No More Learning

Indeed, when I was over the bark's rails, I headed
off due north across the ice. I climbed and stumbled on in this
direction till I was well out of their sight and hearing amongst the
hummocks, and then I turned at right angles for the shore.

The cold up yonder in that Arctic night takes away your breath; it seems
to take the manhood out of you. You stumble along gasping. By a chance I
came on an Esquimaux sealing, and he beat and thumped me into
wakefulness. Then he packed me on to his dog-sleigh, and took my own bit
of a sled behind, and set his fourteen-foot whip cracking, and off we
set.

Well, you have to be pretty far gone if you can stay asleep with an
[v]Innuit's dog-sledge jolting and jumping beneath you, and I was well
awakened, especially as the Esquimaux sat on top of me. And so in time
we brought up at the huts, and a good job, too. I'd been tramping in the
wrong direction, so it turned out, and, besides, if I had come to the
village, I might well have walked over the top of it, as it was drifted
up level with snow. There was a bit of a rabbit-hole giving entrance to
each hut, with some three fathoms of tunnel underground, and skin
curtains to keep out the draught, but once inside you might think
yourself in a [v]stoke-hold again. There was the same smell of oil, and
almost the same warmth. I tell you, it was fine after that slicing cold
outside.

It was Amatikita's house I was brought to, and he was very hospitable.
They took off my outer clothes and put them on the rack above the
soapstone lamp to dry, and waited on me most kindly. Indeed, they
recognized me as a superior at once, and kept on doing it. They put
tender young seal-meat in the dish above the lamp, and when it was
cooked I ate my part of the stew, and then got up and took the best
place on the raised sleeping-bench at the farther side of the hut. I cut
a fill for my pipe, lit up and passed the plug, and presently we were
all smoking, happy as you please.

Amatikita spoke up like a man. "Very pleased to see you, Cappie. What
you come for? What you want? "

"You're a man of business," I said. "You waste no time. I like that.
What I want is bearskins. The jackets of big, white, baggy-trousered
polar bears, you know; and I brought along a couple of tip-top rifles
for you to get them with. Now, I make you a fair offer. Get me all the
bears in the North Polar regions, and you shall have my Henrys and all
the cartridges that are left over. And as for the meat, you shall have
that as your own share of the game. "

"You want shoot those bears yourself? "

"Not if I can help it. I'm an engineer, and a good one at that. But as a
sportsman I've had but little experience, and don't seem drawn toward
learning. It is too draughty up here, just at present, for my taste.
I'll stay and keep house, and maybe do a bit of repairing and inventing
among the furniture. I've brought along a hand-vice and a bag of tools
with me, and if you can supply drift-wood and some scrap-iron, I'll make
this turf-house of yours a real cottage. "

The deal was made. I worked away with my tools, and whenever those
powdering winter gales eased for a little, Amatikita and his friends
would go off with the howling dog-sledges and the Henrys, and it was
rare that they'd come back without one bear, and often they'd bring two
or even three. These white bears sleep through the black winter months
in hollows in the cliffs, and the Esquimaux know their lairs, though
it's rare enough they dare tackle them. Small blame, too, you'd say, if
you saw the flimsy bone-tipped lances and harpoons, which are all they
are armed with.

With a good, smashing, heavy-bore Henry rifle it is a different thing.
The Esquimaux were no cowards. They would walk up within a yard of a
bear, when the dogs had ringed it, and blow half its head away with a
single shot. And then they would draw the carcass up to the huts with
the dog trains, and the women would skin and dress the meat, and
Amatikita and the others would gorge themselves.

At last the long winter wore away. Amatikita dived in through the
entrance of the hut one day and told me that the ice-floe was beginning
to break. The news affected me like the blow of a whip. I went out into
the open and found the sun up. The men were overhauling their skin
canoes. The snow was wet underfoot and seafowl were swooping around. The
floe was still sound where it joined the shore, but two seaward lanes of
blue water showed between the ice, and in one of them a whale was
spouting pale gray mist.

It was high time for me to be off. So the bearskins were fastened by
thongs to the sledges and word was shouted to the dog leader of each
team. The dogs started, and presently away went the teams full tilt, the
sledges leaping and crashing in their wake, with the drivers and a
certain Scotch engineer who was unused to such [v]acrobatics clinging
on top of the packs. My! but yon was a wild ride over the rotten,
cracking, sodden floe, under the fresh, bright sunshine of that Arctic
spring morn!

Presently round the flank of a small ice-berg we came in view of the
_Gleaner_. She was still beset in the ice; but the hands were hard at
work beating the ice from the rigging and cutting a gutter around her in
the floe, so that she might float when the time came. They knocked off
work when we drove up.

"Good-day, Captain Black," I said. "I've been troubling myself over
bearskins, and I'll ask you for seven shillings head money on
twenty-nine. "

"You've shot twenty-nine bears? You're lying to me. "

"The skins are there, and you can count them for yourself. "

His color changed when the Esquimaux passed the skins over the side. And
I clambered aboard the ship along with them.

W. CUTCLIFFE HYNE.


=HELPS TO STUDY=

Tell this story briefly, using your own words. What mistake did
McTodd make in preparing for the hunt? What amused you most? How
did McTodd show his shrewdness, even if he was not a good hunter?
What do you learn about the Arctic region?


SUPPLEMENTARY READING

The Frozen Pirate--W. Clark Russell.
The Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine--Frank R. Stockton.




LOCHINVAR


Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west:--
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best,
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none;
He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He stayed not for [v]brake, and he stopped not for stone,
He swam the Esk river where ford there was none;
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate
The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,
Among bride's-men and kinsmen and brothers and all:
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word),
"Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar? "

"I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied;--
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide--
And now am I come with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar. "

The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up,
He quaffed of the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,--
"Now tread we a measure! " said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a [v]galliard did grace;
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume,
And the bride-maidens whispered, "'Twere better by far
To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar. "

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the [v]croup the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
"She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and [v]scar;
They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan;
Fosters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran;
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie lea,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war;
Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

SIR WALTER SCOTT.


=HELPS TO STUDY=

Read the poem through and tell the story briefly. Where is the
scene laid? _Border_ here means the part of Scotland bordering on
England. Who is the hero? Give your opinion of him. Find the
expressions used by the poet to inspire admiration for Lochinvar.
Give your opinion of the bridegroom. Quote lines that express the
poet's opinion of him. What word is used instead of _thicket_ in
the second stanza? a _loiterer_? a _coward_? Why do you suppose the
bride had consented? Why did her father put his hand on his sword?
What reason did Lochinvar give for coming to the feast? Why did he
act as if he did not care? Was the bride willing to marry "the
laggard in love"? How do you know? Describe the scene as the two
danced. What do you suppose was the "one word in her ear"?

Read aloud the lines describing Lochinvar's ride to Netherby Hall.
Read those describing the ride from the hall. Notice the galloping
movement of the verse.




IN LABRADOR


I

Trafford and Marjorie were in Labrador to spend the winter. It was a
queer idea for a noted [v]scientist and rich and successful business man
to cut himself loose from the world of London and go out into the Arctic
storm and darkness of one of the bleakest quarters of the globe. But
Trafford had fallen into a discontent with living, a weariness of the
round of work and pleasure, and it was in the hope of winning back his
lost zest and happiness that he had made up his mind to try the cure of
the wilderness. Marjorie had insisted, like a good wife, on leaving
children and home and comfort and accompanying him into the frozen
wilds.

The voyage across the sea and the march inland into Labrador were
uneventful. Trafford chose his winter-quarters on the side of a low
razor-hacked, rocky mountain ridge, about fifty feet above a little
river. Not a dozen miles away from them, they reckoned, was the Height
of Land, the low watershed between the waters that go to the Atlantic
and those that go to Hudson's Bay. North and north-east of them the
country rose to a line of low crests, with here and there a yellowing
patch of last year's snow, and across the valley were slopes covered in
places by woods of stunted pine. It had an empty spaciousness of
effect; the one continually living thing seemed to be the river,
hurrying headlong, noisily, perpetually, in an eternal flight from this
high desolation.

For nearly four weeks indeed they were occupied very closely in fixing
their cabin and making their other preparations, and crept into their
bunks at night as tired as wholesome animals who drop to sleep. At any
time the weather might break; already there had been two overcast days
and a frowning conference of clouds in the north. When at last storms
began, they knew there would be nothing for it but to keep in the hut
until the world froze up.

The weather broke at last. One might say it smashed itself over their
heads. There came an afternoon darkness swift and sudden, a wild gale,
and an icy sleet that gave place in the night to snow, so that Trafford
looked out next morning to see a maddening chaos of small white flakes,
incredibly swift, against something that was neither darkness nor light.
Even with the door but partly ajar, a cruelty of cold put its claw
within, set everything that was movable swaying and clattering, and made
Marjorie hasten shuddering to heap fresh logs upon the fire. Once or
twice Trafford went out to inspect tent and roof and store-shed; several
times, wrapped to the nose, he battled his way for fresh wood, and for
the rest of the blizzard they kept to the hut. It was slumberously
stuffy, but comfortingly full of flavors of tobacco and food. There
were two days of intermission and a day of gusts and icy sleet again,
turning with one extraordinary clap of thunder to a wild downpour of
dancing lumps of ice, and then a night when it seemed all Labrador,
earth and sky together, was in hysterical protest against inconceivable
wrongs.

And then the break was over; the annual freezing-up accomplished; winter
had established itself; the snowfall moderated and ceased, and an
ice-bound world shone white and sunlit under a cloudless sky.

One morning Trafford found the footmarks of some catlike creature in the
snow near the bushes where he was accustomed to get firewood; they led
away very plainly up the hill, and after breakfast he took his knife and
rifle and snowshoes and went after the lynx--for that he decided the
animal must be. There was no urgent reason why he should want to kill a
lynx, unless perhaps that killing it made the store-shed a trifle safer;
but it was the first trail of any living thing for many days; it
promised excitement; some [v]primitive instinct perhaps urged him.

The morning was a little overcast, and very cold between the gleams of
wintry sunshine. "Good-by, dear wife! " he said, and then as she
remembered afterward came back a dozen yards to kiss her. "I'll not be
long," he said. "The beast's prowling, and if it doesn't get wind of me,
I ought to find it in an hour. " He hesitated for a moment. "I'll not be
long," he repeated, and she had an instant's wonder whether he hid from
her the same dread of loneliness that she concealed. Up among the
tumbled rocks he turned, and she was still watching him. "Good-by! " he
cried and waved, and the willow thickets closed about him.

She forced herself to the petty duties of the day, made up the fire from
the pile he had left for her, set water to boil, put the hut in order,
brought out sheets and blankets to air, and set herself to wash up. She
wished she had been able to go with him. The sky cleared presently, and
the low December sun lit all the world about her, but it left her spirit
desolate.

She did not expect him to return until midday, and she sat herself down
on a log before the fire to darn a pair of socks as well as she could.
For a time this unusual occupation held her attention and then her hands
became slow and at last inactive, and she fell into reverie. Thoughts
came quick and fast of her children in England so far away.

What was that? She flashed to her feet.

It seemed to her she had heard the sound of a shot, and a quick, brief
wake of echoes. She looked across the icy waste of the river, and then
up the tangled slopes of the mountain. Her heart was beating fast. It
must have been up there, and no doubt Trafford had killed his beast.
Some shadow of doubt she would not admit crossed that obvious
suggestion. The wilderness was making her as nervously responsive as a
creature of the wild.

There came a second shot; this time there was no doubt of it. Then the
desolate silence closed about her again.

Marjorie stood for a long time, staring at the shrubby slopes that rose
to the barren rock wilderness of the purple mountain crest. She sighed
deeply at last, and set herself to make up the fire and prepare for the
midday meal. Once, far away across the river, she heard the howl of a
wolf.

Time seemed to pass very slowly that day. Marjorie found herself going
repeatedly to the space between the day tent and the sleeping hut from
which she could see the stunted wood that had swallowed her husband up,
and after what seemed a long hour her watch told her it was still only
half-past twelve. And the fourth or fifth time that she went to look out
she was set a-tremble again by the sound of a third shot. And then at
regular intervals out of that distant brown-purple jumble of thickets
against the snow came two more shots. "Something has happened," she
said, "something has happened," and stood rigid. Then she became active,
seized the rifle that was always at hand when she was alone, fired into
the sky, and stood listening.

Prompt came an answering shot.

"He wants me," said Marjorie. "Something--perhaps he has killed
something too big to bring! "

She was for starting at once, and then remembered this was not the way
of the wilderness.

She thought and moved very rapidly. Her mind catalogued possible
requirements,--rifle, hunting knife, the oilskin bag with matches, and
some chunks of dry paper, the [v]rucksack. Besides, he would be hungry.
She took a saucepan and a huge chunk of cheese and biscuit. Then a
brandy flask is sometimes handy--one never knows,--though nothing was
wrong, of course. Needles and stout thread, and some cord. Snowshoes. A
waterproof cloak could be easily carried. Her light hatchet for wood.
She cast about to see if there was anything else. She had almost
forgotten cartridges--and a revolver. Nothing more. She kicked a stray
brand or so into the fire, put on some more wood, damped the fire with
an armful of snow to make it last longer, and set out toward the willows
into which he had vanished.

There was a rustling and snapping of branches as she pushed her way
through the bushes, a little stir that died insensibly into quiet again;
and then the camping place became very still.

Trafford's trail led Marjorie through the thicket of dwarf willows and
down to the gully of the rivulet which they had called Marjorie Trickle;
it had long since become a trough of snow-covered, rotten ice. The trail
crossed this and, turning sharply uphill, went on until it was clear of
shrubs and trees, and, in the windy open of the upper slopes, it crossed
a ridge and came over the lip of a large desolate valley with slopes of
ice and icy snow. Here Marjorie spent some time in following his loops
back on the homeward trail before she saw what was manifestly the final
trail running far away out across the snow, with the [v]spoor of the
lynx, a lightly-dotted line, to the right of it. She followed this
suggestion of the trail, put on her snowshoes, and shuffled her way
across this valley, which opened as she proceeded. She hoped that over
the ridge she would find Trafford, and scanned the sky for the faintest
discoloration of a fire, but there was none. That seemed odd to her, but
the wind was in her face, and perhaps it beat the smoke down. Then as
her eyes scanned the hummocky ridge ahead, she saw something, something
very intent and still, that brought her heart into her mouth.
It was a
big gray wolf, standing with back haunched and head down, watching and
scenting something beyond.

Marjorie had an instinctive fear of wild animals, and it still seemed
dreadful to her that they should go at large, uncaged. She suddenly
wanted Trafford violently, wanted him by her side. Also, she thought of
leaving the trail, going back to the bushes. But presently her nerve
returned. In the wastes one did not fear wild beasts, one had no fear of
them. But why not fire a shot to let him know she was near?

The beast flashed round with an animal's instantaneous change of pose,
and looked at her. For a couple of seconds, perhaps, woman and brute
regarded one another across a quarter of a mile of snowy desolation.

Suppose it came toward her!

She would fire--and she would fire at it. Marjorie made a guess at the
range and aimed very carefully. She saw the snow fly two yards ahead of
the grisly shape, and then in an instant the beast had vanished over the
crest.

She reloaded, and stood for a moment waiting for Trafford's answer. No
answer came. "Queer! " she whispered, "queer! "--and suddenly such a
horror of anticipation assailed her that she started running and
floundering through the snow to escape it. Twice she called his name,
and once she just stopped herself from firing a shot.

Over the ridge she would find him. Surely she would find him over the
ridge!

She now trampled among rocks, and there was a beaten place where
Trafford must have waited and crouched. Then on and down a slope of
tumbled boulders. There came a patch where he had either thrown himself
down or fallen; it seemed to her he must have been running.

Suddenly, a hundred feet or so away, she saw a patch of violently
disturbed snow--snow stained a dreadful color, a snow of scarlet
crystals! Three strides and Trafford was in sight.

She had a swift conviction that he was dead. He was lying in a crumpled
attitude on a patch of snow between [v]convergent rocks, and the lynx, a
mass of blood-smeared, silvery fur, was in some way mixed up with him.
She saw as she came nearer that the snow was disturbed round about them,
and discolored [v]copiously, yellow, and in places bright red, with
congealed and frozen blood. She felt no fear now and no emotion; all her
mind was engaged with the clear, bleak perception of the fact before
her. She did not care to call to him again. His head was hidden by the
lynx's body, as if he was burrowing underneath the creature; his legs
were twisted about each other in a queer, unnatural attitude.

Then, as she dropped off a boulder, and came nearer, Trafford moved. A
hand came out and gripped the rifle beside him; he suddenly lifted a
dreadful face, horribly scarred and torn, and crimson with frozen blood;
he pushed the gray beast aside, rose on an elbow, wiped his sleeve
across his eyes, stared at her, grunted, and flopped forward. He had
fainted.

Marjorie was now as clear-minded and as self-possessed as a woman in a
shop. In another moment she was kneeling by his side. She saw, by the
position of his knife and the huge rip in the beast's body, that he had
stabbed the lynx to death as it clawed his head; he must have shot and
wounded it and then fallen upon it. His knitted cap was torn to ribbons,
and hung upon his neck. Also his leg was manifestly injured--how, she
could not tell. It was evident that he must freeze if he lay here, and
it seemed to her that perhaps he had pulled the dead brute over him to
protect his torn skin from the extremity of cold. The lynx was already
rigid, its clumsy paws asprawl,--and the torn skin and clot upon
Trafford's face were stiff as she put her hands about his head to raise
him. She turned him over on his back--how heavy he seemed? --and forced
brandy between his teeth. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she poured
a little brandy on his wounds.

She glanced at his leg, which was surely broken, and back at his face.
Then she gave him more brandy, and his eyelids flickered. He moved his
hand weakly. "The blood," he said, "kept getting in my eyes. "

She gave him brandy once again, wiped his face, and glanced at his leg.
Something ought to be done to that, Marjorie thought. But things must be
done in order.

The woman stared up at the darkling sky with its gray promise of snow,
and down the slopes of the mountain. Clearly they must stay the night
here. They were too high for wood among these rocks, but three or four
hundred yards below there were a number of dwarfed fir trees. She had
brought an ax, so that a fire was possible. Should she go back to camp
and get the tent?

Trafford was trying to speak again. "I got--"

"Yes? "

"Got my leg in that crack. "

Was he able to advise her? She looked at him, and then perceived that
she must bind up his head and face. She knelt behind him and raised his
head on her knee. She had a thick silk neck muffler, and this she
supplemented by a band she cut and tore from her inner vest. She bound
this, still warm from her body, about him, and wrapped her dark cloak
round his shoulders. The next thing was a fire. Five yards away,
perhaps, a great mass of purple [v]gabbro hung over a patch of nearly
snowless moss. A hummock to the westward offered shelter from the bitter
wind, the icy draught, that was soughing down the valley. Always in
Labrador, if you can, you camp against a rock surface; it shelters you
from the wind, guards your back.

"Dear! " she said.

"Awful hole," said Trafford.

"What? " she cried sharply.

"Put you in an awful hole," he said. "Eh? "

"Listen," she said, and shook his shoulder. "Look! I want to get you up
against that rock. "

"Won't make much difference," replied Trafford, and opened his eyes.
"Where? " he asked.

"There. "

He remained quite quiet for a second perhaps. "Listen to me," he said.
"Go back to camp. "

"Yes," she said.

"Go back to camp. Make a pack of all the strongest
food--strenthin'--strengthrin' food--you know? " He seemed unable to
express himself.

"Yes," she said.

"Down the river. Down--down. Till you meet help. "

"Leave you? "

He nodded his head and winced.

"You're always plucky," he said. "Look facts in the face. Children.
Thought it over while you were coming. " A tear oozed from his eye.
"Don't be a fool, Madge. Kiss me good-by. Don't be a fool. I'm done.
Children. "

She stared at him and her spirit was a luminous mist of tears. "You old
_coward_," she said in his ear, and kissed the little patch of rough and
bloody cheek beneath his eye. Then she knelt up beside him. "_I'm_ boss
now, old man," she said. "I want to get you to that place there under
the rock. If I drag, can you help? "

He answered obstinately: "You'd better go. "

"I'll make you comfortable first," she returned.

He made an enormous effort, and then, with her quick help and with his
back to her knee, had raised himself on his elbows.

"And afterward? " he asked.

"Build a fire. "

"Wood? "

"Down there. "

"Two bits of wood tied on my leg--splints. Then I can drag myself. See?
Like a blessed old walrus. "

He smiled and she kissed his bandaged face again.

"Else it hurts," he apologized, "more than I can stand. "

She stood up again, put his rifle and knife to his hand, for fear of
that lurking wolf, abandoning her own rifle with an effort, and went
striding and leaping from rock to rock toward the trees below. She made
the chips fly, and was presently towing three venerable pine dwarfs,
bumping over rock and crevice, back to Trafford. She flung them down,
stood for a moment bright and breathless, then set herself to hack off
the splints he needed from the biggest stem. "Now," she said, coming to
him.

"A fool," he remarked, "would have made the splints down there.
You're--_good_, Marjorie. "

She lugged his leg out straight, put it into the natural and least
painful pose, padded it with moss and her torn handkerchief, and bound
it up. As she did so a handful of snowflakes came whirling about them.
She was now braced up to every possibility. "It never rains," she said
grimly, "but it pours," and went on with her bone-setting. He was badly
weakened by pain and shock, and once he spoke to her sharply. "Sorry,"
he said a moment later.

She rolled him over on his chest, and left him to struggle to the
shelter of the rock while she went for more wood.

The sky alarmed her. The mountains up the valley were already hidden by
driven rags of slaty snowstorms. This time she found a longer but easier
path for dragging her boughs and trees; she determined she would not
start the fire until nightfall, nor waste any time in preparing food
until then. There were dead boughs for kindling--more than enough. It
was snowing quite fast by the time she got up to him with her second
load, and a premature twilight already obscured and exaggerated the
rocks and mounds about her. She gave some of her cheese to Trafford, and
gnawed some herself on her way down to the wood again. She regretted
that she had brought neither candles nor lantern, because then she might
have kept on until the cold night stopped her, and she reproached
herself bitterly because she had brought no tea. She could forgive
herself the lantern, for she had never expected to be out after dark,
but the tea was inexcusable. She muttered self-reproaches while she
worked like two men among the trees, panting puffs of mist that froze
upon her lips and iced the knitted wool that covered her chin. "Why
don't they teach a girl to handle an ax? " she cried.


II

When at last the wolfish cold of the Labrador night had come, it found
Trafford and Marjorie seated almost warmly on a bed of pine boughs
between the sheltering dark rock behind and a big but well-husbanded
fire in front, drinking a queer-tasting but not unsavory soup of
lynx-flesh, which she had fortified with the remainder of the brandy.
Then they tried roast lynx and ate a little, and finished with some
scraps of cheese and deep draughts of hot water.

The snowstorm poured incessantly out of the darkness to become flakes of
burning fire in the light of the flames, flakes that vanished magically,
but it only reached them and wetted them in occasional gusts. What did
it matter for the moment if the dim snowheaps rose and rose about them?
A glorious fatigue, an immense self-satisfaction, possessed Marjorie;
she felt that they had both done well.

"I am not afraid of to-morrow now," she said at last.

Trafford was smoking his pipe and did not speak for a moment. "Nor I,"
he said at last. "Very likely we'll get through with it. " He added after
a pause: "I thought I was done for. A man--loses heart--after a loss of
blood. "

"The leg's better? "

"Hot as fire. " His humor hadn't left him. "It's a treat," he said. "The
hottest thing in Labrador. "

Later Marjorie slept, but on a spring as it were, lest the fire should
fall. She replenished it with boughs, tucked in the half-burnt logs, and
went to sleep again. Then it seemed to her that some invisible hand was
pouring a thin spirit on the flames that made them leap and crackle and
spread north and south until they filled the heavens with a gorgeous
glow. The snowstorm was overpast, leaving the sky clear and all the
westward heaven alight with the trailing, crackling, leaping curtains of
the [v]aurora, brighter than she had ever seen them before. Quite
clearly visible beyond the smolder of the fire, a wintry waste of rock
and snow, boulder beyond boulder, passed into a [v]dun obscurity. The
mountain to the right of them lay long and white and stiff, a shrouded
death. All earth was dead and waste, and the sky alive and coldly
marvelous, signalling and astir. She watched the changing, shifting
colors, and they made her think of the gathering banners of inhuman
hosts, the stir and marshaling of icy giants for ends stupendous and
indifferent to all the trivial impertinence of man's existence! Marjorie
felt a passionate desire to pray.

The bleak, slow dawn found Marjorie intently busy. She had made up the
fire, boiled water and washed and dressed Trafford's wounds, and made
another soup of lynx. But Trafford had weakened in the night; the soup
nauseated him; he refused it and tried to smoke and was sick, and then
sat back rather despairfully after a second attempt to persuade her to
leave him there to die. This failure of his spirit distressed her and a
little astonished her, but it only made her more resolute to go through
with her work. She had awakened cold, stiff and weary, but her fatigue
vanished with movement; she toiled for an hour replenishing her pile of
fuel, made up the fire, put his gun ready to his hand, kissed him,
abused him lovingly for the trouble he gave her until his poor torn face
lit in response, and then parting on a note of cheerful confidence, set
out to return to the hut. She found the way not altogether easy to make
out; wind and snow had left scarcely a trace of their tracks, and her
mind was full of the stores she must bring and the possibility of moving
Trafford nearer to the hut. She was startled to see by the fresh, deep
spoor along the ridge how near the wolf had dared approach them in the
darkness.

Ever and again Marjorie had to halt and look back to get her direction
right. As it was, she came through the willow scrub nearly half a mile
above the hut, and had to follow the steep bank of the frozen river.
Once she nearly slipped upon an icy slope of rock.

One possibility she did not dare to think of during that time--a
blizzard now would cut her off absolutely from any return to Trafford.
Short of that, she believed she could get through.

Her quick mind was full of all she had to do. At first she had thought
chiefly of Trafford's immediate necessities, of food and some sort of
shelter. She had got a list of things in her head--meat extract,
bandages, [v]corrosive sublimate by way of antiseptic, brandy, a tin of
beef, some bread, and so forth; she went over it several times to be
sure of it, and then for a time she puzzled about a tent. She thought
she could manage a bale of blankets on her back, and that she could rig
a sleeping tent for herself and Trafford out of them and some bent
sticks. The big tent would be too much to strike and shift. And then her
mind went on to a bolder enterprise, which was to get him home. The
nearer she could bring him to the log hut, the nearer they would be to
supplies.

She cast about for some sort of sledge. The snow was too soft and broken
for runners, especially among the trees, but if she could get a flat of
smooth wood, she thought she might be able to drag him. She decided to
try the side of her bunk, which she could easily get off. She would
have, of course, to run it edgewise through the thickets and across the
ravine, but after that she would have almost clear going up to the steep
place of broken rocks within two hundred yards of him. The idea of a
sledge grew upon her, and she planned to nail a rope along the edge and
make a kind of harness for herself.

Marjorie found the camping-place piled high with drifted snow, which had
invaded tent and hut, and that some beast, a wolverine she guessed, had
been into the hut, devoured every candle-end and the uppers of
Trafford's well-greased second boots, and had then gone to the corner of
the store-shed and clambered up to the stores. She took no account of
its [v]depredations there, but set herself to make a sledge and get her
supplies together.