The Purple Cloud

by M. P. Shiel

the tummy off and on.'

  'A quarter-grain, then, Clodagh, 'I said.

  As she opened the syringe-box, she remarked with a pout:

  'Our patient has been naughty! He has taken some more atropine.'

  I became angry at once.

  'Peters,' I cried, 'you know you have no right to be doing things likethat without consulting me! Do that once more, and I swear I havenothing further to do with you!'

  'Rubbish,' said Peters: 'why all this unnecessary heat? It was a mereflea-bite. I felt that I needed it.'

  'He injected it with his own hand...' remarked Clodagh.

  She was now standing at the mantel-piece, having lifted the syringe-boxfrom the night-table, taken from its velvet lining both the syringe andthe vial containing the morphia tablets, and gone to the mantel-piece tomelt one of the tablets in a little of the distilled water there. Herback was turned upon us, and she was a long time. I was standing; Petersin his arm-chair, smoking. Clodagh then began to talk about a CharityBazaar which she had visited that afternoon.

  She was long, she was long. The crazy thought passed through some dimregion of my soul: 'Why is she so _long_?'

  'Ah, that was a pain!' went Peters: 'never mind the bazaar, aunt--thinkof the morphia.'

  Suddenly an irresistible impulse seized me--to rush upon her, to dashsyringe, tabloids, glass, and all, from her hands. I _must_ have obeyedit--I was on the tip-top point of obeying--my body already leant prone:but at that instant a voice at the opened door behind me said:

  'Well, how is everything?'

  It was Wilson, the electrician, who stood there. With lightningswiftness I remembered an under-look of mistrust which I had once seenon his face. Oh, well, I would not, and could not!--she was my love--Istood like marble...

  Clodagh went to meet Wilson with frank right hand, in the left being thefragile glass containing the injection. My eyes were fastened on herface: it was full of reassurance, of free innocence. I said to myself:'I must surely be mad!'

  An ordinary chat began, while Clodagh turned up Peters' sleeve, and,kneeling there, injected his fore-arm. As she rose, laughing atsomething said by Wilson, the drug-glass dropped from her hand, and herheel, by an apparent accident, trod on it. She put the syringe among anumber of others on the mantel-piece.

  'Your friend has been naughty, Mr. Wilson,' she said again with thatsame pout: 'he has been taking more atropine.'

  'Not really?' said Wilson.

  'Let me alone, the whole of you,' answered Peters: 'I ain't a child.'

  These were the last intelligible words he ever spoke. He died shortlybefore 1 A.M. He had been poisoned by a powerful dose of atropine.

  From that moment to the moment when the _Boreal_ bore me down theThames, all the world was a mere tumbling nightmare to me, of whichhardly any detail remains in my memory. Only I remember the inquest, andhow I was called upon to prove that Peters had himself injected himselfwith atropine. This was corroborated by Wilson, and by Clodagh: and theverdict was in accordance.

  And in all that chaotic hurry of preparation, three other things only,but those with clear distinctness now, I remember.

  The first--and chief--is that tempest of words which I heard atKensington from that big-mouthed Mackay on the Sunday night. What was itthat led me, busy as I was, to that chapel that night? Well, perhaps Iknow.

  There I sat, and heard him: and most strangely have those words of hisperoration planted themselves in my brain, when, rising to a passion ofprophecy, he shouted: 'And as in the one case, transgression wasfollowed by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, I warnthe entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but alowering sky, and thundery weather.'

  And this second thing I remember: that on reaching home, I walked intomy disordered library (for I had had to hunt out some books), where Imet my housekeeper in the act of rearranging things. She had apparentlylifted an old Bible by the front cover to fling it on the table, for asI threw myself into a chair my eye fell upon the open print near thebeginning. The print was very large, and a shaded lamp cast a light uponit. I had been hearing Mackay's wild comparison of the Pole with thetree of Eden, and that no doubt was the reason why such a startconvulsed me: for my listless eyes had chanced to rest upon some words.

  'The woman gave me of the tree, and I did eat....'

  And a third thing I remember in all that turmoil of doubt and flurry:that as the ship moved down with the afternoon tide a telegram was putinto my hand; it was a last word from Clodagh; and she said only this:

  'Be first--for Me.'

  * * * * *

  The _Boreal_ left St. Katherine's Docks in beautiful weather on theafternoon of the 19th June, full of good hope, bound for the Pole.

  All about the docks was one region of heads stretched far in innumerablevagueness, and down the river to Woolwich a continuous dull roar andmurmur of bees droned from both banks to cheer our departure.

  The expedition was partly a national affair, subvented by Government:and if ever ship was well-found it was the _Boreal_. She had a frametougher far than any battle-ship's, capable of ramming some ten yards ofdrift-ice; and she was stuffed with sufficient pemmican, codroe,fish-meal, and so on, to last us not less than six years.

  We were seventeen, all told, the five Heads (so to speak) of theundertaking being Clark (our Chief), John Mew (commander), AubreyMaitland (meteorologist), Wilson (electrician), and myself (doctor,botanist, and assistant meteorologist).

  The idea was to get as far east as the 100 deg., or the 120 deg., of longitude;to catch there the northern current; to push and drift our waynorthward; and when the ship could no further penetrate, to leave her(either three, or else four, of us, on ski), and with sledges drawn bydogs and reindeer make a dash for the Pole.

  This had also been the plan of the last expedition--that of the_Nix_--and of several others. The _Boreal_ only differed from the _Nix_,and others, in that she was a thing of nicer design, and of moreexquisite forethought.

  Our voyage was without incident up to the end of July, when weencountered a drift of ice-floes. On the 1st August we were at Kabarova,where we met our coal-ship, and took in a little coal for emergency,liquid air being our proper motor; also forty-three dogs, four reindeer,and a quantity of reindeer-moss; and two days later we turned our bowsfinally northward and eastward, passing through heavy 'slack' ice undersail and liquid air in crisp weather, till, on the 27th August, we laymoored to a floe off the desolate island of Taimur.

  The first thing which we saw here was a bear on the shore, watching foryoung white-fish: and promptly Clark, Mew, and Lamburn (engineer) wenton shore in the launch, I and Maitland following in the pram, each partywith three dogs.

  It was while climbing away inland that Maitland said to me:

  'When Clark leaves the ship for the dash to the Pole, it is three, nottwo, of us, after all, that he is going to take with him, making a partyof four.'

  _I_: 'Is that so? Who knows?'

  _Maitland_: 'Wilson does. Clark has let it out in conversation withWilson.'

  _I_: 'Well, the more the merrier. Who will be the three?'

  _Maitland_: 'Wilson is sure to be in it, and there may be Mew, makingthe third. As to the fourth, I suppose _I_ shall get left out in thecold.'

  _I_: 'More likely I.'

  _Maitland_: 'Well, the race is between us four: Wilson, Mew, you and I.It is a question of physical fitness combined with special knowledge.You are too lucky a dog to get left out, Jeffson.'

  _I_: 'Well, what does it matter, so long as the expedition as a whole issuccessful? That is the main thing.'

  _Maitland_: 'Oh yes, that's all very fine talk, Jeffson! But is it quitesincere? Isn't it rather a pose to affect to despise $175,000,000? _I_want to be in at the death, and I mean to be, if I can. We are all moreor less self-interested.'

  'Look,' I whispered--'a bear.'

  It was a mother and cub: and with determined trudge she came wagging herlow head, having no doubt smelled
the dogs. We separated on theinstant, doubling different ways behind ice-boulders, wanting her to goon nearer the shore, before killing; but, passing close, she spied, andbore down at a trot upon me. I fired into her neck, and at once, with aroar, she turned tail, making now straight in Maitland's direction. Isaw him run out from cover some hundred yards away, aiming his long-gun:but no report followed: and in half a minute he was under her fore-paws,she striking out slaps at the barking, shrinking dogs. Maitland roaredfor my help: and at that moment, I, poor wretch, in far worse plightthan he, stood shivering in ague: for suddenly one of those wrangles ofthe voices of my destiny was filling my bosom with loud commotion, oneurging me to fly to Maitland's aid, one passionately commanding me bestill. But it lasted, I believe, some seconds only: I ran and got a shotinto the bear's brain, and Maitland