Part 16 (1/2)
Snow-blindness had found him in a night.
Slowly they plodded out of the valley, for hunger gnawed acutely, and they left a trail of blood tracks from the dogs. It took the combined efforts of both men to lash them to foot after each pause. Thus progress was slow and fraught with agony.
As they rose near the pa.s.s, miles of Arctic wastes bared themselves.
All about towered bald domes, while everywhere stretched the monotonous white, the endless snow unbroken by tree or shrub, pallid and menacing, maddening to the eye.
”Thank G.o.d, the worst's over,” sighed Willard, flinging himself onto the sled. ”We'll make it to the summit next time; then she's down hill all the way to the road house.”
Pierre said nothing.
Away to the northward glimmered the a.s.s's Ears, and as the speaker eyed them carelessly he noted gauzy shreds and streamers veiling their tops.
The phenomena interested him, for he knew that here must be wind--wind, the terror of the bleak tundra; the hopeless, merciless master of the barrens! However, the distant range beneath the twin peaks showed clear-cut and distinct against the sky, and he did not mention the occurrence to the guide, although he recalled the words of the Indians: ”Beware of the wind through the a.s.s's Ears.”
Again they laboured up the steep slope, wallowing in the sliding snow, straining silently at the load; again they threw themselves, exhausted, upon it. Now, as he eyed the panorama below, it seemed to have suffered a subtle change, indefinable and odd. Although but a few minutes had elapsed, the coast mountains no longer loomed clear against the horizon, and his visual range appeared foreshortened, as though the utter distances had lengthened, bringing closer the edge of things.
The twin peaks seemed endlessly distant and hazy, while the air had thickened as though congested with possibilities, lending a remoteness to the landscape.
”If it blows up on us here, we're gone,” he thought, ”for it's miles to shelter, and we're right in the saddle of the hills.”
Pierre, half blinded as he was, arose uneasily and cast the air like a wild beast, his great head thrown back, his nostrils quivering.
”I smell the win',” he cried. ”Mon Dieu! She's goin' blow!”
A volatile pennant floated out from a near-bye peak, hanging about its crest like faint smoke. Then along the brow of the pa.s.s writhed a wisp of drifting, twisting flakelets, idling hither and yon, astatic and aimless, settling in a hollow. They sensed a thrill and rustle to the air, though never a breath had touched them; then, as they mounted higher, a draught fanned them, icy as interstellar s.p.a.ce. The view from the summit was grotesquely distorted, and glancing upward they found the guardian peaks had gone a-smoke with clouds of snow that whirled confusedly, while an increasing breath sucked over the summit, stronger each second. Dry snow began to rustle slothfully about their feet. So swiftly were the changes wrought, that before the mind had grasped their import the storm was on them, roaring down from every side, swooping out of the boiling sky, a raging blast from the voids of sunless s.p.a.ce.
Pierre's shouts as he slashed at the sled las.h.i.+ngs were s.n.a.t.c.hed from his lips in scattered sc.r.a.ps. He dragged forth the whipping tent and threw himself upon it with the sleeping-bags. Having cut loose the dogs, Willard crawled within his sack and they drew the flapping canvas over them. The air was twilight and heavy with efflorescent granules that hurtled past in a drone.
They removed their outer garments that the fur might fold closer against them, and lay exposed to the full hate of the gale. They hoped to be drifted over, but no snow could lodge in this hurricane, and it sifted past, dry and sharp, eddying out a bare place wherein they lay.
Thus the wind drove the chill to their bones bitterly.
An unnourished human body responds but weakly, so, vitiated by their fast and labours, their suffering smote them with tenfold cruelty.
All night the north wind shouted, and, as the next day waned with its violence undiminished, the frost crept in upon them till they rolled and tossed s.h.i.+vering. Twice they essayed to crawl out, but were driven back to cower for endless, hopeless hours.
It is in such black, aimless times that thought becomes distorted.
Willard felt his mind wandering through bleak dreams and tortured fancies, always to find himself harping on his early argument with Pierre: ”It's the mind that counts.” Later he roused to the fact that his knees, where they pressed against the bag, were frozen; also his feet were numb and senseless. In his acquired consciousness he knew that along the course of his previous mental vagary lay madness, and the need of action bore upon him imperatively.
He shouted to his mate, but ”Wild” Pierre seemed strangely apathetic.
”We've got to run for it at daylight. We're freezing. Here! Hold on!
What are you doing? Wait for daylight!” Pierre had scrambled stiffly out of his cover and his gabblings reached Willard. He raised a clenched fist into the darkness of the streaming night, cursing horribly with words that appalled the other.
”Man! man! don't curse your G.o.d. This is bad enough as it is. Cover up. Quick!”
Although apparently unmindful of his presence, the other crawled back muttering.
As the dim morning greyed the smother they rose and fought their way downward toward the valley. Long since they had lost their griping hunger, and now held only an apathetic indifference to food, with a cringing dread of the cold and a stubborn sense of their extreme necessity.