Of Landon himself, though, I had heard nothing after his leaving Halifax, and now I was amazed at his changed appearance as he sat opposite me. He must have guessed my thoughts.
“You think I’ve changed, Morris?” he asked. “Don’t deny it, man—I know that I have. I know what’s stamped on my face.”
“Travis and Skeel—” I began awkwardly.
“Travis and Skeel are dead and they’re lucky,” he said somberly. “It’s not their death that has changed me, though they were the best pals a man ever had. It’s the way they died.
“There were three of us who went up there,” he said, gazing darkly past me. “And the third still lives. I wonder for how long?”
“Landon, you’ve brooded too much,” I told him. “I can understand what an appalling experience that polar quake must have been to go through, but—”
“You can’t understand!” he lashed out. “No one can! Morris, you saw me panic-stricken a little while ago when that tremor shook the city. Did it surprise you?”
“Frankly, it did,” I said slowly. “But I can understand how that first quake would have unnerved you—and the ones you’ve chanced to be in since.”
“It wasn’t chance that I was in them,” he said astonishingly, and then leaned to clutch my arm. “Morris, can you conceive of such a thing as earthquakes following one person across the face of this earth, seeking him out no matter where he may go, riving the earth and razing cities and killing tens of thousands, to kill that one fugitive? Earthquakes that deliberately pursue one fleeing man with deadly purpose?”
“Earthquakes following a man?” I repeated. “Why, the idea’s mad! You surely don’t think because you have been by coincidence in all these quakes of the last two years—”
“I don’t think,” he said, “I know. I know that the quakes you speak of have pursued me across earth in the last two years with deadly purpose! Even today, two hours after I landed in this city, they have shown me that they are still after me!”
“Landon, you can’t believe this!” I expostulated. “Be reasonable, man—an earthquake is simply a movement of the earth’s mass. How could such movements follow you deliberately?”
“I know how,” he said, his eyes strange. “Travis and Skeel knew, too, before they died. But I know and I still live, if only for a time.
“And I am going to tell you the thing, Morris. I know before the telling that you will find it impossible to believe, just as I would have two years ago. But in your unbelief remember this—that of all things in the universe the one we men know least really of is this earth we live upon.
“It has been over two years since Travis and Skeel and I started north on that trip of ours. We left St. John’s in a sturdy Canadian schooner built for arctic work, with a Canadian crew. The ship was to take us as far as northern Grant Land, and from there we three were going to work north ourselves on the last lap. Our objective was a great ice-mountain, its rock visible through openings in its icy sides, that was supposed to exist in the polar region some three hundred miles or more this side of the pole.
“We had heard of this polar mountain from several sources. It had been a matter of minor dispute between two different aeroplane expeditions that had flown over the pole. One claimed to have sighted the big ice-clad peak and the other claimed that it didn’t exist. Travis and Skeel and I were going north to see if it did exist.
“If you know anything at all of geology you will know what such a polar mountain—a mountain in that icy desolation at the earth’s top—would mean to geologists. It would prove beyond doubt the existence of a polar continent beneath the ice and might throw a flood of light on things that have puzzled geological science. The three of us were afire to find out if such a peak did exist in the north polar region.
“The north pole, you know, like the south one, is more a region than a point. The earth is oblate, flattened at top and bottom, and that flat region around the northern pole is in fact the top or forefront of earth. In that great icy expanse the mountain was supposed to exist, and Travis and Skeel and I were bent on finding it. So we sailed north from St. John’s with our schooner loaded with equipment.
“The schooner crept northward for two months through icy channels toward the northern tip of Grant Land. Travis and Skeel and I were busy making ready our equipment. At North Devon we picked up two Eskimos who were to make the final trip with us, two sturdy fellows named Noskat and Shan. Our sledges and dogs were ready, and when the ship reached the icy coast of Grant Land we were ready to start north on the final lap as soon as the freeze came.
“It came soon, and we started. Travis and Skeel and I, and Noskat and Shan, with the two sledges and dogs, headed north over the frozen wastes. We carried felt tents, special chemical fuel of small bulk and weight, food and instruments, and an automatic apiece. Travis and Skeel and Noskat took the lead-sledge, Shan and I the other.
“For ten days we pushed north over endless ice-fields, making thirty miles a day. Ten days—three hundred miles—it doesn’t sound so much, does it? Well, it was a cross-section of icy hell. Can you imagine a world in which all has turned to glittering ice that stretches to the horizon in eye-aching whiteness? A world in which the sickly polar day never ceases to shine? A world in which the polar cold closes down upon you like a hand, gripping through your numbed flesh to your bones?
“That was the kind of world we were moving through. Ten days—and they each seemed weeks long. We would wake, would eat half-warmed food and limber our stiffened muscles, then fold the tent and harness the dogs. And then north again, north over the ice desert’s hummocks and ridges like pigmies traversing that vast white expanse. North, until on the tenth day we sighted the mountain.
“At first we could not believe our eyes. We had been pushing onward so mechanically that in the sheer struggle we had almost forgotten our mission. Then as our eyes took in that huge peak towering into the steely sky far ahead, ice-sheathed and with the dark openings in its sides, our exclamations came with a rush.
“We pushed on, little heeding difficulties then. In another day we were at the mountain’s foot, a thousand feet below the lowest of the dark openings in its icy bulk.
“We camped there that night, exultant at reaching our goal. And there trouble began. The dogs had been whining strangely as we approached the mountain, needing the lash to make them go forward at all, and our two Eskimos had been muttering to themselves. Then no sooner had we pitched camp than there came a slight earth-tremor, a shock as of earth stirring underneath that made our tent quiver and the ice-fields round it crackle.
“To us it was somewhat surprising to encounter an earth-tremor in this region, but that was all. But on Noskat and Shan, the two Eskimos, the tremor’s effects were tremendous. Their swart faces grew positively livid with fear, they jabbered in their tongue for minutes, looking fearfully up toward the mountain’s huge icy bulk, and then approached us in panic. By then the dogs had begun yelping strangely as though in terror.
“‘We cannot stay here!’ Noskat told us excitedly. ‘This is the forbidden mountain at the earth’s top—shunned by all our race! We knew not that this was your goal!’
“‘Forbidden mountain?’ repeated Travis. ‘Forbidden by whom?’