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Cayley Wheeled Sharply Up Into the Wind.
1
CHAPTER I.
The Man With Wings.
For many hours —Cayley was too
much of a god today to bother with
the exact number of them —he had
been flying slowly northward down a
mild southerly breeze. Hundreds of
feet below him was the dazzling, ter
rible expanse of the polar ice pack
which shrouds the northern limits of
the Arctic ocean in Its impenetrable
veil of mystery.
A compass, a sextant, a bottle of
milk and a revolver comprised, with
the clothes he wore, and with the
shimmering silken wings of his areo
plane, his whole equipment. His near
est base of supplies, if you could call
it that, was a 20-pound tin of pemmi
can, hidden under a stone on the
north east extremity of Herald island,
200 miles away. The United States
rescue station at Point Barrow, the
extreme northerly point of Alaska,
the place which he had called home
for the past three months, was pos
sibly, half as far again away, some
where off to the southeast.
But for these past weeks of un
broken arctic sunshine, he had fairly
lived a wing. The earth had no ob
structions and the air no perils. To
day, with his great broad fan-tail
drawn up arc-wise beneath him, his
planes pitched slightly forward at the
precise and perilous angle that only
just did not send him plunging, head
first, down upon the sullen masses of
ice below, he lay there, prone, upon
the sheep-skin sleeping bag which
padded the frame-work supporting his
two wings, as secure as the great ful
mar petrel which drew curiously near,
and then, with a wheel and a plunge,
fled aw'ay, squawking.
For all practical purposes Cayley
had learned to fly. The great fan
driven air ship, 100 feet from tip to
tip, which had long lain idle on his
ranch at Sandoval, would probably
never leave its house again. It had
done yeoman service. Without its
powerful propellers, for the last re
source, Cayley would never have been
able to try the experiments and get
the practise which had given him the
air for his natural element. He had
outgrown it. He had no more need
of motors or whirling fans. The force
of gravity, the force of the breeze and
the perfectly co-ordinated muscles of
his own body gave him all the power
he needed now.
Perhaps the succeeding generations
of humankind may develop an eye
which can see ahead when the body
is lying prone, as a bird lies in its
Bight. Cayley had remedied this de
ficiency with a little silver mirror,
slightly concave, screwed fast to the
crossbrace which supported bis shoul
ders. Instead of bending back his
head, or trying to see out through his
eyebrows, he simply cast a backward
glance into tys mirror whenever he
wanted to look on ahead. It had been
a little perplexing at first, but he
could see better in it now than with
his unaided eyes.
And now, a minute or two, perhaps,
after that fulmar had gone squawking
away, he glanced down into his mir
row, and his olympian calm was
shaken with the shock of surprise.
For what he saw, clearly reflected in
his little reducing glass, was land.
•There was a mountain, and a long
dark line that must be a clifflike
coast.
: And It was land that never had
been marked on any chart. In abso
lute degrees of latitude he was not,
from the arctic explorer’s view, very
far north. Over on the other side of
the world they run excursion steam
ers every summer nearer to the pole
than he was at this moment Spits-
bergen, which has had a permanent
population of 15,000 souls, lies 300
miles farther north than this un
charted coast which Philip Cayley saw
• before him.
1 But the great ice cap which covers
the top of the world is irregular in
• shape, and just here, northwmrd from
Alaska, it juts its Impenetrable bar
rier far down into the Arctic sea.
Rogers, Collinson and the 111-fated De-
Long —they all had tried to penetrate
this barrier, and had been turned
back.
Cayley wheeled sharply up into the
wind, and soared aloft to a height of,
' perhaps, a quarter of a mile. Then,
with a long, flashing, shimmering
sweep, he descended, in the arc of a
great circle, and hung, poised, over
the land itself and behind the jutting
1 shoulder of the mountain.
The land was a narrow-necked pe
ninsula. Mountain and cliff prevented
him from seeing the immediate coast
on the other side of it; but out a 1.-ttle
way to sea he was amazed to discover
open water, and the smoke-like vapor
that he saw rising over the cliffhead
made it evident that the opening ex
tended nearly, if not quite, to the
very land’s edge. It was utterly un
expected, for the side of the penin
sula which he had approached was
ice-locked for miles.
He would have towered again
above the rocky ridge which shut off
his view, and gone to investigate this
phenomenon at closer range, had
he not, just then, got the shock of an
other surprise, greater than the dis
covery of land itself.
The little valley which he hung
poised above was sheltered by a second
ridge of rocky, ice-capped hills to the
north, and, except for streaks, denot
ing crevices, here and there, was quite
free from ice and snow. There were
bright patches of green upon it, ev
idently some bit of flowering northern
grass, and it was flecked here and
there with bright bits of color, yellow
poppy, he judged it to be, and saxi
frage. Hugging the base of the moun
tain on the opposite side of the valley,
then notching the cliff and grinding
down to sea at the other side of it
was a great w’hite glacier, all the
whiter, and colder, and more dazzling
for its contrast with the brown moun
tain-side and the green-clad valley.
Up above the glacier, on the farth
er side, were great broad yellow
patches, which he would have thought
were poppy field, but for the impos
sibility of their growing in such a
place. No vegetable growth was pos
sible, he would have thought, against
that clean-cut, almost vertical, rocky
face. And yet, what else could have
given it that blazing yellow color?
Some day he was to learn the answer
to that question.
But the thing that caught his eye
now, that made him start and draw in
a little involuntary gasp of wonder,
was the sight of a little clump ot
black dots moving slowly, almost im
perceptibly from this distance, across
the face of the glacier. He blinked his
eyes, as if he suspected them of play
ing him false. Unless they had played
him false, these tiny dots were men.
All of the party, but one man, were
dressed exactly alike, in hooded bear
skin shirts and breeches, and boots
of what he guessed was walrus hide.
They moved along with the peculiar
wary shuffle of men accustomed, by
long habit, to the footing and to the
heavy confining garb thay wore. So
far as he could see they were un
armed.
The other man was strikingly dif
ferent He appeared to be clad much
as Cayley was himself, in leather,
rather than in untanned hide. He
seemed slighter, sprightller, and in
every way to convey the Impression
of having come more recently from
the civilized, habitable portion of the
world than his companions. He car
ried a rifle slung by a strap over his
shoulder, evidently foreseeing no im
mediate use for It, and a flask.
Cayley was too far aloft for their
conversation to be audible to him, but
he could hear that they were talking.
The leather-clad man appeared to be
doing the most of It, and, from the
inflection of his voice, he seemed to
be speaking in English.
Presently he noticed that the leath
er-clad man had forged a little ahead
of his companions, or, rather —like a
flash, this idea occurred to Cayley—
that the others were purposely lag
ging a little behind.
And then, before that sinister idea
could formulate itself into a definite
suspicion, his eyes widened with
amazement, and the cry lie would
have uttered died in his throat; for
this man, who hail so innocently al
lowed the others to fall behind him,
suddenly staggered, clutched at some
thing—it looked like a thin ivory dart
—that had transfixed his throat,
tugged It out in a sudden flood of
crimson, reeled a little and then went
backwards over the glassy edge of a
fissure in the ice, which lay just to
the left of the path where he had
been walking.
From the instant when Cayley had
noticed the others dropping behind, to
the last glimpse he had of the body
of the murdered man could hardly
have been five seconds.
The instant the murdered man dis
appeared, another, who had not previ
ously been with Kie party, it seemed,
appeared from behind a hummock of
ice. There could be no doubt either
that he was the assassin, or that he
was the commander of the little group
of skin-clad figures that remained.
The ambush appeared to have been
perfectly deliberate. There had been
no outcry, not even a gesture of sur
prise or of remonstrance.
Cayley looked at the assassin curi
ously. He was dressed exactly like
the others, but seemed very much
bigger; seemed to walk with less of
a slouch, and had, even to Cayley's
limited view of him. an air of authori
ty. Cayley was surprised at his not
being armed with a bow, for he knew
of no other way in which a dart could
have been propelled with power
enough, even at close range, to have
transfixed a man's throat. The assas
sin’s only weapon, except for a quiver
ful of extra darts, seemed to be a
short blunt stick, rudely whittled,
perhaps ten inches long.
Obedient, apparently, to the order
of the new arrival, the party changed
its direction, leaving what was evi
dently a well-known path to them, for
a seemingly more direct but rougher
route. And they moved now with an
appearance of haste. Presently they
scrambled over a precipitous ledge of
ice and, in a moment, were lost to
Cayley’s view.
The world was suddenly empty
again, as if no living foot had ever
trodden it; and Cayley, hovering
there, a little above the level of the
ice, rubbed his eyes and wondered
whether the singular, silent tragedy
he had just witnessed were real, or a
trick the mysterious arctic light had
played upon his tired eyes. But there
remained upon that vacant scene two
material reminders of the tragedy to
which it had afforded a setting. One
was smudge of crimson on the snow;
the other, a little distance off, just
this side of the icy ridge over which
the last of the party had gone scram
bling a moment before, was the
strange looking blunt stick which he
had seen in the assassin’s hand.
Cayley flew a little lower, his wings
almost skimming the ice. Finally,
reaching the spot where the thing had
fallen, he alighted and picked it up.
Whether its possessor had valued it,
or not, whether or not he might be
expected to return for it, Cayley did
not know, and did not much care.
He stood for some time turning the
thing over in his hands, puzzling over
it, trying to make out how it could
have been used as the instrument of
propulsion to that deadly ivory dart
There was a groove on one side of it,
with a small ivory plug at the end.
The other end was curiously shaped,
misshapen, rather, for, though it was
obviously the end one held, Cayley
could not make it fit his hand, what
ever position he held it in.
Giving up the problem at fast, he
tucked the stick into his belt, slipped
his arm through the strap in the
frame-work of his aeroplane and pre
pared for flight. He had a little diffi
culty getting up, owing to the absence
of a breeze at this point. Finally he
was obliged to climb, with a good deal
of labor, the icy ridge up which he
had w’atched the little party of mur
derers scrambling.
At the crest he cast a glance
around, looking for them, but saw no
sign* of them. Then, getting a favor
able slant of the wind, he mounted
again into the element he now called
his own.
Five years before Philip Cayley
would have passed for a good exam
ple of that type of clean-limbed, clean
minded, likable young sun which the
; best of our civilization seems to be
flowering into. Physically,. it would
have been hard to suggest an improve
ment In him, he approached so near
the ideal standards. He was fine
grained, supple, slender, small-jointed,
thorough-bred from head to heel.
Intellectually, he had been good
enough to go through the academy at
West Point with credit, and to grad
uate high enough in his class to be
assigned to service in the cavalry. His
standards of conduct, his ideas of hon
or and morality had been about the
same as those of the best third of his
classmates. If his fellow officers in
the Philippines, during the year or
two he spent in the service, had been
asked to pick a flaw in him, which
they would have been reluctant to do,
they would have said that he seemed
to them a bit too thin-skinned and
rather fastidious; that was what his
chum and only intimate friend, Perry
Hunter, said about him at any rate.
But he could afford to be fastidi
ous, for he had about all a man could
want, one would think. For three
generations they had taken wealth
for granted in the Cayley family, and
with it had come breeding, security
of social position, simplicity and ease
in making friends, both among men
and women. In short, there could be
no doubt at all that up to his twenty
ninth year Fate had been ironically
kind to Philip Cayley. She had given
him no hint, no preparation for the
stunning blow that was to fall upon
him. suddenly, out of so clear a sky.
When it did fall, it cut his life
clean across; so that when he thought
back to that time now, it seemed to
him that the Lieutenant Cayley of the
United States army had died over
there in the Philippines, and that he,
the man who was now soaring in those
great circles through the arctic sky,
was a chance inheritor of his name
and of his memory.
He had set out one day at the head
of a small scouting party, the best
liked man in the regiment, secure in
the respect, in the almost fatherly re
gard, of his colonel, proudly conscious
of the almost idolatrous admiration
of his men and the younger officers.
He had gone out believing that no
one ever had a truer friend than he
possessed in Perry Hunter, his class
mate at West Point, his fellow officer
in the regiment, the confidant of all
his hopes and ideals.
He had come back, after a fort
night's absence, to find his name
smeared with disgrace, himself judged
and condemned, unheard, in the opin
ion of the mess. And that was not
the worst of it. The same blow which
bad deprived him of the regard of the
only people in the world who matter
ed to him, destroyed, also, root and
branch, his affection for the one man
of whom he had made an intimate.
The only feeling that it would be pos
sible for him to entertain for Perry
Hunter again must be a half-pitying,
half-incredulous contempt. And if
that was his feeling for the man he
had trusted most and loved the most
deeply, what must be it for the rest of
humankind? What did it matter What
they thought of him or what they did
to him? All he wanted of human so
ciety was to escape from it.
He fell to wondering, as he hung,
suspended, over that rosy expanse of
fleecy fog, whether, were the thing to
do over again, he would act as he had
acted five years ago; whether he
would content himself with a single
disdainful denial of the monstrous
thing they charged him with, whether
he would resign again, under fire, and
go away, leaving his tarnished name
for the daws to peck at.
Heretofore he had always answered
that question with a fierce affirma
tive. Today it left him wondering.
Had he stayed, had he paid the price
that would have been necessary to
clear himself, he would never have
found his wings, so much was clear.
He would never have spent those
four years in the wilderness, working,
experimenting, taking his life in his
hands, day after day, while he master
ed the art that no man had ever mas
tered before.
He had set himself this task because
it was the only one he knew that did
not involve contact with his fellow
beings. He must have something that
he could work at alone. Work and
solitude were tw’o things that he had
felt an overmastering craving for. And
the possibility he had faced with a
light heart every morning—the possi
bility of a sudden and violent death
before night, had been no more to
him than an agreeable spice to the
day’s work.
It was not until he had actually
learned to fly, had literally shaken the
dust of the earth from his' feet and
taken to the sky as his abode, that his
wound had healed. The three months
that he had spent in this upper arctic
air, a-wing for 16 hours out of 24, had
calmed him, put his nerves in tuns
again; given him for men and their
affairs a quiet Indifference, in place
of the smarting contempt he had been
hugging to his breast before. Three
months ago, at sight of those little
human dots crossing the glacier, he
would have wheeled aloft and gone
sailing away. Even a month ago he
would hardly have hung, soaring
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He Heard a Little Surprised Cry.
there, above the fog, waiting for it to
lift again the veil of mystery which
it had drawn across the tragic scene
he had just witnessed.
The month was August, and the
long arctic day had already begun to
know its diurnal twilight. A fort
night ago the sun had dipped, for the
first time, below the horizon. By now
there were four or five hours, out of
every 25, that would pass for night.
The sun set while he hung there in
the air, and as it did so, with a new
slant of the breeze the fog rolled itself
up Into a great violet-colored cloud,
leaving the earth, the ice, the sea un
veiled below him. And there, in the
open water of the little bay, he saw a
ship, and on the shore a cluster of
rude, huts.
It struck him, even from the height
at which he soared, that the ship, tied
to an Ice-floe in the shelter of the
great headland, did not look like a
whaler, nor like the sort of craft
which an arctie explorer would have
selected for his purposes. It had more
the trim smartness of a yacht.
They were probably all asleep down
there, he reflected. It was nearly mid
night and he saw no signs of life any
where. He would drop down for a
nearer look.
He descended, with a sudden hawk
like pounce, which was one of his
more recent achievements in the navi
gation of the air, checked himself
again at about the level of the mast
head, with a flashing, forward swoop,
like a man diving in shallow water;
tfien, with a sudden effort, brought
himself up standing, his planes nearly
vertical, and, with a backward spring,
alighted, clear of his wings, on the ice
floe just opposite the ship.
As he did so, he heard a little sur
prised cry, half of fear, half of aston
ishment. It was a girl’s voice.
CHAPTER 11.
The Girl on the Ice Floe.
She stood there on the floe confront
ing him, not ten feet away, and at
sight of her Philip Cayley’s eyes
widened. “What in the w'orld!” he
gasped. Then stared at her speech
less.
She was clad, down to the knees, in
sealskin, and below its edge he could
see the tops of her small fur-trimmed
boots. Upon her head she wore a
little turban-like cap of seal. The
smartly tailored lines of the coat em
phasized her young slenderness. Her
bootmaker must have had a reputa
tion upon some metropolitan boule
vard, and her head-gear came clearly
under the category of what is known
as modes. Her eyes were very blue
and her hair was golden, warmed, he
thought, as she stood there in the
orange twilight, with a glint of red.
Cayley gasped again, as he took in
the details of this vision. Then col
lected himself. “I beg your pardon,”
he stammered. “I don’t mean to be
rudely inquisitive, but what, in the
world, is a person like you doing in
this part of it —that Is, if you are real
at all? This Is latitude 76, and no
cartographer who ever lived has put
that coast-line yonder into his maps.
Yet here, in this nameless bay, I find
a yacht, and on this ice floe, In the
twilight,, you.”
She shook her head a little impa
tiently, and blinked her eyes, as If to
clear them of a Vision. “Os course,”
she said, “I know I’ve fallen asleep
and this is a dream of mine, but even
for a . dream, aren't you a little un
reasonable? Yachts are a natural
mode ot conveyance across the ocean.
You find them in many bays—some
times in nameless ones —and they al
ways have people on them. But you
—you come wheeling down, out of a
night sky. like some great nocturnal
bird, and alight here on the floe be
side me. And then you change your-
self into a man and look at me in sur
prise, and ask me, in English, what
in the world I am doing here —I had
the yacht; and ask me if I’m real.”
i There was a moment of silence aft
। er that. Unconsciously they drew a
■ little nearer together. Then Cayley
spoke. “I’m real, at any rate,” he
said; “at least I’m a tax payer, and >
' weigh 160 pounds, and I have a name
and address. It’s Philip Cayley, if
that will make me seem more natural,
and my headquarters this summer are
' over on Point Barrow.”
"I’m not dreaming, then?” she asked
dubiously.
“No,” he said; "if either of us is
dreaming, it’s not you. May I furl up
my wings and talk to you for awhile?”
Her eyes were on the broad-spread,
shimmering planes which lay on the
ice behind him. She seemed hardly
to have heard his question, though
she answered it with an almost voice
less "yes.” Then she approached,
half fearfully, the thing he called his
“wings.”
“It is made of quite commonplace
materials,” he said with a smile—
“split bamboo and carbon and catgut
and a fabric of bladders, cemented
with fish glue. And folding It up is
rather an ungainly job. The birds still
have the advantage of me there. In
a strong wind It’s not very easy to do
without damaging something. Would
you mind slipping that joint for me —
that one right by your hand? It’s just
like a fishing rod.”
She did as he asked, and her smile
convinced him that she had at least
half-guessed his purpose in asking the
service of her. The next moment her
words confirmed it.
“You wanted me to make sure, I
suppose, that it would not turn into a
great roc when I touched it and fly
away w’lth me to the Valley of Dia
monds.” She patted the furled wing
gently with both hands. "I suppose,”
she continued, “one could dream as
vividly as this, although I never have
—unless, of course, this is a dream.
But —” and now she held out her hand
to him, “but I hope lam awake. And
my name is Jeanne Fielding.”
He had the hand in his, and noticed
how live and strong and warm it was,
before she pronounced her name. At
the sound of it, he glanced at her curi
ously; but all he said just then was,
"Thank you,” and busied himself im
mediately with completing the process
of furling his wings.
When he had finished, he tossed the
sheep-skin down in a little hollow in
the floe, and with a gesture invited
her to be seated.
“Oh, I’ve a great pile of bear skins
out here,” she said, “quite a ridiculous
pile of them, considering it is not a
cold night; and we can make our
selves comfortable here, or go aboard
the yacht. Just as you please."
They were seated side by side In
the little nest she had made for her
self, before be reverted to the idea
which had sprung up in his mind
upon hearing her name. “There was
a ‘Captain Fielding* once,” he said
slowly, “who set out from San Fran
cisco half a dozen years ago, in the
hope of discovering the pole by the
way of Behring strait. His ship was
never seen again, nor was any word
received from him. Finding you here
and hearing your name, I wondered—”
“Yes,” she said gravely, “he was my
father. We got news of him last win
ter, if you could call it news, for it
was four years old before it reached
us. A whaler in the arctic fleet
picked up a floating bottle with a mes
sage from him telling where he was.
So we have come here to find him—
at least to find where he died, for I
suppose there is no hope—never so
much as a grain of hope of anything
better.”
(TO BE CONTINUEJUJ
