Part 42 (2/2)
They plodded on once more. Stefan walked nearly all the time, pus.h.i.+ng the sledge, but tied to it by the waist for safety. He forgot that he was cold or that his limbs might become frostbitten. The dogs exerted all their strength, scenting the danger. Every minute the roar came nearer; it sounded like a cannonade above the noise of the wind.
Driven by despair, they fled ever faster. Yet at last the ice rocked under them, and in imagination they saw the water bubbling under their feet. It was close behind them; but the ice on which they were driving was still dry.
”Throw out everything--clothes as well as food! Throw them all out of the sledge!” Stefan shouted, scarcely able to keep pace with the terrified dogs. Bags, implements of all kinds, and furs flew away into the darkness. The lightened sledge sped forward rapidly, and Stefan was only just in time to throw himself on to it beside Jzef; the dogs needed no rein or guiding.
”You will die through my fault, Stefan; forgive me,” Jzef said. ”When I think of that, I want to jump out of the sledge and go back into the storm; but I expect you would not let me, would you?”
”What's the use of talking nonsense! We shall die together as we have lived together. A year sooner or later...! But we shall be buried in graves--never fear, we shall get back all right! Besides, the wind is going down. Can that be the coast?” he exclaimed, as he looked up.
Close above them rose a dark belt of rocks. Quickly they climbed up on to this firm ground, and while sheltering there, half dead with exhaustion, they watched the white ice-floes below packing with a loud roar. Stefan went to look for wood, and found a tree trunk not far away, from which he broke off a few splinters and lighted a small fire. The wind soon changed this into a bonfire, and for the rest of the night they slept beside it.
Buza found them there at daybreak.
”Are you alive? Thank G.o.d! It's a good thing that I didn't allow you to take anything away with you from there, or we should never have come off safe and sound. For this is just their 'bad weather.' It's the crime that made it bad. We didn't even make a fire, for I am afraid of the Chukchee. Didn't you light one? We saw a fire in this direction.”
”We lighted one, for we haven't any of our things left, and nothing to eat. We should have been frozen.”
They related how they had lost everything, and how the sea had chased them.
”Ah! that was not the sea--it wasn't the sea!” Buza sighed. ”If only we get home safely....”
Sadly they returned along the cliffs. They were obliged to make a wide circle, for the wind had blown them far beyond Pawal. They were unable to light fires, and drove on without resting as long as the dogs'
strength held out. Buza continually cast anxious looks about him.
Suddenly the dogs growled fiercely, and ran so fast towards the rocks that Buza was scarcely able to hold them.
”It only needed this!” he cried with pale lips. ”A rock-spirit!”
A dark brown, unmoving face looked through a crevice in the rock.
”Make the sign of the Cross over him, Father!”
With trembling hands the missionary made the sign of the Cross; but the head did not disappear. Stefan held in his dogs, which were straining at their harness. He looked fixedly at the head.
”Otowaka! is that you?” he cried at last, when an old Chukchee, thin and pale, came out, leading a little boy by the hand.
”It is I ... Otowaka ... Kituwia....” he said; but his lips were too parched to continue, and he merely waved his hand towards the distant Peweka. ”The Great Spirit would not allow my family to perish without an avenger. I will go with you and be baptized, and bring him up.”
He laid his hand on the head of the boy, whose face suddenly took a disdainful expression, reminding Stefan strikingly of Kituwia's stony face.
THE RETURNING WAVE
BY BOLESLAW PRUS (ALEXSANDER GLOWACKI)
CHAPTER I
If Pastor Boehme's worthiness could have been weighed on a pair of scales, the reverend gentleman would have been obliged to travel on a goods truck. But as worthiness cannot be cla.s.sified under any of the three mathematical dimensions, but comes under the fourth, which does not belong to the world of realities, he travelled in a little one-horse britzka instead.
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