Viewing page 37 of 49

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

70 ABBOTT'S MONTHLY

The Needle's Point
(Continued from page 41)

breath. She drew here tall slender body between Vigil and the side of the house, came up to John and stood vibrant from head to foot looking down at him with restless eyes.

"Hello, Peacie," he said.

Vigil got up slowly, like some giant animal after a long nap. Oscie held his breath. She turned around on the narrow step and faced them.

"I see you got your ear-rings of'en the shelf," Vigil said.

"Them's my heart." Peacie laughed. The glass balls, pendant from a thin chain attached to her ears, made a tinkling music.

Vigil started down the steps. Half way down she called back: "Glad you didn't buy no snow." And there was scorn, knife-edged, in her voice.

"Go to hell," Peacie said. Then she brushed by John into the room.

THE hardest part, the meeting, was over. For ten minutes John sat on the sill, looking over the dark river. He pulled the flat air into his lungs in great nosefuls and let it out slowly, bit by bit, until his heart pounded. Under his resting arms his knees trembled. He could feel the sweat drop from the pits of his arms to his ribs. When he went in he found her lying supine on the bed. Her eyes were on him as soon as his shadow crossed the sill. Pretending to himself that she was asleep, he moved cautiously between the stove and the closet putting away the cans and the tub. When he had finished a feeling of exhaustion came on him.

Out of the darkness Peacie asked: "What you been doing all this time since I been gone?"

He stopped in the middle of the floor, the weight of his averted head stooping his shoulders. 

"You ain't been gone so long," he protested mildly.

Peacie laughed shortly. "I ain't talkin' 'bout that," she said. She closed her eyes. He could see the light of them go out. Now her body was a blub of shadow on the bed.

"Six months ain't long," she said derisively. "Oh, no, six months ain't long." Suddenly her voice became higher, more strident. "Six months is too damn long for a woman like me."

He had nothing to say to that. He could only look at her hopelessly. He stood perfectly still and a silent misery pressed down on him, smothering, like a wet blanket. When he moved he realized that all his muscles were tight, aching.

"You all right now, ain't you, Peacie?"

"All right !" She laughed. Then as if she were suddenly tired, she said: "Oh, yeh. I'm all right. Six months would make anybody all right."

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and began unlacing her shoes. She looked up at him. "All right," she said again.

HE grabbed at her words for assurance. With a mad feverishness he slipped on his shirt and shoes, going over in his mind what to get for her to eat. The heat, forgotten for a time, renewed life in him. He remembered that he had not eaten.

"I'm goin'a git sum'en t' eat," he said.

"Oscie."

He stopped at the door and turned toward her. Her voice was subdued, intense, like the voice of one in great joy, or sorrow. John moved closer to her, drawn by the spell of her eyes.

"I'm cured this time, sure." She got up and went to him, her stockinged feet make soft sounds on the bare floor. "I ain't never goin' back there no more." She raised her head slowly and her lean face seemed all alight. "Never !" Then, loving, pitying, she drew his face down to hers and for an instant there was nothing, nothing.

"I'm goin'a git sum'en t' eat." He was gone, laughing happily, stumbling down the steps in made haste.

PEACIE threw herself back on the bed, feeling that kiss burn in her blood like a live thing. She laughed and it broke on a high note, falling like rain in the hot bare room. "I ain't never goin' back there no more," she thought. No more. No more. The kiss was burning out in her blood. She sighed:...Women in gray in a long bare room, bent over buzzing machines...glad you didn't buy no snow...nothing but the buzz of the machines, like a million steel-voiced bees...and a craving, such a craving !...work hard as hell and time'll go quicker...sewing straps on overalls...a million straps, a million women, a million machines, and endless time...didn't buy no snow...work, woman, work...no snow.....

NOW she was in a hurry. It seemed if she did not move, every muscle, every nerve of her would snap and jangle. In a pain of stillness, her muscles aching, she controlled herself, breathing like a blown dog. It was somehow good to exercise this control, a sort of paying up. Fighting haste, she lifted her skirt and took a hypodermic from under her garter. She peeled the thin sleeve of her dress back to her elbow and rubbed the little puckers, forcing herself to wait. Finally, slowly she plunged the needle deep into her arm and prolonged the pain of the wound. In an ecstasy of pain she pressed the pump. With elaborate care she replaced the needle under her garter, smoothed out her skirts and, feeling a heavy surge of slumber, settled her head in the crumpled pillow.

John found her there when he came back. As he crossed the sill he called to her: "Peacie," but there was no answer. For a moment he stood uncertainly, merging with the night. Then he heard her slow, quiet breathing and thought he would not wake her. When he had put the food on the cold stove, he got down his mandolin and sat bent over it by the window, like some overgrown hobgoblin, quietly picking note after note and humming through his thick nose:

"Rivah's wide, rivah's deep: It's Jordan."

Then smiling and patting his foot,

"Jordan, Jordan..."

SUDDENLY something that had been making a great noise stopped. He didn't know what it was. He got up, tense. With bulging eyes he tried to make out Peacie's

(Continued on page 72)

for JANUARY, 1931 71

He Stood on the Top of the World
(Continued from page 44)

He believed that he had struck the right method and that, given the proper support, financially and otherwise, the Pole could be reached, and the American flag could be the first to fly from that lonely spot.

MORRIS JESSUP, financier, came to Peary's rescue, and to the rescue of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, which had financed the previous expeditions, and, in 1908, the most thoroughly fitted expedition ever launched, turned its face toward the North and success.

In his specially constructed ship, Peary and his party sailed from Etah on the 18th of August, wintered at Grant's Land, a northernmost point reached by a sailing craft, where the party spent the winter. Early in March, 1909, the party, consisting of ten, four Eskimos and six Americans, started the long hike over the ice. They marched in sections, one in front of the other. As supplies ran short, one or another was sent back. Finally, at the end of a month, Captain Bartlett, the only white man left with Peary, was told to return to camp, leaving Peary, Henson and four Eskimos to continue the trip to the Pole.

"Captain Bartlett had reached 88 degrees when he was told to return to camp," Henson recalled, as he talked freely of this adventure of adventures. "It was the highest point ever attained by man. When he left, I told Commander Peary that it looks as if we are the men ordained to unlock the doors that have held the mysteries of the Arctic.

"He said, 'Yes, I only wish I were in condition as you.'"

Ever charitable, despite his bitter experiences with the cold of the North and the more bitter cold of his country toward him, Henson has never failed to glow with enthusiasm when approached about his trip North and about his commander. To him, Commander Peary deserved every honor he received. He is reticent, however, if approached about the slights that have been given him.

"We were five days on the way to the Pole," he said, in discussing the trip. "Bright and early on the morning of April 2, the Commander left the igloo at 85 degrees, 48 minutes, to set the pace. He was usually the first to leave camp for he had no sledge to drive; I was last in order to be sure that nothing was left behind. The Commander's trail was easy to follow, and I usually caught up with him in an hour or two, and then generally went ahead.

"My own start, on this day, was unpropitious, for I had been on the trail less than half an hour when I had a mishap that almost cost me my life. My dogs were going fast as we reached the foot of the ridge, and I noticed that my sledge sagged as it was going over the slush. The dogs stopped, and I walked around the sledge to see what was the trouble. As I took hold of the sledge, and began to lift, I suddenly began to sink, and, in a moment, was up to my hips in icy water. Grasping an ice-floe which had been drifting by me, and crawling up on my stomach, I struggled vigorously, and got out. My trousers, of course, froze instantly, and were as stiff as a board. The Eskimos helped me beat the ice out of my trousers with their 'kidlootoos,' but the chill of the plunge was with me for a long time."

Even such an experience as this failed to dampen the spirit of Matthew Henson. If he had any premonition of what awaited him at home, he did not allow it to interfere with his desire to be there at the finish; to him, a sacred undertaking had to be finished, or death would be the only answer to failure. And so the little party pushed on and on into the North.

On April 6, Commander Peary signalled that camp would be pitched. This indicated that the Pole had been reached. One might have thought such a climax to years and years of strenuous, hazardous effort would have called for a general rejoicing, but there are some things that reach too deep for outward emotion, and so, says Mr. Henson:

"The hoisting of the flag was not the occasion of any riotous outburst of feeling. The Commander merely said in English: 'We will plant the Stars and Stripes at the North Pole,' and the Stars and Stripes were planted. Speaking in the Eskimo language, I then proposed three cheers, and they were heartily given. The Eskimos showed their delight by jumping around and exclaiming: 'Ting neigh, tima ketisher !', which means 'We have reached here at last !' I suppose, if the truth were known, their rejoicing was not because we had reached the North Pole, but because we had arrived at the place from which we could start back.

"As I stood there at the top of the world and thought of the hundreds of men who had lost their lives in the effort to reach it, I felt profoundly grateful that I had been permitted the honor of representing my race in the historic achievement."

Last year Congress turned down another bill to grant a medal to Matthew Henson. The debate against it lasted long and the debators waxed eloquent. The sum of the arguments was that it is now too late to honor a man who hasn't been at the North Pole in 20 years ! Most of them forgot that, when the victorious expedition returned to New York, all the world paid homage to Admiral Peary, the discoverer of the North Pole, but the daily Press even forgot the name of Matthew Henson. To most of the reporters, he was "Peary's Negro servant."

"Ah, well, such is life," says Mr. Henson, as he sorts and files documents in the New York branch of the United States Customs Department. "Such is life."


Making Brotherhood a Reality
(Continued from page 67)

ray is the establishment of universal peace. The fourth ray is the investigation of reality. The fifth ray is the promulgation of universal fellowship. The sixth ray is the inculcation of divine love through the power of religion. The seventh ray is the conformity of religion with science and reason. The eighth ray is the abandonment of religious, racial, patriotic and political prejudices. The ninth ray is the universal spread of education. The tenth ray is the organization of the abritral court of justice,