L.H.
Here, b'y, is the issue of our plighted troth.
Why I am the scribe and not you, God knows:
and you have his secret.
D.W.
"There's no sense in going further—it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it...
Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges—
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"
—Kipling's "The Explorer."
Three years have passed since Hubbard and I began that fateful journeyinto Labrador of which this volume is a record. A little more than ayear has elapsed since the first edition of our record made itsappearance from the press. Meanwhile I have looked behind the ranges.Grand Lake has again borne me upon the bosom of her broad, deep watersinto the great lonely wilderness that lured Hubbard to his death.
It was a day in June last year that found me again at the point wheresome inexplicable fate had led Hubbard and me to pass unexplored thebay that here extends northward to receive the Nascaupee River, alongwhich lay the trail for which we were searching, and induced us totake, instead, that other course that carried us into the dreadfulSusan Valley. How vividly I saw it all again—Hubbard resting on hispaddle, and then rising up for a better view, as he said, "Oh, that'sjust a bay and it isn't worth while to take time to explore it. Theriver comes in up here at the end of the lake. They all said it was atthe end of the lake." And we said, "Yes, it is at the end of the lake;they all said so," and went on, for that was before we knew—Hubbardnever knew. A perceptible current, a questioning word, the turn of apaddle would have set us right. No current was noticed, no word wasspoken, and the paddle sent us straight toward those blue hills yonder,where Suffering and Starvation and Death were hidden and waiting forus. How little we expected to meet these grim strangers then. ThatJuly day came back to me as if it had been but the day before. Ibelieve I never missed Hubbard so much as at that moment. I never felthis loss so keenly as then. An almost irresistible impulse seized meto go on into our old trail and hurry to the camp where we had left himthat stormy October day and find if he were not after all still thereand waiting for me to come back to him.
Reluctantly I thrust the impulse aside. Armed with the experiencegained upon the former expedition, and information gleaned from theIndians, I turned into the northern trail, through the valley of theNascaupee, and began a journey that carried me eight hundred miles tothe storm-swept shores of Ungava Bay, and two thousand miles with dogsledge over endless reaches of ice and snow.
While I struggled northward with new companions, Hubbard was alwayswith me to inspire and urge me on. Often and often at night as I sat,disheartened and alone, by the camp-fire while the rain beat down andthe wind soughed drearily through the firtops, he wou