The Argosy, Christmas 1912 — page 39: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LOOSING THE TEMPEST. heard. The wall, that had obscured our vision to the south, fell with a crash into the sea. “My God, Dag! Look! Look!” With this cry Ordway fell flat on his face, unconscious. There was little wonder in it. For a moment I lost myself. I felt my reason going. With a mighty clutch of will-power I hauled myself back to life and looked again. I knew that in northern waters there is an ice-mirage the same as on the torrid desert. Was this a mirage that was driving me insane? . Before me stretched land! Not five hundred feet away was a rugged shore. A great forest of beech and birch and spruce spread out to the south and southeast. I staggered to my feet. “Ord,” I cried, “ wake up! Don't give way now, when we are safe. Don’t! Get up, Ord. It is really land.” He moaned. “ Ord, I tell you it is land.” There was an ominous cracking un- der my feet. “Ord! We've got to go. swim it. Come.” He didn’t move. came louder. “ Ord, for God’s sake, come. We've got to swim for it. Get up.” He stirred. | “Let me alone. I might as well die now,” he said. “I’m all in.” “Land, I tell you. Land! Get up. This ice is going to pieces.” He made no move. I was desperate. I knew from my former experience I could not lift him. I would not go and leave him. Oh, if I had but a bit of brandy left! There was not a drop. “Ord, don’t you want to live?”’ “No. To the deuce with living.” Something—I don’t know what to call it—seized me. Call it insane fury, call it anything you like. | I fell upon him. I kicked him. I smote him in the face, on the chest, everywhere. We can The cracking be- 25 I called him sundry disagreeable names. I aroused all the fighting rage there was left in him. He struggled to his feet and came at me with a fury; that was what I wanted. “Catch me!” I yelled with a loud laugh, and, running to the edge of what was left of the ice, I plunged into the sea. CHAPTER XIII. MAN AND BEAST. My ruse succeeded beyond my ex- pectations and most ardent desires. Ordway let out a bellow that would put a mad bull to shame, and came plunging “after me, yelling in his fury that “he would show me.” Just then I did not feel like being from Missouri. But I had roused him, which had been the purpose of my assault. : But Ordway, lying supine, waiting to die, was one individual, and Ordway enraged, and bellowing for vengeance, quite another. The plunge into the water seemed to bring back to him all his energies, and he followed me like a porpoise. I made straight for the rugged bank, sometimes swimming round a big piece of drift-ice, and sometimes ducking and swimming under. Ordway always kept exactly in my wake. We had gone perhaps half the way to land when the roar of the splitting ice came, and I glanced back over my shoulder to note the havoc done. Ord- way, too, looked back, so the time lost was equal. The end of the berg had split off, but, from where I was in the water, it seemed as though the portion contain- ing the basin had been left intact. I reached land first, and had clam- bered to a high and dry position when Ordway came climbing after me. I braced myself for a fight. I knew he was more than my equal if it came to a pitched battle. CoOMmicbook CO