Part 75 (1/2)

They had not spoken to each other for many days--or was it only hours?--when the Colonel, looking at the Boy, said:

”You've got to have a face-guard. Those frostbites are eating in.”

”'Xpect so.”

”You ought to stop it. Make a guard.”

”Out of a snow-ball, or chunk o' ice?”

”Cut a piece out o' the canvas o' the bag.” But he didn't.

The big sores seemed such small matters beside the vast overshadowing doubt, Shall we come out of this alive?--doubt never to be openly admitted by him, but always knocking, knocking----

”You can't see your own face,” the Colonel persisted.

”One piece o' luck, anyhow.”

The old habit of looking after the Boy died hard. The Colonel hesitated. For the last time he would remonstrate. ”I used to think frost_bite_ was a figure o' speech,” said he, ”but the teeth were set in _your_ face, sonny, and they've bitten deep; they'll leave awful scars.”

”Battles do, I b'lieve.” And it was with an effort that he remembered there had been a time when they had been uncomfortable because they hadn't washed their faces. Now, one man was content to let the very skin go if he could keep the flesh on his face, and one was little concerned even for that. Life--life! To push on and come out alive.

The Colonel had come to that point where he resented the Boy's staying power, terrified at the indomitable young life in him. Yes, the Colonel began to feel old, and to think with vague wrath of the insolence of youth.

Each man fell to considering what he would do, how he would manage if he were alone. And there ceased to be any terror in the thought.

”If it wasn't for him”--so and so; till in the gradual deadening of judgment all the hards.h.i.+p was somehow your pardner's fault. Your nerves made him responsible even for the snow and the wind. By-and-by he was The Enemy. Not but what each had occasional moments of lucidity, and drew back from the pit they were bending over. But the realisation would fade. No longer did even the wiser of the two remember that this is that same abyss out of which slowly, painfully, the race has climbed. With the lessened power to keep from falling in, the terror of it lessened. Many strange things grew natural. It was no longer difficult or even shocking to conceive one's partner giving out and falling by the way. Although playing about the thought, the one thing that not even the Colonel was able actually to realise, was the imminent probability of death for himself. Imagination always pictured the other fellow down, one's self somehow forging ahead.

This obsession ended on the late afternoon when the Colonel broke silence by saying suddenly:

”We must camp; I'm done.” He flung himself down under a bare birch, and hid his face.

The Boy remonstrated, grew angry; then, with a huge effort at self-control, pointed out that since it had stopped snowing this was the very moment to go on.

”Why, you can see the sun. Three of 'em! Look, Colonel!”

But Arctic meteorological phenomena had long since ceased to interest the Kentuckian. Parhelia were less to him than covered eyes, and the perilous peace of the snow. It seemed a long time before he sat up, and began to beat the stiffness out of his hands against his breast. But when he spoke, it was only to say:

”I mean to camp.”

”For how long?”

”Till a team comes by--or something.”

The Boy got up abruptly, slipped on his snow-shoes, and went round the shoulder of the hill, and up on to the promontory, to get out of earshot of that voice, and determine which of the two ice-roads, stretching out before them, was main channel and which was tributary.

He found on the height only a cutting wind, and little enlightenment as to the true course. North and east all nimbus still. A brace of sun-dogs following the pale G.o.d of Day across the narrow field of primrose that bordered the dun-coloured west. There would be more snow to-morrow, and meanwhile the wind was rising again. Yes, sir, it was a mean outlook.

As he took Mac's aneroid barometer out of his pocket, a sudden gust cut across his raw and bleeding cheek. He turned abruptly; the barometer slipped out of his numb fingers. He made a lunge to recover it, clutched the air, and, sliding suddenly forward, over he went, flying headlong down the steep escarpment.

He struck a jutting rock, only half snowed under, that broke the sheer face of the promontory, and he bounded once like a rubber ball, struck a second time, caught desperately at a solitary clump of ice-sheathed alders, crashed through the snow-crust just below them, and was held there like a mudlark in its cliff nest, halfway between bluff and river.

His last clear thought had been an intense anxiety about his snow-shoes as they sailed away, two liberated kites, but as he went on falling, clutching at the air--falling--and felt the alder twigs snap under his hands, he said to himself, ”This is death,” but calmly, as if it were a small matter compared to losing one's snow-shoes.