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They've no scientific poison masks. Yet year after year an outfit makes the summer trail and they get back when things freeze up with enough Adresol for their own doping, and a big bunch for trade to us. Your father doesn't answer that. He leaves us guessing, and thinking of winter when the whole darn country is covered feet thick in snow and ice."
Was it there that the secret of the Adresol plant lay hidden? Was it there that the sturdy Sleepers dared the summer trail for their priceless treasure? What monstrous conditions had produced it? What amazing anachronism had Nature created in the far-off Arctic world? And the terror of that journey in the dead of winter. It was a journey into the unknown, unguessed heart of a world's desolation.
There's no more unreal to Adresol than there is to the hell fires raging away out there in the heart of Unaga, where the whole place is white like a lake of pure milk with the bloom of the plant that breathes certain death, but which holds in its heart the greatest benefit the world's ever known. It's all queer, I allow. But say " He turned and pointed at the store-house. "It's all there.
They don't bring it green, and dry it themselves. They bring it dried. Now then, your father says that one root would yield a thousand per cent. more Adresol than the green foliage. And the green foliage five hundred per cent. more than the dried. Why then do the neches bring in the dried stuff in the open growing season? Do they prefer it that way?" He shook his head thoughtfully.
The only moment at which Adresol, in its native conditions, is perfectly innocuous is in its dead season, when the bulbous root lies dormant. The proportion of the drug contained in the dried foliage, however, is infinitely small." Steve looked up from his reading. "That," he said, "is all we need to convince us of the Sleepers' lack of understanding of the nature of the plant.
"I want to read this to you, boy. You've read it. We've both read it, but it's got a different meaning now. Listen." "Adresol has many features, interesting and deadly, foreign to all other known drug-producing flora. Aconite, digitalis, and the commoner varieties of toxins lie dormant in the producing plant. That is, there are no exhalations of a noxious nature.
The course had been deflected in response to the change of wind. Steve had left the shelter of the river where it had definitely turned northward. He had left it without regret. He had no regret for anything which did not further his purpose. Adresol! The quest of the Adresol pastures was the whole aim and object of his life.
He reminded himself that there must be a barrier, a dividing line, beyond which no life could endure. But he also knew that the field of Adresol must lie on the hither side of it. If that were not so, what of the Indians to whom it yielded supplies for the pleasant calm of their winter's sleep? Steve knew he was by no means witnessing a simple volcanic eruption. It was something far greater.
In Adresol the drug is active violently active. But in its active, crude state in the growing plant, it is of a very violent and deadly character. It would almost seem that an All-wise Creator has, for this reason, set it to flourish in climates almost unendurable to human and animal life, and in remotenesses almost inaccessible.
The heat from this hell ripens the stuff quick, and the sun makes it green again. This Adresol. A great field of dead white. Then, as swiftly, it dies. Dies before the Indians come. Burnt up by the rising temperature of the advancing season and the blistering volcanic heat." Marcel started up from his chair with an excited cry. "You're right, Uncle," he cried, completely carried away. "But where?