A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY If the rifle finally used up its last shot, then I could fall to with a harpoon, Es- quimat fashion. The Esquimaux laughed when they saw the size of the sled. And in other ways, it was the strangest sled ever made, I dare say, because the material of which it was composed was almost entirely whalebone. Whalebone and best sinew, welded and compounded until maximum strength and minimum weight were attained. When the sled was finished, I could handle it with one hand. IJ could throw it about, and no matter how it struck, it neither dented nor broke! The heaviest item was the canvas which was to be my tent, my bed wrapping, and the skin to fit over the sled, and turn it into a canoe! My skis, fitted in crisscross at the center of the sled, would distend the sides and give me a craft, when occasion rose, capable of transporting a very con- siderable weight of provisions or other necessities. But there were few other necessities. A knife, a gun, ammunition, the sled, the oil- soaked canvas, the dog. That was about all. Then the time came to march out into the sea ice. I hired a pair of packers to get me over the ridge of ice thrown up by the winter jams; we labored most of the day, and then I found myself out on the smoother ice of the open sea. There I said goodhye to the Esquimaux, and to Scanderov. We didn’t waste many words, but my heart was turned to water by an odd thing. One of the natives began to laugh. I don't know what had struck him so funny. An Esquimau will laugh at anything, if it happens to hit him in the right way. At any rate, that fool followed me with his loon laughter for a long distance, and for days and weeks afterwards the throb and the weird wailing of the sound hung in my ears, and got somehow into my blood. WAS started, however. At the last mo- ment I would have turned back, be- cause my knees were so literally unstrung that I had to go forward with short steps. But shame compelled me. Shame is a queer devil. The murderer who has made a mockery of shame. by the shamelessness of his crime, yet may feel the shame of cowardice that turns him into a hero on the scaffold. I was playing the hero or fool out there on the open ice, realizing that to talk about a thing is very different from doing it. But I don’t want to talk about the ice. I could write hundreds of thousands of words about it, because those days are written into my memory with the sort of ink that traces a thousand words a minute and never fades out! But I have to get at what lay behind the ice. I have to get at the Smoking Land, since that is the shore I reached. Yes, I may as well throw away suspense, and put myself on that shore. Yet I am almost irresistibly tempted to put in something for the eight months of my journey over the ice. Why do I call it a journey at all? Why shouldn't I speak of my voyage? Because, during nearly every moment of the day, I was being carried by one current or another, drifting pretty steadily. I should like to write at length, for in- stance, of how I found myself sailing on a fiftv-acre island of ice, and how I kept on sailing on it for a month, sometimes seeing other ice lands in the distance, blue and gleaming, and sometimes, again, voyaging alone through an empty sea! That island was kind to me. It brought the seals to bask on its shore, fattening Murder and me. And above all, while I was on it, the currents bore it almost steadily toward the North. I remember the thrilling, pulsing, up- welling joy that kept my heart in my throat for four days, because during those days a powerful gale was striking that island, and making it tremble, and smash- ing it with ponderous waves—but all the while that gale hung due in the south, and drove me gloriously on my chosen way. My white island split in two, divided, and redivided, and at last, one day, I found that I was walking on a surface that had once been level, but which was now rapidly sloping to the side. I was amazed. There was no wind pressure then, to ac- count for the thing. It was as though some subterranean monster were thrusting .up against my island from beneath, but as the angle increased, I realized at last that my iceberg was simply turning over! A trick the scoundrels have, I never knew why! Well, I had, literally, exactly half an Se pe . Eomicbhooks-com)