Chapter IX: Narratives of Adventure (2)

I turned the horses toward her boarding-place, which was with a new family who had moved in at the head of the slew, near the pond for which poor Rowena was making the day of the prairie fire; and in doing so, set their faces right into the teeth of the gale. It seemed as if it would strip the scalps from our heads, in spite of all our capes and comforters and veils. Virginia pulled the robe up over her head. I had to face the storm and manage my team; but before I had gone forty rods, I saw that I was asking too much of them; and I let them turn to beat off with it. At that moment I really abandoned control, and gave it over to the wind and snow. But I thought myself steering for my own house. I was not much worried, having the confidence of youth and strength. The cutter was low and would not tip over easily. The horses were active and powerful and resolute. We were nested down in the deep box, wrapped in the warmest of robes; and it was not yet so very cold--not that cold which draws down into the lungs; seals the nostrils and mouth; and paralyzes the strength. That cold was coming--coming like an army with banners; but it was not yet here. I was not much worried until I had driven before the wind, beating up as much as I could to the east, without finding my house, or anything in the way of grove or fence to tell me where it was. I now remembered that I had not mounted the hill on which my house stood. In fact, I had missed my farm, and was lost, so far as knowing my locality was concerned: and the wind was growing fiercer and the cold more bitter.

For a moment I quailed inwardly; but I felt Virginia snuggled down by me in what seemed to be perfect trust; and I brushed the snow from my eye-opening and pushed on--hoping that I might by pure accident strike shelter in that wild waste of prairie, and determined to make the fight of my life for it if I failed.

It was getting dusk. The horses were tiring. We plunged through a deep drift under the lee of a knoll; and I stopped a few moments to let them breathe. I knew that stopping was a bad symptom, unless one had a good reason for it--but I gave myself a good reason. I felt Virginia pulling at my sleeve; and I turned back the robes and looked at her. She pulled my ear down to her lips.

“I know you now,” she shouted. “It’s Teunis!”

I nodded; and she squeezed my arm with her two hands. Give up! Not for all the winds and snows of the whole of the Iowa prairie! I disarranged the robes while I put my arm around her for a moment; while she patted my shoulder. Then, putting tendernesses aside, when they must be indulged in at the expense of snow in the sleigh, I put my horses into it again. A few minutes ago, I gave you the thoughts that ran through my mind as I conjured up the image of one lost in such a storm; but now I thought of nothing--only for a few minutes after that pressure on my arm--but getting on from moment to moment, keeping my sleigh from upsetting, encouraging those brave mares, and peering around for anything that might promise shelter. Virginia has always told of this to the children, when I was not present, to prove that I am brave, even if I am mortal slow; and if just facing danger from minute to minute without looking further, is bravery, I suppose I am--and there is plenty of good courage in the world which is nothing more, look at it how you will.

So far, the cutter and team of which I had robbed Buck Gowdy, had been a benefit to us. They gave us transportation, and the warm sleigh in which to nest down. I began to wonder, now, as it began to grow dark, as the tempest greatened, as my horses disappeared in the smother, and as the frost began to penetrate to our bodies, whether I should not have done better to have stayed in the schoolhouse, and burned up the partitions for fuel; but the thought came too late; though it troubled me much. Two or three times, one of the mares fell in the drifts, and nothing but the courage bred into them in the blue-grass fields of Kentucky saved us from stalling out in that fearful moving flood of wind and frost and snow. Two or three times we narrowly escaped being thrown out into it by the overturn of the sleigh; and then I foresaw a struggle, in which there would be no hope; for in a storm in which a strong man is helpless, how could he expect to come out safe with a weak girl on his hands?

At last, the inevitable happened: the off mare dove into a great drift; the nigh one pulled on: and they came to a staggering halt, one of them was kept from falling partly by her own efforts, and partly by the snow about her legs against which she braced herself. As they stood there, they turned their heads and looked back as if to say that so far as they were concerned, the fight was over. They had done all they could.

I sat a moment thinking. I looked about, and saw, between gusts, that we were almost against a huge straw-pile, where some neighbor had threshed a setting of wheat. This might mean that we were close to a house, or it might not. I handed the lines to Virginia under the robes, got out, and struggled forward to look at my team. Their blood-shot eyes and quivering flanks told me that they could help us no longer; so I unhitched them, so as to keep the cutter as a possible shelter, and turned them loose. They floundered off into the drifts, and left us alone. Cuffed and mauled by the storm, I made a circuit of the stack, and stumbled over the tumbling-rod of the threshing-machine, which was still standing where it had been used. Leaning against the wheel was a shovel, carried for use in setting the separator. This I took with me, with some notion of building a snow-house for us; for I somehow felt that if there was any hope for us, it lay in the shelter of that straw. As I passed the side of the stack, just where the ground was scraped bare by the wind, I saw what seemed to be a hole under and into the great loose pile of dry straw. It looked exactly like one of those burrows which the children used to make in play in such places.

Virginia was safe for the moment, sitting covered up snugly with her hands warmed by the little dog; but the cold was beginning to penetrate the robes. I could leave her for the moment while I investigated the burrow with the shovel. As I gained a little advantage over the snow which was drifted in almost as fast as I could shovel it out, my heart leaped as I found the hole opening out into the middle of the stack; and I plunged in on my hands and knees, found it dry and free from snow within ten feet of the mouth, and after enlarging it by humping up my back under it where the settling had made it too small, I emerged and went to Virginia; whom I took out with her dog, wrapped her in the robes so as to keep them from getting snowy inside, and backing into the burrow, hauled the pile of robes, girl and dog in after me, like a gigantic mouse engaged in saving her young. I think no mouse ever yearned over her treasures in such case more than I did.

And then I went back to get the dinner-basket, which was already buried under the snow which had filled the cutter; for I knew that there was likely to be something left over of one of the bountiful dinners which a farmer’s wife puts up for the teacher. Then I went back into the little chamber of straw in which we had found shelter, stopping up the mouth with snow and straw as I went in. I drew a long breath. This was far better than I had dared hope for. There is a warmth generated in such a pile, from the slow fermentation of the straw juices, even when seemingly dry as this was; and far in the middle of the stack, vegetables might have been stored without freezing. The sound of the tempest did not reach us here; it was still as death, and dark as tar. I wondered that Virginia did not say anything; but she kept still because she did not understand where she was, or what I had done with her.

Finally, when she spoke it was to say, “Unwrap me, Teunis! I am smothering with the heat!”

I laughed a long loud laugh. I guess I was almost hysterical. The change was so sudden, so complete. Virginia was actually complaining of the heat!

I unwrapped her carefully, and kissed her. Did ever any peril turn to any one a face so full of clemency and tenderness as this blizzard to me?

“It takes,” says she, “a storm to move you to any speed faster than a walk.”

The darkness in the burrow was now full of light for me. I made it soft as a mouse-nest, by pulling down the clean straw, and spreading it in the bottom, with the coonskin under her, and the buffalo-robe for a coverlid. There was scarcely room for two there, but we made it do, and found room for the little dog also. There was an inexpressible happiness in our safety from the awful storm, which we knew raged all about our nest; but to be together, and to feel that the things that stood between us had all been swept away at once--even the chaff that fell down our necks only gave us cause for laughter.

“Your coat is all wet!” she exclaimed.

“It was the snow, shoveling the way in,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

But she began right there to take care of me. She made me take off the overcoat, and wrap myself in the blanket. The dampness went out into the dry straw; but when drowsiness came upon us, she would not let me take the chance of getting chilled, but made me wrap myself in the robes with her; and we lay there talking until finally, tired by my labors, I went to sleep with her arms about me, and her lips close to mine; and when I awoke, she was asleep, and I lay there listening to her soft breathing for hours.

We were both hungry when she awoke, and in the total darkness we felt about for the dinner-basket, in which were the dinners of the children of the McConkey family with whom she had boarded, and who had gone home at noon, because the fuel was gone. We ate frozen pie, and frozen boiled eggs, and frozen bread and butter; and then lay talking and caressing each other for hours. We talked about the poor horses, for which Virginia felt a deep pity, out there in the fierce storm and the awful cold. We talked of the beautiful cutter; and finally, I explained the way in which I had robbed Gowdy of horses and robes and sleigh, and dog.

“He can never have the dog back,” said she. “And to think that I am hiding out in a strawstack with a robber and a horse-thief!”

Then she said she reckoned we’d have to join the Bunker gang, if we could find any of it to join. Certainly we should be fugitives from justice when the storm was over; but she for herself would rather be a fugitive always with me than to be rescued by “that man”--and it was lucky for him, too, she said, that I had licked him and shut him up in a house where he would be warm and fed; because he never would have been able to save himself in this awful storm as I had done. Nobody could have done so well as I had done. I had snatched her from the very jaws of death.

“Then,” said I, “you’re mine.”

“Of course I am,” she said. “I’ve been yours ever since we lived together so beautifully on the road, and in our Grove of Destiny. Of course I’m yours--and you are mine, Teunis--ain’t you?”

“Then,” said I, “just as soon as we get out of here, we’ll be married.”

It took argument to establish this point, but the jury was with me from the start; and finally nothing stood between me and a verdict but the fact that she must finish her term of school. I urged upon her that my house was nearer the school than was McConkey’s, and she could finish it if she chose. Then she said she didn’t believe it would be legal for Virginia Vandemark to finish a contract signed by Virginia Royall--and pretty soon I realized that she was making fun of me, and I her and kissed her until she begged my pardon.

And all the time the storm raged. We finished the food in the dinner pail, and began wondering how long we had been imprisoned, and how hungry we ought to be by this time. I was not in the least hungry myself; but I began to feel panicky for fear Virginia might be starving to death. She had a watch, of course, as a teacher; but it had run down long ago, and even if it had not, we could not have lit a match in that place by which to look at it. Becoming really frightened as the thought of starvation and death from thirst came oftener and oftener into my mind, I dug my way to the opening of the burrow, and found it black night, and the snow still sweeping over the land; but there was hope in the fact that I could see one or two bright stars overhead. The gale was abating; and I went back with this word, and a basket of snow in lieu of water.

Whether it was the first night out or the second, I did not know, and this offered ground for argument. Virginia said that we had lived through so much that it had probably made the time seem longer than it was; but I argued that the time of holding her in my arms, kissing her, telling her how much I loved her, and persuading her to marry me as soon as we could get to Elder Thorndyke’s, made it seem shorter--and this led to more efforts to make the time pass away. Finally, I dug out again, just as we both were really and truly hungry, and went back after Virginia. I made her wrap up warmly, and we crawled out, covered with chaff, rumpled, mussed up, but safe and happy; and found the sun shining over a landscape of sparkling frost, with sundogs in the sky and millions of bright needles of frost in the air, and a light breeze still blowing from the northwest, so bitingly cold that a finger or cheek was nipped by it in a moment’s exposure. And within forty rods of us was the farmstead of Amos Bemisdarfer; who stood looking at us in amazement as we came across the rippled surface of the snow to his back door.

“I kess,” said Amos, “it mus’ have peen your team I put in de parn lass night. Come in. Preckfuss is retty.”

From _Vandemark’s Folly_, by Herbert Quick.
Copyright 1922. Used by special permission of the
publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

THE ATTACK OF THE TIGER

J. H. ROSNY

Aoun woke when a third of the night had passed. The moon had gone down behind the western jungle, and its light reddened the vapours which were condensing on the branches. The moor was covered with pale grey shadows; the fire shed only a faint light near the seven bamboos.

At first the warrior only saw the motionless vegetation, but his sense of smell warned him of a living presence. Then a shadow emerged, became detached from a clump of palm trees and approached cautiously towards him. Aoun knew it was the tiger from the moment he opened his eyes, and he watched it come with anxiety and anger. The daring spirit which worked in him like a storm on the waters dilated his chest. Although he knew the tiger’s superiority over man, and despite the secret horror which possessed him, he desired to fight. Had not Noah conquered the grey wolf and the tigress, had he not himself overcome the sabre-tooth, the victor of the rhinoceros? For a moment he felt giddy, but this soon passed, the prudence of his ancestors calmed his blood; he knew that neither Noah nor Faouhm nor the Hairy Men would have attacked the tiger unless their own lives had been in danger....

Besides, one had awoken who would restrain him. The son of Earth became aware in his turn of the terrible presence. He looked at his companion, who had raised his club, and said, “The tiger has not found any prey.”

“If he comes near us,” said the other in a quivering voice, “Aoun will fling his spear and harpoon.”

“It is dangerous to wound the tiger. Its fury is greater than that of the lion,” was the reply.

“And if it will not go away from our refuge?”

“Aoun and Zouhr have provisions for two days.”

“We have no water and the tigress may join him.”

Zouhr did not reply. He had already thought of that. He knew that the wild beasts would sometimes take turns in watching a difficult prey. After hesitating a moment he replied, “The tiger has been alone since last night. Perhaps the tigress is far from here.”

Aoun could not see sufficiently clearly into the future to insist; his attention was concentrated on the tiger, which had come within five ells of the bamboos.

They could distinctly see the thick-set muzzle, fringed at the back with stiff hairs, the eyes shining more brightly than before. Aoun had a strange horror of their green light, and they made Zouhr tremble. At intervals growls could be heard on the moor. The tiger came closer; then it began to prowl up and down and round the shelter, with an awful and exasperating patience. It seemed as if it expected that the interstices would grow bigger or the interlaced creepers and bamboos become relaxed. Each time it came closer to them the two men trembled as if the wild beast’s hope was about to be realised.

Finally it couched in the dry grass. From there it observed them patiently, and from time to time opened its great jaws, so that the dying light of the fire shone upon its fangs.

“It will still be there in the morning,” said Aoun.

Zouhr did not reply. He was looking at two little branches of the turpentine tree which he had exposed to the fire, for he always liked to have some dry wood ready. He split the thinnest one down its whole length and gathered some twigs.

“Zouhr is not going to make a fire!” exclaimed the son of Urus reprovingly.

“There is no wind; the ground of our refuge is bare; the bamboos are young,” said Zouhr striking the stone flint against the marcasite ... “Zouhr has only need of a little fire!”

Aoun did not insist. He watched the sparks rise from the twigs, while his companion lighted the end of a turpentine stick. It soon threw out a bright light. Then, leaning towards one of the openings, the son of Earth flung the burning brand towards the tiger....

The flame described a parabola and fell among the dry grass. It was the most arid part of the moor, where the nocturnal vapours had not yet formed....

The tiger started up at sight of the glittering projectile, which disappeared among the tall grass stalks. Aoun laughed silently. Zouhr was carefully considering whether he should light another torch.

Only a twinkling red glow remained among the vegetation. The tiger lay down again.

After a moment’s hesitation Zouhr lit the second turpentine stick. The fire had just caught the point of it, when a livid jet appeared where the first had fallen, ran up the grass stalks, and made a line of light. The wild beast rose up with a roar, and was about to spring when Zouhr flung the second burning brand.

It struck the brute on the chest. Maddened, it turned round and round and bounded from side to side in zigzags. The fire, with a dry crackling sound, seemed to gallop its way through the tall grass; then it disseminated itself in sheafs and enveloped the wild beast.... The carnivore gave a cry of fury, plunged through the flames and fled.

“It will not come back,” Zouhr asserted. “No beast returns to the place where it has been burnt.”

His companion’s cunning delighted Aoun. His laugh was no longer silent but rang out over the moor, like a joyous war-cry.

“Zouhr is more cunning than Goun of the Dry Bones,” he said enthusiastically.

He laid his muscular hand on the shoulder of the son of Earth.

The tiger did not return. Aoun and Zouhr slept till day-break. A mist covered the moor and the jungle; silence and stillness lasted till the full dawn. Then the day animals began to stir. A loud clamour rose from the river and the trees of the forest. The son of Urus came out of the refuge and studied the landscape. No suspicious odour alarmed his nostrils and some axis passed by, which reassured him still more.

He went back to Zouhr and said, “We will continue our journey; but we will first go in a westerly direction so as not to meet the tiger.”

They started before day had fully dawned. The mist slowly rolled away and was lost in the pale sky, which rapidly turned blue. At first there were few animals to be seen; then their numbers increased and the warriors conjectured that they had left the domain of the tiger behind them. Aoun however sniffed the air anxiously. Feverish heat hung over the foliage; red-headed flies tormented the two men; the sun’s rays shot through the branches and seemed to bite into their flesh like white ants; monkeys made faces at them, and parrots shrieked in strident and furious tones.

“There will be thunder in the forest!” said the son of Earth.

Aoun stopped to consider the western sky. They were at the entrance of a clearing and could see a long stretch of firmament, of the colour of lapis lazuli, without a single cloud. Notwithstanding this the two men felt a vague uneasiness, which seemed to pervade the air like an unseen terror.

It lasted for a long time. Aoun and Zouhr turned aside towards the river, following the lines indicated by the various kinds of undergrowth. At mid-day the storm was still far off. They made no fire, but ate, without enjoyment, a slice of meat they had cooked on the previous day. Their rest was disturbed by the attacks of insects.

When they resumed their journey, the first mists were appearing in the west. A milky colour spread itself among the blue; the uneasy belling of the swamp deer was heard, and the lowing of buffaloes; cobras slipped by among the grasses. For a moment the warriors hesitated to start, but their halting-place was not a favourable one; immense old trees lifted crests that were dangerously high; the ground was spongy at their feet; they could see no shelter against the thunder-bolts that would ravage the forest. At intervals gusts of air passed over the crests of the trees with a sound like that of a river, or rose up in spirals, brushing aside the foliage. This was followed by deep, heavy silence. A wall of vapour rose towards the zenith, black smoke that became phosphorescent towards the edge. Then furious livid gleams of light shot through the world of trees. They had their origin very far from where Zouhr and Aoun stood, so they did not add their clamour to the tumult of the storm. When the wall shrouded the middle of the firmament and began to descend towards the east, a growing terror took possession of all living things; here and there only a fugitive animal could be seen seeking its lair, or a frightened insect trying to reach some crack in the bark of a tree. The life of the creatures was enveloped by another life, that life which, subtly diffused, creates and nourishes the forest life, but which if it is unchained destroys alike trees, grass and animals.

The wanderers had experienced these convulsions of nature. Aoun only thought of a refuge; Zouhr lifted his head from time to time possessed by the idea that monstrous wild beasts were raging in the clouds. Already their roars could be heard. Distance made them solemn, like the sound of lions’ voices lost among the hills. Then the thunder broke and the glare of the lightning became intolerable. A sound of running water was heard, which soon grew to the roar of rapids and of torrents. The jungle opened upon a lake which was preceded by marshes; no shelter was visible in the reeking ground; and the thunder rolled on at intervals. Under the arcades of a banyan tree where the two men stopped, a leopard crouched; sharp cries were heard from the monkeys in the branches above. Water flowed as if an ocean had broken through dykes in the sky; the smell of thunder and the scent of plants was borne on the squalls of wind.... In an hour the lake had risen; the marshy pools were full; one of them overflowed and began to invade the forest.

The wanderers were forced to retreat; but other waters came on with a roar which added to the noise of the storm. They were forced to flee as best they could towards the east. The raging waters harassed them. They had barely escaped from the flood on one side when it appeared unexpectedly on the other. Aoun galloped like a stallion, and Zouhr followed him, bent down and hardly lifting his feet, as was the custom of the Men-without-Shoulders. When they had put a space between themselves and the inundation, they continued their way towards the east, in the hope of reaching the river.

They traversed moors, and threaded their way through bamboos, palms and creepers. A marsh which had overflowed obliged them to turn towards the North. The storm was abating, the gusts of wind howled less loudly, and they finally reached a clearing where a torrent formed by the rain was racing along....

There they stopped, trying to estimate the depth of the water.

The lightning struck a group of ebony trees; on the other bank the long body of a terrified animal rose in great bounds; Aoun and Zouhr recognised the tiger. It turned round and round for a time in terror, then it stopped and perceived the human beings....

Aoun’s instinct told him that it was the one which had prowled round the refuge. Zouhr was certain of it when he saw that its chest was singed, and knew it must have been done by the burning grass.... More vaguely the tiger recognised the prey that had escaped him, made memorable by the fire, the barricade of creepers and the burning grass. He found them again at the moment when another fire struck the ebony tree. Their forms, thus associated in its mind with terrible things, made the wild beast hesitate.

All three remained immovable for a time. There was too small a space between the men and the beast to make flight possible.

Aoun had already got ready his spear, and Zouhr, fearing that flight might be followed by pursuit, also prepared himself to fight.

It was he who first hurled his weapon. It whistled above the waters and hit the brute close to its right eye. With a terrible roar it made its spring, but blood impeded its sight; its bound had not that awful precision which condemned to death all within its reach. The long body fell into the torrent, turned round and round, and clung to the bank by its front paws. Aoun threw himself upon it, his spear struck its breast, missing the shoulder.... Maddened with rage the brute hoisted himself on to the bank and charged the men. It was lame, and it moved slowly; Zouhr pierced its side with a second spear, while the son of Urus wounded it on the neck....

Then, holding their clubs in readiness, they waited. Aoun faced the attack and brought down his weapon on the tiger’s head, while the Wah attacked it from behind and aimed at the vertebrae.... One of its claws tore the Oulhamr’s body, but by stepping aside he made it slip, and the club, crashed down on the tiger’s nostrils, momentarily arrested its course.... Before it could spring again, Aoun’s club came down for the third time with such force that the tiger remained motionless, as if it slept. Then, without pausing for a moment, the two companions belaboured its vertebrae and legs with blows. The enormous body sank down, with terrible convulsions, and the son of Urus having put out its left eye, the wild beast was at the men’s mercy.

A spear thrust let out its heart’s blood.

From _The Giant Cat_ by J. H. Rosny. By
permission of the publishers, Robert M. McBride
and Company.

THE STORM

PIERRE LOTI

... It had changed its aspect, also, and its colour, the sun of Iceland, and it opened this new day by a sinister morning. Completely rid of its veil, it gave out great rays which traversed the sky in jets, announcing impending storms.

It had been too fine in the last few days and a change was due. The wind blew on this assembly of boats, as if it felt the need of scattering them, of ridding the sea of them; and they began to disperse, to flee like a routed army--simply before this menace written in the air, about which there could be no mistake.

And it steadily increased in strength, until men and ships alike shivered at it.

The waves, still small, began to chase one another, to group themselves. They had been marbled at first with a white foam which spread over them in slaver; but presently, with a sound of crackling, they gave out a smoke of spray; one would have said that the sea was boiling, that it was burning--and the shrill noise of it all augmented from minute to minute.

There was no thought now for the fishing, but only for the management of the boats. The lines had been hauled in long before. All were hurrying to get away, some to seek a shelter in the fiords, striving to arrive in time; others, preparing to pass the southern point of Iceland, deeming it the safer course to take to the open sea and have free space in which to sail before the wind. They still saw one another a little; here and there, in the hollows of the waves, sails rose up, poor little things, wet, weary, fugitive--but keeping upright nevertheless, like those children’s toys of pith of elder-wood which one may lay flat by blowing on them, but which always raise themselves again.

The great shag of clouds which had condensed on the western horizon with the aspect of an island began to break up at the top and the tatters coursed across the sky. It seemed inexhaustible, this shag: the wind stretched it, extended it, unravelled it, making issue from it an indefinite succession of dark curtains, which it outspread over the clear yellow sky, become now livid in its cold depths.

And still the wind increased, agitating everything.

The cruiser had made off towards the shelters of Iceland, the fishermen remained alone on this agitated sea, which now had an angry air and a dreadful colour. They made haste in their preparation for foul weather. The distance between them increased. Soon they were lost from sight of one another.

The waves, curling in volutes, continued to chase one another, to unite, to join forces in order to become still higher, and, between them, the hollows deepened.

In a few hours all was ploughed up, convulsed in this region which on the preceding evening had been so calm, and, in place of the silence of before, one was deafened with noise. Very quickly the scene had changed and all now was agitation, unconscious, useless. What was the object of it all?... What a mystery of blind destruction!...

The clouds were completing their unfolding, coming always from the west, overlaying one another, hurrying, swift, obscuring everything. There remained now only a few yellow openings, by which the sun sent down its last rays in sheaves. And the water, greenish now, was veined more and more with white slaver.

By midday, the _Marie_ had assumed completely her foul-weather trim; with closed hatches and reefed sails, she bounded supple and light; amid the disorder that was commencing she had the air of playing as play the porpoises whom storms amuse. With only her foresail spread, she ran before the wind, according to the nautical expression which describes this particular trim.

Above, the heavens had become completely overcast, a closed, oppressive vault--with darker shadings spread over it in shapeless smudges; the impression was almost of an immobile dome, and it was necessary to look close to realise that on the contrary it was in a very whirl of movement: great grey sheets, hastening to pass, and replaced without ceasing by others which came from below the horizon; funereal tapestries unwinding as if from an inexhaustible roll....

She ran before the wind the _Marie_, ever more quickly--and the wind ran, too--before I know not what mysterious and terrible power. The wind, the sea, the _Marie_, the clouds, all were seized with the same madness of flight and speed in the same direction. That which ran ahead the fastest was the wind; then the great heavings of the water, more lumbering, slower, followed after it; then the _Marie_, dragged in the universal movement. The waves pursued her, with their pale crests, which rolled on in a perpetual crashing, and she--continually overtaken, continually outstripped--escaped them, none the less, thanks to a wake she skilfully left behind her, an eddy on which their fury broke.

And in this movement of flight, the chief sensation was an illusion of lightness; without any difficulty, without an effort, one felt oneself leap. When the _Marie_ rose on the waves she rose without shock as if the wind had lifted her, and her descent afterwards was like a sliding, causing those internal qualms one has in the simulated fallings of the switchback or in the imaginary descents of dreams. She slid backwards, as it were, the racing mountains slipping away from under her to continue their course, and then she plunged again in one of those deep troughs which raced in their turn; without taking hurt she touched the dreadful bottom of them, in a shower of spray which did not even wet her, but which sped on like everything else; which sped on and vanished ahead of her like smoke, like an intangible nothing....

At the bottom of these troughs there was a deeper gloom, and as each wave passed, one saw behind another coming on; another larger still which rose up quite green by transparency, with furious writhings, with volutes that threatened to close, with an air of saying: “Now I have got you, now I will engulf you.”

But, no; it raised you merely, as with a lifting of a shoulder one might raise a feather: and, almost gently, you felt it passing under you, with its rustling foam, its roar as of a cascade.

And so it went on, continuously. But getting worse all the time. The waves followed one another, becoming ever more enormous, in long chains of mountains the valleys of which began to cause fear. And all this madness of movement became faster, under a sky that grew darker and darker, amid a noise that swelled until it became a roar.

It was very heavy weather, indeed, and it was necessary to keep watch. But, then, there was so much free space before them, space in which to run! And it happened also, that this year the _Marie_ had spent the season in the most western part of the Iceland fisheries; so that this headlong flight towards the coast was so much way made in their voyage home.

Yann and Sylvestre were at the helm lashed by the waist. They were singing again the song of “Jean-François de Nantes”; drunk with movement and speed, they sang at the top of their voices, laughing to find they could not hear each other amid all this unloosing of noise, turning round in their high spirits, to sing against the wind and losing breath for their pains.

“Hello, there! you youngsters, do you find it stuffy up there?” Guermeur asked them, putting his bearded face through the half-opened hatchway, like a devil ready to leap out of his box.

No, there was no lack of air on deck, that was certain!

They were not afraid, having a very exact notion of what was manageable, having confidence in the solidity of their boat, in the strength of their arms. And also in the protection of the faience Virgin who, during forty years of voyages to Iceland, had so often danced this same disagreeable dance, forever smiling between her bouquets of artificial flowers....

Jean-François de Nantes,
Jean-François.
Jean-François!

In general, they could see but a short distance around them: some hundreds of yards away everything seemed to end in monstrous waves whose pale crests stood erect, shutting out the view. One seemed always to be, in the middle of a restricted scene, which, nevertheless, was perpetually changing; and, in addition, things were drowned in this kind of watery smoke, which scudded like a cloud, with an extreme swiftness, over all the surface of the sea.

But, from time to time, a rift appeared in the northwest from which a sudden shift of wind would come; then, a glancing light arrived from the horizon; a trailing reflection, making the dome of the sky seem darker, shed itself on the white agitated crests. And this rift was sad to see; these glimpsed distances, these vistas oppressed the heart the more in that they made you realise only too well that there was the same chaos everywhere, the same fury--even beyond the great empty horizon, and infinitely beyond that again: the terror had no limits, and one was alone in the midst of it.

A gigantic clamour issued from things like an apocalyptic prelude sounding the alarm of the end of the world. And thousands of voices could be distinguished in it; from above came whistling voices and deep voices, which seemed almost distant because they were immense: that was the wind, the mighty soul of this disorder, the invisible power directing the whole commotion. It was terrifying enough; but there were other noises, closer, more material, carrying a more imminent menace of destruction, which the tormented water gave out, spluttering as if on burning coals.

And still the storm waxed fiercer.

And, in spite of their close trim, the sea began to cover them, to “eat” them as they said: first, the spray lashing from behind, then water in masses, hurled with smashing force. The waves rose higher still, more madly high, and the higher they rose the more jagged they became; one saw large greenish tatters of them, rags of falling water which the wind scattered everywhere. Some of them fell in heavy masses on the deck, with a smacking sound, and then the _Marie_ shook in her whole being as if in pain. Now one could distinguish nothing, on account of all this white scattering foam; when the blasts roared more fiercely one saw it rushing in thicker clouds--like the dust of the roads in summer. A heavy rain, which had begun, fell slant-wise also, almost horizontally, and these things together whistled, whipped, hurt like blows of a lash.

They remained both at the helm, bound and holding firm, clothed in their oilskins, which were tough and glistening as the skins of sharks; they had tied them tight at the neck, by tarred laces, and tight at the wrists and ankles, so as to keep the water out; and everything streamed over them, who bowed their backs when it fell too thick, buttressing themselves well so as not to be borne completely over. The skin of their cheeks burnt, and at every minute they caught their breath. After each great mass of water had fallen, they looked at each other--and smiled to see the salt amassed in their beards.

In time, nevertheless, it became an extreme weariness, this fury which did not abate, which remained always at its same exasperated paroxysms. The rage of men, the rage of beasts, exhausts itself and quickly subsides; one has perforce to suffer long the rage of inanimate things which is without cause and without aim, mysterious as life and as death.

Jean-François de Nantes,
Jean-François.
Jean-François!

Through their lips, which had become white, the refrain of the old song passed still, but like an aphonous thing, continued from time to time unconsciously. The excess of movement and noise had made them drunk; it was in vain that they were young, their smiles grimaced on their teeth which chattered in their trembling from the cold; their eyes, half-closed under burning, flickering eyelids, remained fixed in a grim atony. Lashed to the helm like two marble buttresses, they made, with their cramped, blue fingers, the efforts that were necessary, almost without thinking, by simple habit of the muscles. With streaming hair, and contracted mouths, they had become strange, and in them reappeared a whole background of primitive savagery.

They could see no longer! They knew only that they were still there, side by side. At the moments of greatest danger, every time that behind them the new mountain of water rose up, overhanging, clamorous, horrible, dashing against their boat with a mighty thud, one of their hands moved involuntarily in the sign of the cross. They no longer thought of anything, not of Gaud, not of any women, nor of any marriage. It was lasting too long and they were past all thinking; their intoxication of noise, of weariness, of cold, obscured everything in their heads. They were now only two pillars of stiff flesh who kept the helm; only two vigorous beasts clinging there by instinct so that they should not die.

From _The Iceland Fisherman_ by Pierre Loti.
Published by Frederick A. Stokes Company.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NARRATIVES OF ADVENTURE

The editors have found these additional selections very useful in teaching the writing of narratives of adventure.

Grenfell, Wilfred. _Adrift on an Ice Pan._ Houghton Mifflin
Company.

London, Jack. _To Build a Fire_, from _Lost Face_. The Macmillan
Company.

Paine, Ralph D. _The Story of The Derelict Polly_, from _Lost Ships
and Lonely Seas_. The Century Company.

Roosevelt, Theodore. _A Book Lover’s Holidays in the Open_, pages
347-353. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Sharp, Dallas Lore. _The Spirit of the Herd_, from _Where Rolls the
Oregon_. Houghton Mifflin Company.

Stewart, Eleanor Rupert. _Letters on an Elk Hunt_, from _The
Letters of a Woman Homesteader_. Houghton Mifflin Company.