Part 31 (1/2)

What gain to keep up pretence longer? Still holding the beast back with no other power than the power of the man's eye over the brute, I called out the truth to the trader.

”Don't move! Don't speak! Don't cry out! Perhaps we can stare them back till daylight comes!”

G.o.defroy held quiet as death. Some subtle power of the man over the brute puzzled the leader of the pack. He shook his great head with angry snarls and slunk from side to side to evade the human eye, every hair of his fur bristling. Then he threw up his jaws and uttered a long howl, answered by the far cry of the coming pack. Sniffing the ground, he began circling--closing in--closing in----

Then there was a shout--a groan, a struggle--a rip as of teeth--from G.o.defroy's place!

Then with naught but a blazing of comets dropping into an everlasting dark, with naught but a s.h.i.+p of fire billowing away to the flame of the northern lights, with naught but the rush of a sea, blinding, deafening, bearing me to the engulfment of the eternal--I lost knowledge of this life!

CHAPTER XIX

AFTERWARD

A long shudder, and I had awakened in stifling darkness. Was I dreaming, or were there voices, English voices, talking about me?

”It was too late! He will die!”

”Draw back the curtain! Give him plenty of air!”

In the daze of a misty dream, M. Picot was there with the foils in his hands; and Hortense had cried out as she did that night when the b.u.t.ton touched home. A sweet, fresh gust blew across my face with a faint odour of the pungent flames that used to flicker under the crucibles of the dispensary. How came I to be lying in Boston Town? Was M. Radisson a myth? Was the northland a dream?

I tried to rise, but whelming shadows pushed me down; and through the dark s.h.i.+fted phantom faces.

Now it was M. Radisson quelling mutiny, tossed on plunging ice-drift, scouring before the hurricane, leaping through red flame over the fort wall, while wind and sea crooned a chorus like the hum of soldiers singing and marching to battle. ”Storm and cold, man and beast, powers of darkness and devil--he must fight them all,” sang the gale. ”Who?”

asked a voice. In the dark was a lone figure clinging to the spars of a wreck. ”The victor,” shrieked the wind. Then the waves washed over the cast-away, leaving naught but the screaming gale and the pounding seas and the eternal dark.

Or it was M. Picot, fencing in mid-room. Of a sudden, foils turn to swords, M. Picot to a masked man, and Boston to the northland forest. I fall, and when I awaken M. Picot is standing, candle in hand, tincturing my wounds.

Or the dark is filled with a mult.i.tude--men and beasts; and the beasts wear a crown of victory and the men are drunk with the blood of the slain.

Or stealthy, crouching, wolfish forms steal through the frost mist, closer and closer till there comes a shout--a groan--a rip as of teeth--then I am up, struggling with Le Borgne, the one-eyed, who pushes me back to a couch in the dark.

Like the faces that hover above battle in soldiers' dreams was a white face framed in curls with l.u.s.trous eyes full of lights. Always when the darkness thickened and I began slipping--slipping into the folds of bottomless deeps--always the face came from the gloom, like a star of hope; and the hope drew me back.

”There is nothing--nothing--nothing at all to fear,” says the face.

And I laugh at the absurdity of the dream.

”To think of dreaming that Hortense would be here--would be in the northland--Hortense, the little queen, who never would let me tell her----”

”Tell her what?” asks the face.

”Hah! What a question! There is only one thing in all this world to tell her!”

And I laughed again till I thought there must be some elf scrambling among the rafters of that smothery ceiling. It seemed so absurd to be thrilled with love of Hortense with the breath of the wolves yet hot in one's face!

”The wolves got G.o.defroy,” I would reason, ”how didn't they get me? How did I get away? What was that smell of fur--”