You may ask what you please, and I will refuse what I please. The Jocelyns have always brought me evil. You are a Jocelyn, and you may sink my ship. I decline to give you passage on the Hector."

"Let me explain my reasons, and you will not refuse the request."

A ring of melancholy in the rich, mellow tones seemed to strike his keen ear, for the stranger stopped, and looked searchingly into the handsome face.

"What does it matter to me what your reasons are? The ship will not return to this station for a month. You have an enemy; how do you know you will ever want a passage to England ?" he demanded, crustily. "Who is it you are so set upon seeing as to surrender your whaling for three seasons ?"

Bernie unbuttoned his coat, and drew from a side-pocket a miniature.

"That is the magnet drawing me homeward," he said, holding it that the other might see the smiling face.

Monsieur Gabe uttered a cry of horror and staggered backward. His hands clutched the table. His face whitened to a ghastly, ashen hue, under the yellowish swarthiness. His eyes contracted with a deadly pain. "God!" he gasped, "where did you get that? God! that face again, and-the Jocelyns again!" "It is my cousin, Winifred Jocelyn." Bernie closed the miniature, and replaced it.

"It is not your cousin! It is not Winifred Jocelyn!" insisted the stranger, wildly. "You know nothing about it! I say you know nothing about it! God! I will not stay here! I shall go mad-mad-again !"

He placed his shapely hands over his eyes, as if to shut out some terrible sight, and rushed away frantically.

flew over the waves.

"I almost wish you had staid on board, Mr. Jocelyn; this will be no play," Adams, the first-mate, said. "We are too confoundedly near the ice. It may break up at any minute. Swing on your oars, my boys. She'll be ours yet."

The men panted with the exertion and feverish anxiety. White, foamy spouts of water were still ascending in jets. "Stand up!" shouted the mate.

The harpooner sprang to the bow. Bernie's strong arm seized his oar, and his college skill in rowing stood him in good stead.

"Pull, pull, my hearties! He is spouting slower. He is going down. He will be lost! Ay! Dart, dart !" vociferated Adams, as they ran close to the giant of the

ocean.

The glistening harpoon darted with unerring skill and aim, and was fastened in the monster's side, and the boat was backed. The creature made a stupendous plunge of pain, then sank swiftly out of sight.

"Where away ?" yelled the mate. "Under the ice," shouted the harpooner, as he flung another coil around the ballard-post. "And running foul," he ejaculated, in a tone of alarm.

The boat lurched violently, then was pulled with lightning velocity straight toward the ice-field. The ballardpost began to smoke with the friction of the rope. The harpooner seized a bucket and laved it with water. The hardy faces were full of intense excitement.

"God almighty! he'll pull us under the ice-we'll be lost!" screamed a terror-stricken voice.

Bernie glanced around contemptuously. John Devey was cowering in the corner of the flying boat, almost paralyzed with fright. `

"Get up, you confounded coward, and jump for your life with the rest of us, or go to the devil if you like," roughly ordered the mate. "They can't reach us in time. Spring on the ice, every one of you."

It was only a few dreadful moments of this mad racing to destruction. The craft would inevitably follow the rope down under the ice, to the bottom of the ocean, wherever the wounded whale might choose to make its gigantic perilous plunges. The relief-boat was dashing over the water to their rescue. One minute every eye turned eagerly toward it; the next minute every eye turned hopelessly from it. Even Bernie's inexperienced glance saw that it was too late to save them.

"Spring for the ice, my hearties," ordered the mate. "Get up, you fool, or be a dead man in two seconds," he added, to Devèy.

Each man braced himself for the leap for life from the doomed craft to the scarcely less perilous ice. One breathless instant intervened, and then, with a grinding crash, boat, lines and whale had vanished under the boundless ice.

The boat had gone, but the crew was safe. Bernie's athletic agility had enabled him to spring clear of the boat, and reach the ice side-by-side with Adams, the mate. "This floe of ice is devilish shaky; we won't venture too far from the boats," Adams said, examining keenly and narrowly the gaping holes and treacherous fissures. "He'll come up again, most like to the nor'west, in about thirty minutes, to blow. Mayhap you'll have the luck to lance him, Mr. Jocelyn. Come on, boys."

"Run for your lives," yelled Adams, in a shrill tone of terror. "The ice is parting. The floe is gone."

Bernie was bending down to watch their great capture. The sailors sprang away with all the frantic speed of men used to saving their lives in an instant. They ran along the widening fissure. The ice was cracking in explosive bursts. The green water was already visible far into the perfidious ice. The mist had deepened suddenly into almost impenetrability. They could see but a few feet before them.

"Here, here! Jump here !" shouted the foremost man, running out on a projecting point of ice cracking away from the main body. He was over in an instant, running on toward the party.

The sailor in front of Bernie leaped over, and stopped short on the other side. Bernie bounded to the edge, now a few feet away. In another second he, too, would have been saved; in another second he could easily have cleared the fatal gap, when a brutal blow from a lance hurled him backward. He recovered his balance and bounded back to the edge. It was too late-the floe had drifted out of reach. The villainous face of John Devey scowled at him from across the horrible, hissing water.

"You are a dead man, curse you," he taunted, with malignant triumph, from the safe side of the frightful abyss. "I came here to kill you, and I've done it. Your Winifred thinks you are dead long ago, and she's Fulke's wife. I fooled her for Fulke. Yes, yes-think on that while you are going out to the sharks, and—”

The floe of ice had drifted out of hearing, swiftly and

"We won't give up the fish, even for a gale," laughed Bernie, gayly. His blood was tingling with the excitement and danger of this novel chase.

The mate glanced at him, almost in admiration.

"I say, Mr. Jocelyn," he began, walking as fast as possible, "for one of these granddee gentleman landsman you've got more spirit, and can handle an oar better than any of them I ever shipped with. Ay, hurry up, boys. There's a great hole in the ice, and curse me if the whale hasn't come up. There she blows."

A spout of water shot up in the air. Their prey was at the surface, for a few minutes, at least, if only they could reach it in time. The sailors rushed frantically forward, yelling a wild cheer. The mist was gathering with Arctic swiftness around them, but nobody heeded. One man passed his comrades in long strides. One man reached the edge of the hole several feet in advance, when Adams and the sailors ran up. Bernard Jocelyn's dexterous white hands had driven his lance into the great whale, and in an instant he had drawn it out and given another fatal wound. The sea-monster spouted streams of blood, while the men cheered lustily for Bernie.

"You' a born whaler," ejaculated Adams, ecstatically. "You've done as well as the best of us. Look out! look out! Bun, run !"

The whie suddenly reared its head under the edge of ice, then pushed forward, breaking its passage in the ice with its gigantic crown.

"Take care, Mr. Jocelyn !" shouted the mate, from the other side of the gap, as Bernie and two of the sailors ran forward to give the whale another lance.

The voices of the men grew fainter. The explosive cracking grew louder. An impenetrable pall of fog enveloped him. He shouted again and again, but the gale seemed to beat his voice back into his teeth. No answer came from his comrades-no answer would ever come to him now. He was shut out from sight and sound, in the realms of eternal silence. The floe suddenly stood still, rocking slightly and moving slowly back and forth, then suddenly the mass of ice began to whirl round and round, with a giddy velocity.

Bernie's lips were tightly compressed, his face was pale, but the brown eyes glittered with unquenchable spirit. Every moment he expected the mass to break into a thousand pieces. He knew that the floe had been caught in the whirling eddy of two meeting ocean currents, rushing down two great lanes in the ice. It would whirl in this mad way for a while, and then either break or, drifting closer to the edge of this ocean whirlpool, be carried with tremendons swiftness out into midocean, or somewhereGod only knew where.

Every sound of human life had died away long ago. The floe rocked and whirled. It must end soon. He knew that. Either alternative was equally hopeless and equally fatal. Possibly he hoped it would break and hurl him into the boiling sea below. Possibly he dreaded starving and freezing more than the awful caldron seething beneath him.

The calmness of despair came over Bernard Jocelyn as he stood there, gazing into the fog vacantly, with the white, salt spray dashing over him from the sea, and freezing on his beard and clothes. He made no effort to shelter himself from the sheets of foam thrown up as high as the peaks of ice.