by

John Martin Leahy

“In Amundsen’s Tent” by John Martin Leahy.

First published in Weird Tales, January 1928.

This ebook version 1.1

This text is in the public domain.

Cover © Murray Ewing 2019.

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Illustration by Hugh Rankin, from Weird Tales, January 1928.

In Amundsen’s Tent

“Inside the tent, in a little bag, I left a letter, addressed to H. M. the King, giving information of what he (sic) had accomplished... Besides this letter, I wrote a short epistle to Captain Scott, who, I assumed, would be the first to find the tent.”

— Captain Amundsen, The South Pole

“We have just arrived at this tent, 2 miles from our camp, therefore about 1 1/2 miles from the pole. In the tent we find a record of five Norwegians having been here, as follows:

’Roald Amundsen

Olav Olavson Bjaaland

Hilmer Hanssen

Sverre H. Hassel

Oscar Wisting

16 Dec. 1911.’

Left a note to say I had visited the tent with companions.”

— Captain Scott: his last journal

“Travellers,” says Richard A. Proctor, “are sometimes said to tell marvelous stories; but it is a noteworthy fact that, in nine cases out of ten, the marvelous stories of travelers have been confirmed.”

Certainly no traveler ever set down a more marvelous story than that of Robert Drumgold. This record I am at last giving to the world, with my humble apologies to the spirit of the hapless explorer for withholding it so long. But the truth is that Eastman, Dahlstrom and I thought it the work of a mind deranged; little wonder, forsooth, if his mind had given way, what with the fearful sufferings which he had gone through and the horror of that fate which was closing in upon him.

What was it, that thing (if thing it was) which came to him, the sole survivor of the party which had reached the Southern Pole, thrust itself into the tent and, issuing, left but the severed head of Drumgold there?

Our explanation at the time, and until recently, was that Drumgold had been set upon by his dogs and devoured. Why, though, the flesh had not been stripped from the head was to us an utter mystery. But that was only one of the many things that were utter mysteries.

But now we know—or feel certain—that this explanation was as far from the truth as that desolate, ice-mantled spot where he met his end is from the smiling, flower-spangled regions of the tropics.

Yes, we thought that the mind of poor Robert Drumgold had given way, that the horror in Amundsen’s tent and that thing which came to Drumgold there in his own—we thought all was madness only. Hence our suppression of this part of the Drumgold manuscript. We feared that the publication of so extraordinary a record might cast a cloud of doubt upon the real achievements of the Sutherland expedition.

But of late our ideas and beliefs have undergone a change that is nothing less than a metamorphosis. This metamorphosis, it is scarcely necessary to say, was due to the startling discoveries made in the region of the Southern Pole by the late Captain Stanley Livingstone, as confirmed and extended by the expedition conducted by Darwin Frontenac. Captain Livingstone, we now learn, kept his real discovery, what with the doubts and derision which met him on his return to the world, a secret from every living soul but two—Darwin Frontenac and Bond McQuestion. It is but now, on the return of Frontenac, that we learn how truly wonderful and amazing were those discoveries made by the ill-starred captain. And yet, despite the success of the Frontenac expedition, it must be admitted that the mystery down there in the Antarctic is enhanced rather than dissipated. Darwin Frontenac and his companions saw much; but we know that there are things and beings down there that they did not see. The Antarctic—or, rather, part of it—has thus suddenly become the most interesting and certainly the most fearful area on this globe of ours.

So another marvelous story told—or, rather, only partly told—by a traveler has been confirmed. And here are Eastman and I preparing to go once more to the Antarctic to confirm, as we hope, another story—one eery and fearful as any ever conceived by any romanticist.

And to think that it was ourselves, Eastman, Dahlstrom and I, who made the discovery! Yes, it was we who entered the tent, found there the head of Robert Drumgold and the pages whereon he had scrawled his story of mystery and horror. To think that we stood there, in the very spot where it had been, and thought the story but as the baseless fabric of some madman’s vision!

How vividly it all rises before me again—the white expanse, glaring, blinding in the untempered light of the Antarctic sun; the dogs straining in the harness, the cases on the sleds, long and black like coffins; our sudden halt as Eastman fetched up in his tracks, pointed and said, “Hello, what’s that?”

A half-mile or so off to the left, some object broke the blinding white of the plains.

“Nunatak, I suppose,” was my answer.

“Looks to me like a cairn or a tent,” Dahlstrom said.

“How on earth,” I queried, “could a tent have got down here in 87° 30' south? We are far from the route of either Amundsen or Scott.”

“H’m,” said Eastman, shoving his amber-colored glasses up onto his forehead that he might get a better look, “I wonder. Jupiter Ammon, Nels,” he added, glancing at Dahlstrom, “I believe that you are right.”

“It certainly,” Dahlstrom nodded, “looks like a cairn or a tent to me. I don’t think it’s a nunatak.”

“Well,” said I, “it would not be difficult to put it to the proof.”

“And that, my hearties,” exclaimed Eastman, “is just what we’ll do! We’ll soon see what it is—whether it is a cairn, a tent, or only a nunatak.”

The next moment we were in motion, heading straight for the mysterious object there in the midst of the eternal desolation of snow and ice.

“Look there!” Eastman, who was leading the way, suddenly shouted. “See that? It is a tent!”

A few moments, and I saw that it was indeed so. But who had pitched it there? What were we to find within it?

I could never describe those thoughts and feelings which were ours as we approached that spot. The snow lay piled about the tent to a depth of four feet or more. Near by, a splintered ski protruded from the surface—and that was all.

And the stillness! The air, at the moment, was without the slightest movement. No sounds but those made by our movements, and those of the dogs, and our own breathing, broke that awful silence of death.

“Poor devils!” said Eastman at last. “One thing, they certainly pitched their tent well.”

The tent was supported by a single pole, set in the middle. To this pole three guy-lines were fastened, one of them as taut as the day its stake had been driven into the surface. But this was not all: a half-dozen lines, or more, were attached to the sides of the tent. There it had stood for we knew not how long, bidding defiance to the fierce winds of that terrible region.

Dahlstrom and I each got a spade and began to remove the snow. The entrance we found unfastened but completely blocked by a couple of provision-cases (empty) and a piece of canvas. “How on earth,” I exclaimed “did those things get into that position?”

“The wind,” said Dahlstrom. “And, if the entrance had not been blocked, there wouldn’t have been any tent here now; the wind would have split and destroyed it long ago.”

“H’m,” mused Eastman. “The wind did it, Nels—blocked the place like that? I wonder.”

The next moment we had cleared the entrance. I thrust my head through the opening. Strangely enough, very little snow had drifted in. The tent was dark green, a circumstance which rendered the light within somewhat weird and ghastly—or perhaps my imagination contributed not a little to that effect.

“What do you see, Bill?” asked Eastman. “What’s inside?”

My answer was a cry, and the next instant I had sprung back from the entrance.

“What is it, Bill?” Eastman exclaimed. “Great heaven, what is it, man?”

“A head!” I told him.

“A head?”

“A human head!”

He and Dahlstrom stooped and peered in. “What is the meaning of this?”

Eastman cried. “A severed human head!”

Dahlstrom dashed a mittened hand across his eyes. “Are we dreaming?” he exclaimed.

“’Tis no dream, Nels,” returned our leader. “I wish to heaven it was. A head! A human head!”

“Is there nothing more?” I asked.

“Nothing. No body, not even stripped bone—only that severed head. Could the dogs——”

“Yes?” queried Dahlstrom.

“Could the dogs have done this?”

“Dogs!” Dahlstrom said. “This is not the work of dogs.”

We entered and stood looking down upon the grisly remnant of mortality.

“It wasn’t dogs,” said Dahlstrom.

“Not dogs?” Eastman queried. “What other explanation is there—except cannibalism?”

Cannibalism! A shudder went through my heart. I may as well say at once, however, that our discovery of a good supply of pemmican and biscuit on the sled, at that moment completely hidden by the snow, was to show us that that fearful explanation was not the true one. The dogs! That was it, that was the explanation—even though what the victim himself had set down told us a very different story. Yes, the explorer had been set upon by his dogs and devoured. But there were things that militated against that theory. Why had the animals left that head—in the frozen eyes (they were blue eyes) and upon the frozen features of which was a look of horror that sends a shudder through my very soul even now? Why, the head did not have even the mark of a single fang, though it appeared to have been chewed from the trunk. Dahlstrom, however, was of the opinion that it had been hacked off.

And there, in the man’s story, in the story of Robert Drumgold, we found another mystery—a mystery as insoluble (if it was true) as the presence here of his severed head. There the story was, scrawled in lead-pencil across the pages of his journal. But what were we to make of a record—the concluding pages of it, that is—so strange and so dreadful?

But enough of this, of what we thought and of what we wondered. The journal itself lies before me, and I now proceed to set down the story of Robert Drumgold in his own words. Not a word, not a comma shall be deleted, inserted or changed.

Let it begin with his entry for January the 3rd, at the end of which day the little party was only fifteen miles (geographical) from the Pole.

Here it is.

Jan. 3.—Lat. of our camp 89° 45' 10". Only fifteen miles more, and the Pole is ours—unless Amundsen or Scott has beaten us to it, or both. But it will be ours just the same, even though the glory of discovery is found to be another’s. What shall we find there?

All are in fine spirits. Even the dogs seem to know that this is the consummation of some great achievement. And a thing that is a mystery to us is the interest they have shown this day in the region before us. Did we halt, there they were gazing and gazing straight south and sometimes sniffing and sniffing. What does it mean?

Yes, in fine spirits all—dogs as well as we three men. Everything is auspicious. The weather for the last three days has been simply glorious. Not once, in this time, has the temperature been below minus 5. As I write this, the thermometer shows one degree above. The blue of the sky is like that of which painters dream, and, in that blue, tower cloud formations, violet-tinged in the shadows, that are beautiful beyond all description. If it were possible to forget the fact that nothing stands between ourselves and a horrible death save the meager supply of food on the sleds, one could think he was in some fairyland—a glorious fairyland of white and blue and violet.

A fairyland? Why has that thought so often occurred to me? Why have I so often likened this desolate, terrible region to fairyland? Terrible? Yes, to human beings it is terrible—frightful beyond all words. But, though so unutterably terrible to men, it may not be so in reality. After all, are all things, even of this earth of ours, to say nothing of the universe, made for man—this being (a god-like spirit in the body of a quasi-ape) who, let in the midst of wonders, leers and slavers in madness and hate and wallows in the muck of a thousand lusts? May there not be other beings—yes, even on this very earth, of ours—more wonderful—yes, and more terrible too—than he?

Heaven knows, more than once, in this desolation of snow and ice, I have seemed to feel their presence in the air about us—nameless entities, disembodied, watching things.

Little wonder, forsooth, that I have again and again thought of these strange words of one of America’s greatest scientists, Alexander Winchell:

“Nor is incorporated rational existence conditioned on warm blood nor on any temperature which does not change the forms of matter of which the organism may be composed. There may be intelligences corporealized after some concept not involving the processes of ingestion, assimilation and reproduction. Such bodies would not require daily food and warmth. They might be lost in the abysses of the ocean, or laid up on a stormy cliff through the tempests of an arctic winter, or plunged in a volcano for a hundred years, and yet retain consciousness and thought.”

All this Winchell tells us is conceivable, and he adds:

“Bodies are merely the load fitting of intelligence to particular modifications of universal matter and force.”

And these entities, nameless things whose presence I seem to feel at times—are they benignant beings or things more fearful than even the madness of the human brain ever has fashioned?

But, then, I must stop this. If Sutherland or Travers were to read what I have set down here, they would think that I was losing my senses or would declare me already insane. And yet, as there is a heaven above us, it seems that I do actually believe that this frightful place knows the presence of beings other than ourselves and our dogs—things which we cannot see but which are watching us.

Enough of this.

Only fifteen miles from the Pole. Now for a sleep and on to our goal in the morning. Morning! There is no morning here, but day unending. The sun now rides as high at midnight as it does at midday. Of course, there is a change in altitude, but it is so slight as to be imperceptible without an instrument.

But the Pole! Tomorrow the Pole! What will we find there? Only an unbroken expanse of white, or——

Jan. 4.—The mystery and horror of this day—oh, how could I ever set that down? Sometimes, so fearful were those hours through which we have just passed, I even find myself wondering if it wasn’t all only a dream. A dream! I would to heaven that it had been but a dream! As for the end—I must keep such thoughts out of my head.

Got under way at an early hour. Weather more wondrous than ever. Sky an azure that would have sent a painter into ecstasies. Cloud-formations indescribably beautiful and grand. The going, however, was pretty difficult. The place a great plain stretching away with a monotonous uniformity of surface as far as the eye could reach. A plain never trod by human foot before? At length, when our dead reckoning showed that we were drawing near to the Pole, we had the answer to that. Then it was that the keen eyes of Travers detected some object rising above the blinding white of the snow.

On the instant Sutherland had thrust his amber glasses up onto his forehead and had his binoculars to his eyes.

“Cairn!” he exclaimed, and his voice sounded hollow and very strange. “A cairn or a—tent. Boys, they have beaten us to the Pole!”

He handed the glasses to Travers and leaned, as though a sudden weariness had settled upon him, against the provision-cases on his sled. “Forestalled!” said he. “Forestalled!”

I felt very sorry for our brave leader in those, his moments of terrible disappointment, but for the life of me I did not know what to say. And so I said nothing.

At that moment a cloud concealed the sun, and the place where we stood was suddenly involved in a gloom that was deep and awful. So sudden and pronounced, indeed, was the change that we gazed about us with curious and wondering looks. Far off to the right and to the left, the plain blazed white and blinding. Soon, however, the last gleam of sunshine had vanished from off it. I raised my look up to the heavens. Here and there edges of cloud were touched as though with the light of wrathful golden fire. Even then, however, that light was fading. A few minutes, and the last angry gleam of the sun had vanished. The gloom seemed to deepen about us every moment. A curious haze was concealing the blue expanse of the sky overhead. There was not the slightest movement in the gloomy and weird atmosphere. The silence was heavy, awful, the silence of the abode of utter desolation and of death.

“What on earth are we in for now?” said Travers.

Sutherland moved from his sled and stood gazing about into the eerie gloom.

“Queer change, this!” said he. “It would have delighted the heart of Dorè.”

“It means a blizzard, most likely,” I observed. “Hadn’t we better make camp before it strikes us? No telling what a blizzard may be like in this awful spot.”

“Blizzard?” said Sutherland. “I don’t think it means a blizzard, Bob. No telling, though. Mighty queer change, certainly. And how different the place looks now, in this strange gloom! It is surely weird and terrible—that is, it certainly looks weird and terrible.”

He turned his look to Travers.

“Well, Bill,” he asked, “what did you make of it?”

He waved a hand in the direction of that mysterious object the sight of which had so suddenly brought us to a halt. I say in the direction of the object, for the thing itself was no longer to be seen.

“I believe it is a tent,” Travers told him.

“Well,” said our leader, “we can soon find out what it is—cairn or tent, for one or the other it must certainly be.”

The next instant the heavy, awful silence was broken by the sharp crack of his whip.

“Mush on, you poor brutes!” he cried. “On we go to see what is over there. Here we are at the South Pole. Let us see who has beaten us to it.”

But the dogs didn’t want to go on, which did not surprise me at all, because, for some time now, they had been showing signs of some strange, inexplicable uneasiness. What had got into the creatures, anyway? For a time we puzzled over it; then we knew, though the explanation was still an utter mystery to us. They were afraid. Afraid? An inadequate word, indeed. It was fear, stark, terrible, that had entered the poor brutes. But whence had come this inexplicable fear? That also we soon knew. The thing they feared, whatever it was, was in that very direction in which we were headed!

A cairn, a tent? What did this thing mean?

“What on earth is the matter with the critters?” exclaimed Travers. “Can it be that—”

“It’s for us to find out what it means,” said Sutherland.

Again we got in motion. The place was still involved in that strange, weird gloom. The silence was still that awful silence of desolation and of death.

Slowly but steadily we moved forward, urging on the reluctant, fearful animals with our whips.

At last Sutherland, who was leading, cried out that he saw it. He halted, peering forward into the gloom, and we urged our teams up alongside his.

“It must be a tent,” he said.

And a tent we found it to be—a small one supported by a single bamboo and well guyed in all directions. Made of drab-colored gabardine. To the top of the tent-pole another had been lashed. From this, motionless in the still air, hung the remains of a small Norwegian flag and, underneath it, a pennant with the word “Fram” upon it. Amundsen’s tent!

What should we find inside it? And what was the meaning of that—the strange way it bulged out on one side?

The entrance was securely laced. The tent, it was certain, had been here for a year, all through the long Antarctic night; and yet, to our astonishment, but little snow was piled up about it, and most of this was drift. The explanation of this must, I suppose, be that, before the air currents have reached the Pole, almost all the snow has been deposited from them.

For some minutes we just stood there, and many, and some of them dreadful enough, were the thoughts that came and went. Through the long Antarctic night! What strange things this tent could tell us had it been vouchsafed the power of words! But strange things it might tell us, nevertheless. For what was that inside, making the tent bulge out in so unaccountable a manner? I moved forward to feel of it there with my mittened hand, but, for some reason that I cannot explain, of a sudden I drew back. At that instant one of the dogs whined—the sound so strange and the terror of the animal so unmistakable that I shuddered and felt a chill pass through my heart. Others of the dogs began to whine in that mysterious manner, and all shrank back cowering from the tent.

“What does it mean?” said Travers, his voice sunk almost to a whisper. “Look at them. It is as though they are imploring us to—keep away.”

“To keep away,” echoed Sutherland, his look leaving the dogs and fixing itself once more on the tent.

“Their senses,” said Travers, “are keener than ours. They already know what we can’t know until we see it.”

“See it!” Sutherland explained. “I wonder. Boys, what are we going to see when we look into that tent? Poor fellows! They reached the Pole. But did they ever leave it? Are we going to find them in there dead?”

“Dead?” said Travers with a sudden start. “The dogs would never act that way if ’twas only a corpse inside. And, besides, if that theory was true, wouldn’t the sleds be here to tell the story? Yet look around. The level uniformity of the place shows that no sled lies buried here.”

“That is true,” said our leader. “What can it mean? What could make that tent bulge out like that? Well, here is the mystery before us, and all we have to do is unlace the entrance and look inside to solve it.”

He stepped to the entrance, followed by Travers and me, and began to unlace it. At that instant an icy current of air struck the place and the pennant above our heads flapped with a dull and ominous sound. One of the dogs, too, thrust his muzzle skyward, and a deep and long-drawn howl arose. And while the mournful, savage sound yet filled the air, a strange thing happened:

Through a sudden rent in that gloomy curtain of cloud, the sun sent a golden, awful light down upon the spot where we stood. It was but a shaft of light, only three or four hundred feet wide, though miles in length, and there we stood in the very middle of it, the plain on each side involved in that weird gloom, now denser and more eery than ever in contrast to that sword of golden fire which thus so suddenly had been flung down across the snow.

“Queer place this!” said Travers. “Just like a beam lying across a stage in a theater.”

Travers’ smile was a most apposite one, more so than he perhaps ever dreamed himself. That place was a stage, our light the wrathful fire of the Antarctic sun, ourselves the actors in a scene stranger than any ever beheld in the mimic world.

For some moments, so strange was it all, we stood there looking about us in wonder and perhaps each one of us in not a little secret awe. “Queer place, all right!” said Sutherland. “But——”

He laughed a hollow, sardonic laugh. Up above, the pennant flapped and flapped again, the sound of it hollow and ghostly. Again rose the long-drawn, mournful, fiercely sad howl of the wolf-dog.

“But,” added our leader, “we don’t want to be imagining things, you know.”

“Of course not,” said Travers.

“Of course not,” I echoed.

A little space, and the entrance was open and Sutherland had thrust head and shoulders through it.

I don’t know how long it was that he stood there like that. Perhaps it was only a few seconds, but to Travers and me it seemed rather long.

“What is it?” Travers exclaimed at last. “What do you see?”

The answer was a scream—the horror of that sound I can never forget—and Sutherland came staggering back and, I believe, would have fallen had we not sprung and caught him.

“What is it?” cried Travers. “In God’s name, Sutherland, what did you see?”

Sutherland beat the side of his head with his hand, and his look was wild and horrible.

“What is it?” I exclaimed. “What did you see in there?”

“I can’t tell you—I can’t! Oh, oh, I wish that I had never seen it! Don’t look! Boys, don’t look into that tent—unless you are prepared to welcome madness, or worse.”

“What gibberish is this?” Travers demanded, gazing at our leader in astonishment. “Come, come, man! Buck up. Get a grip on yourself. Let’s have an end to this nonsense. Why should the sight of a dead man, or dead men affect you in this mad fashion?”

“Dead men?” Sutherland laughed, the sound wild, maniacal.

“Dead men? If ’twas only that! Is this the South Pole? Is this the earth, or are we in a nightmare on some other planet?”

“For heaven’s sake,” cried Travers, “come out of it! What’s got into you? Don’t let your nerves go like this.”

“A dead man?” queried our leader, peering into the face of Travers. “You think I saw a dead man? I wish it was only a dead man. Thank God, you two didn’t look!”

On the instant Travers had turned.

“Well,” said he, “I am going to look!”

But Sutherland cried out, screamed, sprang after him and tried to drag him back.

“It would mean horror and perhaps madness!” cried Sutherland. “Look at me. Do you want to be like me?”

“No!” Travers returned. “But I am going to see what is in that tent.”

He struggled to break free, but Sutherland clung to him in a frenzy of madness.

“Help me, Bob!” Sutherland cried. “Hold him back, or we’ll all go insane.”

But I did not help him to hold Travers back, for, of course, it was my belief that Sutherland himself was insane. Nor did Sutherland hold Travers. With a sudden wrench, Travers was free. The next instant he had thrust head and shoulders through the entrance of the tent.

Sutherland groaned and watched him with eyes full of unutterable horror.

I moved toward the entrance, but Sutherland flung himself at me with such violence that I was sent over into the snow. I sprang to my feet full of anger and amazement.

“What the hell,” I cried, “is the matter with you, anyway? Have you gone crazy?”

The answer was a groan, horrible beyond all words of man, but that sound did not come from Sutherland. I turned. Travers was staggering away from the entrance, a hand pressed over his face, sounds that I could never describe breaking from deep in his throat. Sutherland, as the man came staggering up to him, thrust forth an arm and touched Travers lightly on the shoulder. The effect was instantaneous and frightful. Travers sprang aside as though a serpent had struck at him, screamed and screamed yet again.

“There, there!” said Sutherland gently. “I told you not to do it. I tried to make you understand, but—but you thought that I was mad.”

“It can’t belong to this earth!” moaned Travers.

“No,” said Sutherland. “That horror was never born on this planet of ours. And the inhabitants of earth, though they do not know it, can thank God Almighty for that.”

“But it is here!” Travers exclaimed. “How did it come to this awful place? And where did it come from?”

“Well,” consoled Sutherland, “it is dead—it must be dead.”

“Dead? How do we know that it is dead? And don’t forget this: it didn’t come here alone!”

Sutherland started. At that moment the sunlight vanished, and everything was once more involved in gloom.

“What do you mean?” Sutherland asked. “Not alone? How do you know that it did not come alone?”

“Why, it is there inside the tent; but the entrance was laced—from the outside!”

“Fool, fool that I am!” cried Sutherland a little fiercely. “Why didn’t I think of that? Not alone! Of course it was not alone!”

He gazed about into the gloom, and I knew the nameless fear and horror that chilled him to the very heart, for they chilled me to my very own.

Of a sudden arose again that mournful, savage howl of the wolf-dog. We three men started as though it was the voice of some ghoul from hell’s most dreadful corner.

“Shut up, you brute!” gritted Travers. “Shut up, or I’ll brain you!”

Whether it was Travers’ threat or not, I do not know; but that howl sank, ceased almost on the instant. Again the silence of desolation and of death lay upon the spot. But above the tent the pennant stirred and rustled, the sound of it, I thought, like the slithering of some repulsive serpent.

“What did you see in there?” I asked them.

“Bob—Bob,” said Sutherland, “don’t ask us that.”

“The thing itself,” said I, turning, “can’t be any worse than this mystery and nightmare of imagination.”

But the two of them threw themselves before me and barred my way.

“No!” said Sutherland firmly. “You must not look into that tent, Bob. You must not see that—that—I don’t know what to call it. Trust us; believe us, Bob! ’Tis for your sake that we say that you must not do it. We, Travers and I, can never be the same men again—the brains, the souls of us can never be what they were before we saw that!”

“Very well,” I acquiesced. “I can’t help saying, though, that the whole thing seems to me like the dream of a madman.”

“That,” said Sutherland, “is a small matter indeed. Insane? Believe that it is the dream of a madman. Believe that we are insane. Believe that you are insane yourself. Believe anything you like. Only don’t look!”

“Very well,” I told him. “I won’t look. I give in. You two have made a coward of me.”

“A coward?” said Sutherland. “Don’t talk nonsense, Bob. There are some things that a man should never know; there are some things that a man should never see; that horror there in Amundsen’s tent is—both!”

“But you said that it is dead.”

Travers groaned. Sutherland laughed a little wildly.

“Trust us,” said the latter; “believe us, Bob. ’Tis for your sake, not for our own. For that is too late now. We have seen it, and you have not.”

For some minutes we stood there by the tent, in that weird gloom, then turned to leave the cursed spot. I said that undoubtedly Amundsen had left some records inside, that possibly Scott had reached the Pole, and visited the tent, and that we ought to secure any such memories. Sutherland and Travers nodded, but each declared that he would not put his head through that entrance again for all the wealth of Ormus and of Ind—or words to that effect. We must, they said, get away from the awful place—get back to the world of men with our fearful message.

“You won’t tell me what you saw?” I said, “and yet you want to get back so that you can tell it to the world.”

“We aren’t going to tell the world what we saw,” answered Sutherland. “In the first place, we couldn’t, and, in the second place, if we could, not a living soul would believe us. But we can warn people, for that thing in there did not come alone. Where is the other one—or the others?”

“Dead, too, let us hope!” I exclaimed.

“Amen!” said Sutherland. “But maybe, as Bill says, it isn’t dead. Probably——”

Sutherland paused, and a wild, indescribable look came into his eyes. “Maybe it—can’t die!”

“Probably,” said I nonchalantly, yet with secret disgust and with poignant sorrow.

What was the use? What good would it do to try to reason with a couple of madmen? Yes, we must get away from this spot, or they would have me insane, too. And the long road back? Could we ever make it now? And what had they seen? What unimaginable horror was there behind that thin wall of gabardine? Well, whatever it was, it was real. Of that I could not entertain the slightest doubt. Real? Real enough to wreck, virtually instantaneously, the strong brains of two strong men. But—were my poor companions really mad, after all?

“Or maybe,” Sutherland was saying, “the other one, or the others, went back to Venus or Mars or Sirius or Algol, or hell itself, or wherever they came from, to get more of their kind. If that is so, heaven have pity on poor humanity! And, if it or they are still here on this earth, then sooner or later—it may be a dozen years, it may be a century—but sooner or later the world will know it, know it to its woe and to its horror. For they, if living, or if gone for others, will come again.”

“I was thinking—” began Travers, his eyes fixed on the tent.

“Yes?” Sutherland queried.

“——that,” Travers told him, “it might be a good plan to empty the rifle into that thing. Maybe it isn’t dead; maybe it can’t die—maybe it only changes. Probably it is just hibernating, so to speak.”

“If so,” I laughed, “it will probably hibernate till doomsday.”

But neither one of my companions laughed.

“Or,” said Travers, “it may be a demon, a ghost materialized. I can’t say incarnated.”

“A ghost materialized!” I exclaimed. “Well, may not every man or woman be just that? Heaven knows, many a one acts like a demon or a fiend incarnate.”

“They may be,” nodded Sutherland. “But that hypothesis doesn’t help us any here.”

“It may help things some,” said Travers, starting toward his sled. A moment or two, and he had got out the rifle.

“I thought,” said he, “that nothing could ever take me back to that entrance. But the hope that I may——”

Sutherland groaned.

“It isn’t earthly, Bill,” he said hoarsely. “It’s a nightmare. I think we had better go now.”

Travers was going—straight toward the tent.

“Come back, Bill!” groaned Sutherland. “Come back! Let us go while we can.”

But Travers did not come back. Slowly he moved forward, rifle thrust out before him, finger on the trigger. He reached the tent, hesitated a moment, then thrust the rifle-barrel through. As fast as he could work trigger and lever, he emptied the weapon into the tent—into that horror inside it.

He whirled and came back as though in fear the tent was about to spew forth behind him all the legions of foulest hell.

What was that? The blood seemed to freeze in my veins and heart as there arose from out the tent a sound—a sound low and throbbing—a sound that no man ever had heard on this earth—one that I hope no man will ever hear again.

A panic, a madness seized upon us, upon men and dogs alike, and away we fled from that cursed place.

The sound ceased. But again we heard it. It was more fearful, more unearthly, soul-maddening, hellish than before.

“Look!” cried Sutherland. “Oh, my God, look at that!”

The tent was barely visible now. A moment or two, and the curtain of gloom would conceal it. At first I could not imagine what had made Sutherland cry out like that. Then I saw it, in that very moment before the gloom hid it from view. The tent was moving! It swayed, jerked like some shapeless monster in the throes of death, like some nameless thing seen in the horror of nightmare or limned on the brain of utter madness itself.

And that is what happened there; that is what we saw. I have set it down at some length and to the best of my ability under the truly awful circumstances in which I am placed. In these hastily crawled pages is recorded an experience that, I believe, is not surpassed by the wildest to be found in the pages of the most imaginative romanticist. Whether the record is destined ever to reach the world, ever to be scanned by the eye of another—only the future can answer that.

I will try to hope for the best. I cannot blink the fact, however, that things are pretty bad for us. It is not only this sinister, nameless mystery from which we are fleeing—though heaven knows that is horrible enough—but it is the minds of my companions. And, added to that, is the fear for my own. But there, I must get myself in hand. After all, as Sutherland said, I didn’t see it. I must not give way. We must somehow get our story to the world, though we may have for our reward only the mockery of the world’s unbelief, its scoffing—the world, against which is now moving, gathering, a menace more dreadful than any that ever moved in the fevered brain of any prophet of woe and blood and disaster.

We are a dozen miles or so from the Pole now. In that mad dash away from that tent of horror, lost our bearings and for a time, I fear, went panicky. The strange, eery gloom denser than ever. Then came a fall of fine snow-crystals, which rendered things worse than ever. Just when about to give up in despair, chanced upon one of our beacons. This gave us our bearings, and we pressed on to this spot.

Travers has just thrust his head into the tent to tell us that he is sure he saw something moving off in the gloom. Something moving! This must be looked into.

[If Robert Drumgold could only have left as full a record of those days which followed as he had of that fearful 4th of January! No man can ever know what the three explorers went through in their struggle to escape that doom from which there was no escape—a doom the mystery and horror of which perhaps surpass in gruesomeness what the most dreadful Gothic imagination ever conceived in its utterest abandonment to delirium and madness.]

Jan. 5.—Travers had seen something, for we, the three of us, saw it again today. Was it that horror, that thing not of this earth, which they saw in Amundsen’s tent? We don’t know what it is. All we know is that it is something that moves. God have pity on us all—and on every man and woman and child on this earth of ours if this thing is what we fear!

6th.—Made 25 mi. today—20 yesterday. Did not see it today. But heard it! Seemed near—once, in fact, as though right over our heads. But that must have been imagination. Effect on dogs most terrible. Poor brutes! It is as horrible to them as it is to us. Sometimes I think even more. Why is it following us?

7th.—Two of the dogs gone this morning. One or another of us on guard all “night.” Nothing seen, not a sound heard, yet the animals have vanished. Did they desert us? We say that is what happened but each man of us knows that none of us believes it. Made 18 mi. Fear that Travers is going mad.

8th.—Travers gone! He took the watch last night at 12, relieving Sutherland. That was the last seen of Travers—the last that we shall ever see. No tracks—not a sign in the snow. Travers, poor Travers, gone! Who will be the next?

Jan. 9.—Saw it again! Why does it let us see it like this—sometimes? Is it that horror in Amundsen’s tent? Sutherland declares that it is not—that it is something even more hellish. But then S. is mad now—mad—mad—mad. If I wasn’t sane, I could think that it all was only imagination. But I saw it!

Jan. 11.—Think it is the 11th but not sure. I can no longer be sure of anything—save that I am alone and that it is watching me. Don’t know how I know, for I cannot see it. But I do know—it is watching me. It is always watching. And sometime it will come and get me—as it got Travers and Sutherland and half of the dogs.

Yes, today must be the 11th. For it was yesterday—surely it was only yesterday—that it took Sutherland. I didn’t see it take him, for a fog had come up, and Sutherland—he would go on in the fog—was so slow in following that the vapor hid him from view. At last when he didn’t come, I went back. But S. was gone—man, dogs, sled, everything was gone. Poor Sutherland! But then he was mad. Probably that was why it took him. Has it spared me because I am yet sane? S. had the rifle. Always he clung to that rifle—as though a bullet could save him from what we saw! My only weapon is an ax. But what good is an ax?

Jan. 13.—Maybe it is the 14th. I don’t know. What does it matter? Saw it three times today. Each time it was closer. Dogs still whining about tent. There—that horrible hellish sound again. Dogs still now. That sound again. But I dare not look out. The ax.

Hours later. Can’t write any more.

Silence. Voices—I seem to hear voices. But that sound again. Coming nearer. At entrance now—now——