Chapter II

When at last the wolfish cold of the Labrador night had come, it found Trafford and Marjorie seated almost warmly on a bed of pine boughs between the sheltering dark rock behind and a big but well-husbanded fire in front, drinking a queer-tasting but not unsavory soup of lynx-flesh, which she had fortified with the remainder of the brandy. Then they tried roast lynx and ate a little, and finished with some scraps of cheese and deep draughts of hot water.

The snowstorm poured incessantly out of the darkness to become flakes of burning fire in the light of the flames, flakes that vanished magically, but it only reached them and wetted them in occasional gusts. What did it matter for the moment if the dim snowheaps rose and rose about them? A glorious fatigue, an immense self-satisfaction, possessed Marjorie; she felt that they had both done well.

"I am not afraid of to-morrow now," she said at last.

Trafford was smoking his pipe and did not speak for a moment. "Nor I," he said at last. "Very likely we'll get through with it." He added after a pause: "I thought I was done for. A man--loses heart--after a loss of blood."

"The leg's better?"

"Hot as fire." His humor hadn't left him. "It's a treat," he said. "The hottest thing in Labrador."

Later Marjorie slept, but on a spring as it were, lest the fire should fall. She replenished it with boughs, tucked in the half-burnt logs, and went to sleep again. Then it seemed to her that some invisible hand was pouring a thin spirit on the flames that made them leap and crackle and spread north and south until they filled the heavens with a gorgeous glow. The snowstorm was overpast, leaving the sky clear and all the westward heaven alight with the trailing, crackling, leaping curtains of the [v]aurora, brighter than she had ever seen them before. Quite clearly visible beyond the smolder of the fire, a wintry waste of rock and snow, boulder beyond boulder, passed into a [v]dun obscurity. The mountain to the right of them lay long and white and stiff, a shrouded death. All earth was dead and waste, and the sky alive and coldly marvelous, signalling and astir. She watched the changing, shifting colors, and they made her think of the gathering banners of inhuman hosts, the stir and marshaling of icy giants for ends stupendous and indifferent to all the trivial impertinence of man's existence! Marjorie felt a passionate desire to pray.

The bleak, slow dawn found Marjorie intently busy. She had made up the fire, boiled water and washed and dressed Trafford's wounds, and made another soup of lynx. But Trafford had weakened in the night; the soup nauseated him; he refused it and tried to smoke and was sick, and then sat back rather despairfully after a second attempt to persuade her to leave him there to die. This failure of his spirit distressed her and a little astonished her, but it only made her more resolute to go through with her work. She had awakened cold, stiff and weary, but her fatigue vanished with movement; she toiled for an hour replenishing her pile of fuel, made up the fire, put his gun ready to his hand, kissed him, abused him lovingly for the trouble he gave her until his poor torn face lit in response, and then parting on a note of cheerful confidence, set out to return to the hut. She found the way not altogether easy to make out; wind and snow had left scarcely a trace of their tracks, and her mind was full of the stores she must bring and the possibility of moving Trafford nearer to the hut. She was startled to see by the fresh, deep spoor along the ridge how near the wolf had dared approach them in the darkness.

Ever and again Marjorie had to halt and look back to get her direction right. As it was, she came through the willow scrub nearly half a mile above the hut, and had to follow the steep bank of the frozen river. Once she nearly slipped upon an icy slope of rock.

One possibility she did not dare to think of during that time--a blizzard now would cut her off absolutely from any return to Trafford. Short of that, she believed she could get through.

Her quick mind was full of all she had to do. At first she had thought chiefly of Trafford's immediate necessities, of food and some sort of shelter. She had got a list of things in her head--meat extract, bandages, [v]corrosive sublimate by way of antiseptic, brandy, a tin of beef, some bread, and so forth; she went over it several times to be sure of it, and then for a time she puzzled about a tent. She thought she could manage a bale of blankets on her back, and that she could rig a sleeping tent for herself and Trafford out of them and some bent sticks. The big tent would be too much to strike and shift. And then her mind went on to a bolder enterprise, which was to get him home. The nearer she could bring him to the log hut, the nearer they would be to supplies.

She cast about for some sort of sledge. The snow was too soft and broken for runners, especially among the trees, but if she could get a flat of smooth wood, she thought she might be able to drag him. She decided to try the side of her bunk, which she could easily get off. She would have, of course, to run it edgewise through the thickets and across the ravine, but after that she would have almost clear going up to the steep place of broken rocks within two hundred yards of him. The idea of a sledge grew upon her, and she planned to nail a rope along the edge and make a kind of harness for herself.

Marjorie found the camping-place piled high with drifted snow, which had invaded tent and hut, and that some beast, a wolverine she guessed, had been into the hut, devoured every candle-end and the uppers of Trafford's well-greased second boots, and had then gone to the corner of the store-shed and clambered up to the stores. She took no account of its [v]depredations there, but set herself to make a sledge and get her supplies together. There was a gleam of sunshine, though she did not like the look of the sky and she was horribly afraid of what might be happening to Trafford. She carried her stuff through the wood and across the ravine, and returned for her improvised sledge. She was still struggling with that among the trees when it began to snow again.

It was hard then not to be frantic in her efforts. As it was, she packed her stuff so loosely on the planking that she had to repack it, and she started without putting on her snowshoes, and floundered fifty yards before she discovered that omission. The snow was now falling fast, darkling the sky and hiding everything but objects close at hand, and she had to use all of her wits to determine her direction: she knew she must go down a long slope and then up to the ridge, and it came to her as a happy inspiration that if she bore to the left she might strike some recognizable vestige of her morning's trail. She had read of people walking in circles when they have no light or guidance, and that troubled her until she bethought herself of the little compass on her watch chain. By that she kept her direction. She wished very much she had timed herself across the waste, so that she could tell when she approached the ridge.

Soon her back and shoulders were aching violently, and the rope across her chest was tugging like some evil-tempered thing. But she did not dare to rest. The snow was now falling thick and fast; the flakes traced white spirals and made her head spin, so that she was constantly falling away to the southwestward and then correcting herself by the compass. She tried to think how this zig-zagging might affect her course, but the snow whirls confused her mind and a growing anxiety would not let her pause to think.

Marjorie felt blinded; it seemed to be snowing inside her eyes so that she wanted to rub them. Soon the ground must rise to the ridge, she told herself; it must surely rise. Then the sledge came bumping at her heels and she perceived that she was going down hill. She consulted the compass and found she was facing south. She turned sharply to the right again. The snowfall became a noiseless, pitiless torture to sight and mind.

The sledge behind her struggled to hold her back, and the snow balled under her snowshoes. She wanted to stop and rest, take thought, sit for a moment. She struggled with herself and kept on. She tried walking with shut eyes, and tripped and came near sprawling. "Oh God!" she cried, "Oh God!" too stupefied for more [v]articulate prayers. She was leaden with fatigue.

Would the rise of the ground to the ribs of rock never come?

A figure, black and erect, stood in front of her suddenly, and beyond appeared a group of black, straight antagonists. She staggered on toward them, gripping her rifle with some muddled idea of defense, and in another moment she was brushing against the branches of a stunted fir, which shed thick lumps of snow upon her feet. What trees were these? Had she ever passed any trees? No! There were no trees on her way to Trafford.

At that Marjorie began whimpering like a tormented child. But even as she wept, she turned her sledge about to follow the edge of the wood. She was too much downhill, she thought, and must bear up again.

She left the trees behind, made an angle uphill to the right, and was presently among trees again. Again she left them and again came back to them. She screamed with anger and twitched her sledge along. She wiped at the snowstorm with her arm as though to wipe it away; she wanted to stamp on the universe.

And she ached, she ached.

Suddenly something caught her eye ahead, something that gleamed; it was exactly like a long, bare, rather pinkish bone standing erect on the ground. Just because it was strange and queer she ran forward to it. As she came nearer, she perceived that it was a streak of barked trunk; a branch had been torn off a pine tree and the bark stripped down to the root. And then came another, poking its pinkish wounds above the snow. And there were chips! This filled her with wonder. Some one had been cutting wood! There must be Indians or trappers near, she thought, and of a sudden realized that the wood-cutter could be none other than herself.

She turned to the right and saw the rocks rising steeply, close at hand. "Oh Ragg!" she cried, and fired her rifle in the air.

Ten seconds, twenty seconds, and then so loud and near it amazed her, came his answering shot.

In another moment Marjorie had discovered the trail she had made overnight and that morning by dragging firewood. It was now a shallow, soft white trench. Instantly her despair and fatigue had gone from her. Should she take a load of wood with her? she asked herself, in addition to the weight behind her, and immediately had a better idea. She would unload and pile her stuff here, and bring him down on the sledge closer to the wood. The woman looked about and saw two rocks that diverged, with a space between. She flashed schemes. She would trample the snow hard and flat, put her sledge on it, pile boughs and make a canopy of blanket overhead and behind. Finally there would be a fine, roaring fire in front.

She tossed her provisions down and ran up the broad windings of her pine-tree trail to Trafford, with the sledge bumping behind her. Marjorie ran as lightly as though she had done nothing that day.

She found Trafford markedly recovered, weak and quiet, with snow drifting over his feet, his rifle across his knees, and his pipe alight. "Back already"--

He hesitated. "No grub?"

The wife knelt over him, gave his rough, unshaven cheek a swift kiss, and rapidly explained her plan.

Marjorie carried it out with all of the will-power that was hers. In three days' time, in spite of the snow, in spite of every other obstacle, they were back in the hut, and Trafford was comfortably settled in bed. The icy vastness of Labrador still lay around them to infinite distances on every side, but the two might laugh at storm and darkness now in their cosy hut, with plenty of fuel and food and light.

H. G. WELLS.

=HELPS TO STUDY=

I. Describe the location of Trafford's camp; also the coming of
winter. Give in your own words an account of the adventure that
befell the two.

II. Name some characteristics Marjorie showed in the critical
situation. What did she do that impressed you most? What would you
have done in similar circumstances?

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Youth--Joseph Conrad.
Prairie Folks--Hamlin Garland.
Northern Lights--Sir Gilbert Parker.

THE BUGLE SONG

The splendor falls on castle walls
The snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying.
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

THE SIEGE OF THE CASTLE

This story is an extract from Sir Walter Scott's novel, _Ivanhoe_,
which describes life in England during the Middle Ages, something
more than a century after the Norman Conquest. The hatred between
the conquering Normans and the conquered Saxons still continued,
and is graphically pictured by Scott. _Ivanhoe_ centers about the
household of one Cedric the Saxon, who was a great upholder of the
traditions of his unfortunate people. Wilfred of Ivanhoe, Cedric's
son, entered the service of the Norman king of England, Richard I,
and accompanied him to the Holy Land on the Third Crusade. His
father disowned the young knight for what he considered disloyalty
to his Saxon blood. Ivanhoe, returning to England, participated in
a great tournament at Ashby, in which he won fame under the
disguise of the "Disinherited Knight." Among the other knights who
took part in the tournament were the Normans, Maurice de Bracy,
Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, and Brian de Bois-Guilbert, a Knight
Templar. Two sides fought in the tournament, one representing the
English, the other representing the foreign element in the land. An
unknown knight, clad in black armor, brought victory to the English
side, but left the field without disclosing his identity. An
archery contest held at the tournament was won by a wonderful
bowman who gave his name as Locksley. Ivanhoe, who fought with
great valor, was badly wounded. Cedric had been accompanied to
Ashby by his beautiful ward, the Lady Rowena, whose wealth and
loveliness excited the cupidity of the lawless Norman knights. "The
Siege of the Castle" opens with Cedric's discovery of his son's
identity, and recounts the stirring incidents that follow the
tournament. It gives a wonderful picture of warfare as it was
hundreds of years ago, before the age of gunpowder.