Speaker 1: The search party's find I can stand it no longer.
I must put down my confession on paper, since there
is no living creature left to whom I can confess it.
The snow is drifting fiercer than ever to day against
the cabin. The last biscuit is almost finished. My fingers
are so pinched with cold I can hardly grasp the
pen to write with. But I will write. I must write.
I am writing. I cannot die with the dreadful story unconfessed.
Upon my conscience, it was only an accident. Most of
you who read this confession perhaps will say, But in
my own heart I know better than that. I know
it was murder, a wicked murder. Still, though my hands
are very numb and my head swimming with delirium, I
will try to be coherent, to tell my story clearly
and collectedly. I was appointed surgeon of the Kotepacsy in
June eighteen eighty. I had reasons of my own, sad
reasons for wishing to join an arctic exposition. I didn't
join it as most of the other men did, from
pure love of danger and adventure. I am not a
man to care for that sort of thing. On its
own account. I joined it because of a terrible disappointment.
For two year I had been engaged to Dora. I
needn't call her anything but Dora, my brother, to whom
I wish this paper sent, but whom I daren't address,
is dear Arthur. How could I A murderer will know
well enough who I mean. And to all the other people,
it isn't needful that they should know anything about it.
But whoever you are, whoever finds this paper, I beg
of you, I implore you. I adjure you do not tell
a word of it to Dora. I cannot die unconfessed,
but I cannot let the confession reach her. If it does,
I know the double shock will kill her. Keep it
from her. Tell her only he is dead, dead as
his post, like a brave man on the cotepaccy exploring expedition.
For Mercy's sake. Don't tell her that he was murdered,
that I murdered him. I had been engaged, I say
two years to Dora. She lived in Arthur's parish, and
I loved her, Yes, in those days, I loved her, purely, devotedly, innocently.
I was innocent then myself and I really believe good
and will meaning. I should have been genuinely horrified and
indignant if anybody had ventured to say that I should
end by committing a murder. It was a great grief
to me when I had to leave Arthur's perish and
my father's parish before him, to go up to London
and take posts as a surgeon to a small hospital.
I couldn't bear being so far away from Dora. And
at first Dora wrote to me almost every day with
the greatest affection. Heaven forgive me if I still ventured
to call her Dora her so good and pure and beautiful,
and I a murderer. But after a while I noticed
slowly that Dora's tone seemed to grow colder and colder,
and her letters less and less frequent. Why should she
have begun to cease loving me, I cannot imagine. Perhaps
she had a premonition of what possibly wickedness was really
in me. At any rate, her coldness grew at last
so marked that I wrote and asked Arthur whether he
could explain it. Arthur answered me a little regretfully and
with brotherly affection. He is a good fellow, Arthur, and
that he could. He feared it was painful to say so,
but he feared Dora was beginning to love a new lover,
A young man had lately come to the village of
whom she had a great deal, and who was handsome
and brave and fascinating. Arthur was afraid he could not
conceal from me his impression that Dora and the stranger
were very much taken with one another. At last, one
morning a letter came to me from Dora. I can
put it in here because I carried it away with
me when I went to Hammerfest to join the Kotapaxy,
and ever since I have kept it sadly in my
private pocket book. Dear Ernest. She had always called me
Ernest since we had been children together, and she couldn't
leave it off even now when she was writing to
let me know she no longer loved me. Can you
forgive me for what I am going to tell you?
I thought I loved you till lately, but then I
had never discovered what love really meant. I have discovered
it now, and I find that, after all I only
liked you very sincerely. You will have guessed before this
that I love somebody else. Who loves me in return
with all the strength of his whole nature. I have
made a grievous mistake, which I know will render you
terribly unhappy. But it is better so than to marry
a man whom I do not really love with all
my heart and soul and affection. Better in the end,
I am sure, for both of us. I am too
much ashamed of myself to write you more. Can you
forgive me yours? Dora? I could not forgive her then,
though I loved her too much to be angry. I
was only broken hearted, thoroughly stunned and broken hearted. I
can forgive her now, but she could never forgive me.
Heaven help me. I only wanted to get away anywhere,
anywhere and forget all about it in a life of danger,
so I asked for the post of surgeon to Sir
Paxton Bateman's Got to Paxy exposition a few weeks afterwards.
They wanted a man who knew something about natural history
and deep sea dredging, and they took me on at once,
on the recommendation of a well known man of science.
The very day I joined the ship at Hammerfest in August,
I noticed immediately that there was one man on board
whose mere face and bearing and manner were at first
sight excessively objectionable to me. He was a handsome enough
young fellow, one Harry Lamarchon, who had been a planter
in Queensland, and who, after being burned up with three
years of tropical sunshine, was anxious to cool himself apparently
by a long winter of arctic gloom. Handsome as he was,
with his black mustache and big, dark eyes, rolling restle,
I took an instantaneous dislike to his cruel, thin lip
and cold proud mouth the moment I looked upon him.
If I had been wise, I would have drawn back
from the expedition at once. It is a foolish thing
to bind oneself down to a voyage of that sorts
unless you are perfectly sure beforehand that you have at
least no instinctive hatred of any one among your messmates
in that long forced companionship. But I wasn't wise, and
I went on with him. From the first moment, even
before I had spoken to him, I disliked the Marchant.
Very soon I grew to hate him. He seemed to
me the most recklessly cruel and devilish creature. God forgive
me I should say that I had ever met, within
my whole lifetime on an Arctic expedition. A man's true
nature soon comes out. Mine certainly did. And he lets
his companions know more about his inner self in six
weeks than they could have possibly learned about him in
years of intercourse under other circumstances. And the second night
I was on board the Coat to POxy, I learned
enough to make my blood run cold about Harry le
Merchant's ideas and feelings. We were all sitting on deck together,
those of us who were not on duty, and listening
to yarns from one another as idle men will, when
the conversation happened accidentally to turn on Queensland, and La
Marchant began to enlighten us about his own doings while
he was in the colony. He boasted a great deal
about his prowess as a disperser of the blackfellows, which
he seemed to consider a very noble sort of occupation.
There's nobody in the colony, he said, who had ever
dispersed so many blacks as he had, and he'd like
to be back there dispersing again. For in the matter
of sport. It beat kangaroo hunting or any other kind
of shooting. He had ever yet tried his hands at
all to pieces. The second Lieutenant, Hepworth Patterson, a nice,
kind hearted young scotchman, looked up at him a little
curiously and said, why what do you mean by dispersing lamarchant?
Driving them off into the bush? I suppose isn't that
it not much fun in that that I can see
scattering a lot of poor, helpless, black naked savages. The
marchant curled his lip contemptuously. He didn't think much of
Patterson because his father was said to be a Glasgow grocer,
and answered, in his rapid daredevil fashion, no fun, isn't there?
Just that's all you know about it, my good fellow.
Now I'll give you one example. One day the inspector
came in and told us there were a lot of
blacks camping out on our estate down by the Wardodi River.
So we jumped on our horses like a shot and
went down there immediately and began dispersing them. We didn't
fire at them because grass and ferns and things were
very high, and we might have wasted our ammunition. But
we went at them with native fears, just for all
the world, like pigsticking. You should have seen those black
fellows run for their lives through the long grass. Men, women,
little ones. Together, we rode after them full pelt. As
we came up with them one by one, we just
rolled them over helter skelter, as if they had been
antelopes or bears or something. Bye and bye. After a
good long charge or two, we cleared the place of
big blacks altogether. But the gins and children, some of
them lay lurking among the grass, you know, and wouldn't
come out and give us fair sport as they ought
to have done out in the open. Children will pack,
you see, whenever they're hard driven, exactly like a grouse.
After a month or two steady shooting well to make
them start and show game, of course, we put a
match to the grass. Just a minute, the whole thing
was ablaze right down to the corner of the two rivers.
So we turned our horses into the stream and rode
alongside half a dozen of us on each river. Every
now and again one of the young ones would break
cover and slide out quietly into the stream and try
to swim across without being perceived and get clean away
back into the country. Then we made a dash at
them with pigspears, and sometimes they die with the precious
good divers they are to those Queenslanders, I can tell you.
But we waited around until they came up again, and
then we struck them as sure as houses. That's what
we call dispersing natives over in Queensland, extending the blessings
of civilization to the unsettled parts of the back country.
He laughed a pleasant laugh to himself quietly as he
finished this atrocious, devilish story, and showed all his white
teeth all in a row, as if he thought the
whole reminisce exceedingly amusing. Of course, we were all simply
speechless with horror and astonishment. Such a deliberate, brutal murderousness.
Gracious heavens, what am I saying? I'd have forgotten for
a moment that I too am a murderer. But what
had the blackfellows done to you? Patterson asked with a
tone of loathing. After we had all sat silent and
horror schicken in a circle for a moment. I suppose
they'd been behaving awfully badly to some white people somewhere
massacring women or something, to get your blood up in
such a horrid piece of butchery. The merchant laughed again,
a quiet chuckle of conscious superiority, and only answered, behaving
badly massacring white women. Lord, bless your heart, I'd like
to see them. Why the wretched creatures wouldn't ever dare
do it? Oh no, nothing of that sort, I can
tell you. And our blood wasn't up either. We went
in it just for by the way of something to do,
and to keep our hands. Of course, you can't allow
a lot of lazy, hulking blacks to go knocking around
the neighborhood of an estate, stealing your fowls and fruit
and so forth without lighter hindrance. It's the custom in
Queensland to disperse to blackfellows. I've often been out riding
with a friend and I've seen one sulking about somewhere
in the hollow among the tree firms, and I've drawn
my six shooter, and I said to my friend, you
see me disperse that confounded one. And I've dispersed him
right off into little pieces too. You may take your
oath upon it. But do you mean to tell me,
mister le merchant, Patterson said, looking at your more puzzled
and shocked, that these poor creatures have been doing absolutely nothing. Well,
now that's the way of all you homesticking sentimentalists, Lamarchant
went on, with an ugly simper. You want to push
on the outskirts of civilization and see the world colonized,
But you're too squeamish to listen to anything about the
only practicable civilizing and colonizing agencies. It's the struggle for existence.
Don't you see the plain outcome of all the best
modern scientific theories. The black man has got to go
to the wall. The white man, with his superior moral
and intellect nature, has got to push him there. At bottom,
it's nothing more than civilization. Shoot him off at once,
I say, and get rid of them forthwith and forever.
Why I say, looking at him with my disgust, speaking
in my face, Heaven forgive me, I call it nothing
less than murder. Lamarchant laughed and lit his cigar. But
after that, somehow the other men didn't care much to
talk to him in an ordinary way, more than was
necessary for carrying out of the ship's business. And yet
he was a very gentlemanly fellow, I must admit, and
well read and decently educated. Only there seemed to be
a certain natural brutality about him, under a thin veneer
of culture and good pay reading that repelled us all
dreadfully from the moment we saw him. I dare say
we shouldn't have noticed it so much if we hadn't
been thrown together so closely as men are on Arctic voyage.
But then and there it was positively unendurable. We none
of us held any communications with him whenever we could
help it, and he soon saw that we of all
of us thoroughly disliked and distrust him. That only made
him reckless and defiant. He knew he was bound to
go the journey through with us now, and he sat
to work deliberately to shock and horrify us. Whether all
the stories he told by the wardroom fire in the
evenings were true or not, I can't tell you. I
don't believe they all were, But at any rate, he
made them seem as brutal and disgusting as the most
loathsome details could possibly make them. He was always apologizing,
nay glorying, in the bloodshed and slaughter, which he used
to defend with a show of cultivated reasoning that made
the naked brutality of his stories seem all the more
awful and unpardonable at bottom. And yet one couldn't deny
all the time there was a grace of manner and
a show of polite feeling about him, which gave him
a certain external pleasantness. In spite of everything. He was
always that women liked him, and I could easily understand
how a great many women who only saw him with
his company manners might even think him brave and handsome
and very chivalrous. I won't go into the details of
the expedition. They will be found fully and officially narrated
in the log which I have hidden in the captain's
box in the hut besides the Captain's body. I need
only mention here the circumstances immediately connected with the main
matter of this confession. One day, a little while before
we got jammed into the ice off the Leakhov Islands,
La Marchant was upon deck with me, helping me remove
from the net of creatures that we had dredged up
in our shallow soundings. As he stooped to pick out
a leptocardium Burrallee. I happened to observe that a golden
locket had fallen out of the front of his waistcoat
and showed a lock of hair on its exposed surface.
Lamarchet noticed it too, and with an awkward laugh, put
it back hurriedly. My little girl's keepsake, he said, in
a tone that seemed to me disagreeably flippant about such
a subject. She gave it to me just before I
set off on my way to Hammerfest. I stared in
some astonishment. He had a little girl, then a sweetheart,
he meant, obviously, if so, Heaven help her poor soul.
Heaven help her. For any woman to be tied to
life to such a creature as that, was really quite
too horrible. I didn't even like to think upon it.
I don't know what devil prompted me, for I seldom
spoke to him, even when we were told off on
duty together. But I said, at last, after a moment's pause,
if you are engaged to be married, as I suppose
you are, from what you say, I wonder you could
bear to come away on such long business as this
When you couldn't get a word or a letter from
the the lady you're engaged to for a whole winter.
He went on picking out the shells and weed, as
he answered, in a careless, jaunty tone, Why to tell
you the truth? Doctor? That was just about the very
meaning of it. We were going to be married next summer,
you see, And for reasons of her papa's, the deuce
knows what my little girl couldn't possibly be allowed to
marry one week sooner. There I'd been knocking about and
spooning with her violently for three months nearly, and the
more I spooned, the more tired I got of it,
and the more she expected me to go on spooning. Well,
I'm not the sort of man to stand around billing
and cooing for a whole year together. At last, things
grow monotonous, and I wanted an excuse to go off
somewhere where there'd be some sort of fun going on
till summer came and we could get spliced properly. For
she's got some tint too, and I didn't want to
throw her over, But I felt that if I'd got
to keep on spooning and spooning for a whole winter
without intermission. The thing would really be one too many
for me, and I should have to give it up
from sheer weariness. So I heard of this precious expedition,
which is just a sort of adventure I like, and
I wrote, and I volunteered for it, And then I
managed to make my little girl and her dear papa
believe that I was an officer in the naval Reserve,
and I was compelled to go when asked, willy nilly,
it's only about half a year, you know, darling, and
all that sort of thing. You understand the line of country. Meanwhile,
I'm saved the bother of ever writing to her or
getting any letters from her either, which is almost, in
its way equal nuisance. I see, I said shortly, Not
to put too fine a point on it. You simply
lied to her upon my soul, he answered, showing his
teeth again, but this time by no means pleasantly. You
fellows on the cote Epaxy, are really the sternest set
of moralists I ever met with outside a book of
sermons or a Surrey melodrama. You ought to have all
been the Parsons, every man jack of you. That's just
about what you're fit for. On the fourteenth of September,
we got jammed in the ice and the kotapaxy went
to pieces. You'll find in the Captain's log how part
of us walked across the pack to the Lyakhov Islands
and settled ourself here on Point Seberyakov in winter quarters.
As to what became of the other party, which went
southwards to the mouth of Lena, I know nothing. It
was hard winter, but by the aid of our stores
and occasional wall was shot by one of the blue jackets,
we managed to get along until March without serious illness.
Then one day, after a spell of terrible frost and snow,
the captain came to me and said, doctor, I wish
you'd come and see La Marchant in the other hut here.
I'm afraid he's got a bad fever. So I went
to see him. So he had a raging fever, fumbling
about amongst his clothes to lay him down comfortably on
the bear skin, for of course we had saved no
bedding from the wreck. I happened to knock out once
more the same locket that I had seen when he
was emptying the drag net. There was a photograph in
it of a young lady. The seal oil lamp didn't
give it very much light in the dark hut. It
was still long winter night on the Lyakhov Islands, but
even so I couldn't help seeing and recognizing the young
lady's features. Great Heaven, support me, uphold me. I reeled
with horror and amazement. It was Dora, Yes, his little
girl that he spoke of so carelessly, that he lied
to so easily, that he meant to marry so cruelly.
Was my Dora. I had pitied the woman who was
to be Harry Lamarchant's wife, even when I didn't know
who she was. In any way, I pitied her terribly
with all my heart when I knew that she was Dora,
my own Dora. If I had become a murderer, after all,
it was to save Dora, To save Dora from that unutterable,
abominable ruffian. I clutched the photograph in the locket eagerly
and held it up to the man's eyes. He opened
them dreamily. Is that the lady you are going to marry?
I asked him, with all the boiling indignation of that
terrible discovery. Seething and burning in my very face. He
smiled and took it all in half a minute. It is,
he answered, in spite of the fever, with all his
old daredevil carelessness. And now I recollect that they told
me the fellow she was engaged to was a doctor
in London and a brother of the parson. By jove,
I never thought of it before that your name, too,
was actually Robinson. That's the worst of having such a
deuced common name as yours. No one ever dreams of
recognizing your relations. Hang it all. If you're the man
I suppose now out of revenge, you'll be wanting to
next go and poison me. You judge others by yourself,
I'm afraid, I answered sternly. Oh, how the words seemed
to rise up in judgment against me At last, Now
the dreadful thing is all over. I doctored him as
well as I was able, hoping in all the time
in my inmost soul, for I will confess it all
now that he would never recover. Already in wish I
had become a murderer. I was too horrible to think
that such a man as that should marry Dora. I
had loved her once, and I love her still. I
love her now. I shall always love her, murderer as
I am, I say it, nevertheless, I shall always love her.
But at last, to my grief and disappointment, the man
began to mend and get better. My doctoring had done
him good. All the sailors, though they did not love him,
had shot him once or twice, a small bird, of
which we made a fresh soup that seemed to revive him. Yes, yes,
he was coming round, and my cured medicines had done
it all. He was getting well, and he would still
I'll go back to Mary Dora. The very idea put
me into such a fever of terror and excitement that
at last I began to exhibit the same symptoms as
Lamarchan himself had done. The captain saw I was sickening,
and feared the fever might prove an epidemic. It wasn't
I knew that mine was brain. Lamartians was intermittent, But
the captain insisted upon disbelieving me, so he put me
in the march. It into the same hut, and made
all the others clear out, so as to turn it
into sort of a temporary hospital. Every night, I put
out from the medicine chest two quin nine powders apiece
for myself in the march it One night, it was
the seventh of April, I can't forget. I woke feebly
from my feverish sleep and noticed, in a faint sort
of fashion that La Marchant was moving about restlessly in
the cabin. Lamarchant, I cried authoritariatively, for as surgeon, I
was of course responsible for the help of the expedition.
Go back and lie down upon your bare skin this minute.
You're a great deal too weak to go and get
anything for yourself. Yet go back this minute, sir, and
if you want anything, I'll pull the string and Patterson
will come see what you're after. For we had fixed
a string between the two huts, tied to a box
at the end, as a rough means of communication. All right,
old fellow, he answered, more cordially than I had ever
yet heard him speak to me. It is all square,
I assure you. I was only saying whether you were
quite warm and comfortable on your rug there. Perhaps I
thought the care I've taken of him has made him
feel really a little grateful to me. So I dozed
off and thought nothing more at the moment about it. Presently,
I heard a noise again and woke up quietly, without starting,
but just opened my eyes and peered around as well
as the dim light of the little oil lamp would
allow me. To my great surprise, I could make out
somehow that La Marchant was meddling with the bottles in
the medicine chest. Perhaps, thought I again, he wants another
dose of quinine. Anyhow, I'm too tired and sleepy to
ask him anything just now about it. I knew he
hated me, and I knew he was unscrupulous, but it
didn't occur to me to think that he would poison
the man who had just helped him through a dangerous fever.
At four, I awoke as I always did, and proceeded
to take one of my powders curiously enough before I
tasted it. The grain appe feared to me to be
rather coarser and more granular than the quinine I had
originally put there. I took a pinch between my finger
and thumb and placed it on my tongue by way
of testing it. Instead of being bitter, the powder I
found was insipid and almost tasteless. Could I, possibly, in
my fever and delirium, though I had not consciously been delirious,
have put some other powder instead of the quinine into
the two papers. The bare idea made me tremble with horror.
If so, I might have poisoned the marchant, who had
taken one of his powders already and was now sleeping
quietly upon his bear skin. At least I had thought so.
Glancing accidentally to his place in that moment, I was
vaguely conscious that he was not really sleeping, but lying
with his eyes held half open, gazing at me cautiously
and furatively through his closed eyelids. Then the horror truth
flashed suddenly across me. The marchant was trying to poison me. Yes,
he had always hated me, and now that he knew
I was Dora's discarded lover, he hated me worse than ever.
He had gotten up and taken a bottle from the
medicine chest. I felt certain and put something else instead
of quinine into my paper. I knew his eyes were
fixed upon me then, and for the moment I dissembled.
I turned around and pretended to swallow the contents of
the packet, and then lay down upon my rug, as
if nothing unusual had happened. The fever was burning me fiercely,
but I lay awake, kept up by the excitement, until
I saw that he was really asleep. And then I
once more undid the paper. Looking at it closely by
the light of the lamp, I saw a finer powder
sticking closely to the folded edges. I wetted my finger,
put it down and tasted it. Yes, that was quite bitter.
This was quinine, no doubt about it. I saw at
once what lamarch It had done. He had emptied out
the quinine and replaced it with some other white powder,
probably arsenic. But a little of the quinine still adhere
to the folds in the paper, because he had been
obliged to substitute it hurriedly. And that at once had
proved that it was no mistake of my own, but
that La Marchant had really made the deliberate attempt to
poison me. This is a confession, and a confession only
so I shall make no effort in any way to
exculpate myself for the horrid crime I committed. The next moment, true,
I was wild with fever and delirium. I was mad
at with the thought that this wretched man would marry Dora.
I was horrified at the idea of sleeping in the
same room with him any longer. But still I acknowledge it,
now face to face with a lonely death upon this
frozen island. It was murder, wilful murder. I meant to
poison him, and I did it. He has set this
powder for me, the villain, I said to myself, And
now I shall make him take it without knowing it.
How do I know that it's arsenic or anything else
to do him any harm? His blood be upon his
own head for aught. I know about it. What I
put there was simply quinine. If anybody had changed it,
he has changed it himself. The pit that he dug
for another, he himself shall fall bren. I wouldn't even
test it, for fear I should find it was arsenic
and be unable to give it to him innocently and harmlessly.
I rose up and went over to the marchant's side.
Horror of horrors. He was sleeping soundly. Yes, the man
had tried to poison me, and when he thought he
had seen me swallow his poisonous powder. So callous enheardened
was his nature that he didn't even lie awake to
watch the effect of it. He had dropped off soundly
as if nothing had happened, and was sleeping now to
all appearance, the sleep of innocence. Being convalescent in fact,
and therefore in need of rest, he slept with unusual soundness.
I laid the altered powder quietly by his bed, and
took away his that I had laid out in readiness
for him, and crept back into my own place noiselessly.
There I lay awake, hot and feverish, wondering to myself,
hour after hour when he would ever wake and take it.
At last, he woke and looked over toward me with
unusual interest. Hello, doctor, he said, quite genially, how are
you this morning? Eh? Get along well? I hope it
was the first time during all my illness that he
had ever inquired after me. I lied to him deliberately
to keep up the delusion. I have a terrible grinding
pain in my chest, I said, pretending to writhe I
had sunk to his level. It seems I was a
liar and a murderer. He looked quite gay over it
and laughed. It's nothing, he said, grinning horribly. It's a
good symptom. I felt just like that myself, dear fellow,
when I was beginning to recover. Then I knew he
had tried to poison me, and I felt no remorse
for my terrible action. It was a good deed to
prevent such a man as that from ever carrying away Dora,
my Dora into a horrid slavery. Sooner than he should
marry Dora, I would poison him. I would poison him
a thousand times over. He sat up, took a spoonful
of treacle, and poured the powder as usual, into the
very middle of it. I watched him take it off
a single gulp, without perceiving the difference. Then I sank back,
exhausted upon my roll of seal skins. All that day
I was very ill, and la marchant, lying tossing beside me,
groaned and moaned in a fearful fashion. At last, the
truth seemed to dawn upon him gradually, and he cried
aloud to me, doctor, doctor, quick, for heaven's sake, you
must get me out an antidote. The powders must have
gotten mixed up somehow, and you seem to have given
me arsenic instead of quinine. I'm certain not a bit
of it, Lamarchion, I said, with some devilish malice, I've
given you one of my own packets that was lying
here beside my pillow. He turned white as a sheet
the moment he heard that, and gasped out horribly that
that why, why, that was arsenic. But he never explained
it in a single word, how he knew it, or
where it came from. I knew I needed no explanation.
I wanted no lies, so I didn't question him. I
treated him as well as I could for arsenic poisoning,
without saying a word to the captain and the other
met about it. For if he died, I said, it
would be by his own act, and if my skill
could avail, he should have the benefit of it. But
the poisons had had full time to work before I
gave him the antidote. He died by seven o'clock that night,
in fearful agony. Then I knew that I really was
a murderer. My fingers are beginning to get horribly numb,
and I'm afraid I shan't be able to write much longer.
I must be quick about it if I want to
finish this confession. After that came my retribution. I have
been punished for it, and punished terribly. As soon as
they all heard the marchant was dead, a severe relapse,
I called it. They set to work to carry him
out and lay him somewhere. Then, for the first time,
the idea flashed across my mind that they couldn't possibly
bury him. The ice was too deep everywhere underneath it
a layer of solid rock of the bare granite islands.
There was no snow, even for wind swept it away
as it fell, and we couldn't do much as decently
cut him. There was nothing for it but to lay
him out upon the icy surface. So we carried the stark,
frozen body, with its hideous, staring eyes wide open, out
by the jutting point of the rock behind the hut,
and there we placed it, dressed and upright. We stood
it up against the point, exactly as if it were alive.
And by and by the snow came and froze it
to the rock, And there it stands to this moment,
glaring forever fiercely upon me. Whenever I went in or
out of the hut. For three long months, that hideous
thing stood there, staring me in the face with mute indignation.
At night, when I tried to sleep, the murdered man
stood there still in the darkness beside me. Oh God,
I dared not say a word about it to anybody,
but I trembled every time I passed it. I knew
what it was to be a murderer. In May, the
sun came back again, but still no open water for
our one boat. In June we had the long day,
but no open water. The captain began to get impatient
and despondent, and as you will read in the log,
he was afraid now we might never get a chance
of making the mouth of Lena by And by this
Gervy came. I have no time now for details. My
hands are so cramped with cold. And then we began
to run short of provisions. Soon I had them all
down upon my hands, and presently we had to place
Patterson's corpse beside the Martins on the little headland. Then
they sank, one after another, sank of cold and hunger,
as you will read in the log, till I alone,
who wanted least to live, was the last left living.
I was left alone with those nine corpses propped up
awfully against the naked rock, one of the nine men
I had murdered. May Heaven forgive me for the terrible crime,
and for pity's sake, whoever you may be, keep it
from Dora, Keep it from Dora. My brother's address is
in my pocket book. The fever and remorse alone have
given me strength to hold the pen. My hands are
quite numbed now I can write no longer. There the
manuscript ended. Heaven knows what effect it may have upon
all of you who read it quietly at your home,
in your own easy chairs in England. But we of
the search party, who took these almost illeligible sheets of
shaky writing from the cold fingers of one solitary corpse
within the frozen cabin of the Lyakhov Islands, we read
them through with such mingled thrill of awe and horror
and sympathy and pity as no one can fully understand
who has not been on an arctic exposition. And when
we gathered our sad burdens to take them off for
burial at home, the corpse to which we gave the
most reverent attention was certainly that of the self accused
murderer and of the search parties find by Grant Allan