Fate Cannot Harm Me Read Online Free Page B

describe that expedition is no part of this tale. It has its place in the annals of the Antarctic. For me it is a welter of impressions—the immensity of ice and snow, the howling and timeless blizzards, the seemingly endless Antarctic nights, the everlasting contrast between the puniness of man and the power of nature. Put down like that, how distant and unreal it all sounds! The captions of a film carry as much or as little conviction. But I cannot express it otherwise, for indeed for me the impressions seem remote and dreamlike, as though they belonged to another world and another life. In such circumstances one grows to love or to hate one’s fellows. For my part, by slow degrees I came to love Christiansen, and to admire him as I admired no other human being. At any moment I can conjure a vision of him before my eyes—gazing out with his blue eyes over the frozen wastes with the calm strength of a man always equal tohis purpose, unswerving, strong as fate itself. Or I see him about the tasks of his day, issuing the orders, navigating the ship—or, still more vividly, I see him engaged in the little jobs of the daily round, jobs which he performed with an efficiency and a skill which seemed to give to each a special significance. Most often of all I see him seated in his hut, opening with a swift deftness which bordered on artistry, those everlasting tins.
    We left Melbourne in November of 1932. Had all gone well I should have sailed for England in April 1934. But it did not. In the very last lap, when all the terrors of storm and tempest, semi-starvation and frostbite had been overcome, I contrived to break my leg. On top of that I collapsed. All that, again, is no part of this story. So they left me on the furthermost margin of the known world, on the edge of the land of perpetual night, and there slowly I struggled back to life. That is how it was that I shipped aboard a tramp in the autumn of 1934, and that is how it came about that it was not until February 1935 that I landed at long last in the port of London.

Chapter II
    â€œAnd not uncrowned with honours ran
    My days, and not without a boast shall end!
    For I was Shakespeare’s countryman;
    And wert thou not my friend?”
    W. WATSON
    I sat in my room among a pile of letters; all round me were scattered envelopes and torn paper; for three hours I had worked through the mass of correspondence which had been heaped up against my arrival. And as I opened the last envelope I was filled with a sense of relief, almost of ecstasy—for in all that pile there was no letter from Lady Dennison. An immense weight of foreboding seemed to be lifted from my mind—I repeated over and over again to myself the good news in order to make myself realize it. There is no letter from Lady Dennison! Once again I fancied myself under the mulberry tree at Critton, listening to her promise, holding her fragile hand. All the intervening months of hardship and tedium and anxiety had vanished; already they seemed to me to lie centuries in the past, whilst Critton and Cynthia and Lady Dennison were the realities of the immediate yesterday. This very week—the next day even, I might meet them both again. And Cynthia was still free! There was no letter from Lady Dennison! Momentarily a doubt obtruded itself. Was it not odd that, whatever the circumstances, she had not written? But no, quite surely I need have no qualms. She had promised, and I could trust her, that she would write if there were bad news to break, or even if there were danger in sight. She had not written, and Cynthia must still be free, as when I had seen her last. Once more I sang to myself my silent song of thanksgiving.

    It was hardly half-past ten on the following morning when I walked into my club. I still felt the sensation of well-being, but something of the intoxication of happiness of the night before had left me. I was in fact worried about my next step. Believe me, the sensation of