The Elder Ice: A Harry Stubbs Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page B

Just him and two dozen others, the only humans for a hundred miles. Looking at the ice ridges and dunes and the deep crevasses that led down to the ancient bedrock far below. “Thinking if maybe there wasn't just some possibility you would find a lost city there. That maybe the Boss did know something about it, and maybe some of the others on earlier expeditions. Perhaps not every Fata Morgana was an optical illusion after all...” He looked up suddenly. “Crazy dreams, when you say them out loud in a place like this. But it's surprising what keeps you going in places like that.”
    “I can't imagine what it was like.”
    “Fresh fruit, that was an obsession of mine. I kept thinking we might find a greenhouse with oranges and pineapples and bananas growing in it—you know, there were days when that would have been more valuable to me than all the gold in the world, just to taste fresh fruit again. Sometimes the sunlight would catch sheet ice that had been swept clean by the wind, and the Boss would say ‘Look there, I think it might be one of Brown’s greenhouses up ahead!’ He laughed and shook his head. “He was always the first to spot anything.”
    I did not see how it could be a happy memory, how he could look back with nostalgia to the bitter cold, the deprivation, the constant exhaustion, all the pains and sufferings of an Antarctic expedition. But he smiled as fondly as though it had been a week at the seaside.
    A vendor was doing the rounds with a tray of jellied eels, and I bought two pots. Brown fell on his and devoured it with such gusto that I ordered a couple of savoury pies from a second vendor to go with them. As Brown ate, I looked through my notebook, scavenging for some scrap I could try him on. “There’s a puzzling remark of Sir Ernest’s here,” I said. “About how ‘future explorers will doubtless carry pocket wireless telephones fitted with wireless telescopes’ and be fed by radio waves. What does it mean?”
    “Another of the Boss’s fancies.” Brown shrugged. “He said we would be the last generation that could explore before the aeroplanes and airships covered the globe.”
    “Do you know what he was doing when he died?”
    “It was his great final expedition, his swan-song. He wanted to go back south one last time.”
    “For what purpose?”
    “Coastal mapping, looking for lost islands. That was the official reason. He wasn't aiming for the Pole, I know that. He said he never had any interest in it.”
    “Might he have been returning to a treasure hoard?”
    “Who knows?” Brown shook his head and smiled. “With the Boss, who knows? He always said he'd die at forty-eight; a Gipsy told him once. I thought it was another of his stories, but his heart gave out just like that.” His gaze fell on the clock above the bar. “Good Lord, is that the time? I’d better shoot off.”
    As we shook hands, Brown leaned closer and looked me in the eye. “Look here, Stubbs. You’re a decent chap and all that. You know a fellow can’t betray a confidence. If you do find anything—and I don’t say there’s anything to be found—just you remember what they say about sleeping dogs.”
    “What do you—”
    Brown turned on his heel and was off, whistling into the night on the long walk to catch his train. He left me to order another pint and jot down notes on our conversation. I could tell his warning was deadly serious, but the meaning was opaque.
    I could still feel his hand, the hand that had shaken Sir Ernest's, in mine. Indeed, the hand that might have embraced Sir Ernest, for the men slept in each others’ arms to keep off the worst of the cold. Imagine that.
    Brown was poor in material things but rich in spirit. I did not doubt he would find a place on an expedition up the Amazon or some such soon enough. His appetite for life was undimmed. Not like that wretch Armydale, who killed himself in Australia. Armydale had been a rich man with a wife and children. For some