It was bitter hard for Ned to fight his way back through death’s
twilight. The cold had hold of him, its triumph was near, and it would
not let him go without a savage battle that seemed to wrack the man in
twain. So far as his own wishes went, he only wanted to drift on,
farther and farther into the twilight ocean, and never return to the
cursed island again. But Bess was calling him, and he couldn’t deny her.
Perhaps in a distant cabin Lenore called him too.
Indeed, the call upon him was more urgent than ever before. Before, his
thought had always been for Lenore, but Bess too was a factor now. In
that utter darkness Ned saw more clearly than ever before in his life,
and while his eyes searched only for Lenore, he kept seeing Bess too.
Bess with her never-failing smile of encouragement, her soft beauty that
had held him, in spite of himself, on their nights at Forks cabin. Her
need of him was real, threatened by Doomsdorf as she was, and he mustn’t
leave her sobbing so forlornly on the ice above. Lenore was first, of
course,—his duty to her reason enough for making a mighty fight. But
Bess’s pleading moved him deeply.
He summoned every ounce of courage and determination that he had and
tried to shake the frost from his brain. “You’ll have to work quick,” he
warned again. His voice was stronger now, but softened with a tenderness
beyond her most reckless dreams. “Don’t be too hopeful—I haven’t much
left in me. What can you do?”
The girl who answered him was in no way the lost and hopeless mortal
that had lain sobbing on the ice. Her scattered, weakened faculties had
swept back to her in all their strength, at the first sound of his
voice. _He was alive_, and it is the code of the North, learned in these
dreadful months, that so long as a spark still glows the battle must not
be given over. There was something to fight for now. The fighting side
of her that Ned had seen so often swept swiftly into dominance. At once
she was a cold blade, true and sure; brain and body in perfect
discipline.
“How far are you?” she asked. “I can’t see——”
“About ten feet—but I can’t get up without help.”
“Can you stand up?”
“Yes.” Forcing himself to the last ounce of his nerve and courage, he
drew himself erect. Reaching upward, his hands were less than a yard
from the top of the crevice.
Bess did not make the mistake of trying to reach down to him. She
conquered the impulse at once, realizing that any weight at all,
unsupported as she was, would draw her into the ravine. Even the rope
would be of no use until she had something firm to which to attach it.
“I’ve dug holes most of the way up,” he told her. “I might try to climb
’em, with a little help——”
“Are you at the bottom of the crevice?”
“The bottom is hundreds of feet below me. I’m on a ledge about three
feet wide.”
“Then stand still till I can really help you. I can’t pull you now
without being pulled in myself, and if you’d fall back you’d probably
roll off the ledge. The ice is like glass. Ned, are you good for ten
minutes more——”
“I don’t know——”
“It’s the only chance.” Again her tone was pleading. “Keep the blood
moving for ten minutes more, Ned. Oh, tell me you’ll try——”
Deep in the gloom she thought she heard him laugh—only a few, little
syllables, wan and strange in the silence—and it was all the answer she
needed. He would fight on for ten minutes more. He would struggle
against the cold until she could rescue him.
“Here’s a blanket,” she told him swiftly. “Put it around you, if you
can, without danger of rolling off.”
She dropped him the great covering she had brought; then in a single,
deerlike motion, she leaped the narrow crevice. On the opposite side she
procured Ned’s axe; then she turned, and half running, half gliding on
the ice, sped toward the nearest timber,—a number of stunted spruce two
hundred yards distant at the far edge of the glacier.
Bess had need of her woodsman’s knowledge now. Never before had her
blows been so true, so telling on the tough wood. Before, in the fuel
cutting of months before, she had wielded the axe in fear of the lash,
but to-day she worked for Ned’s life, for the one dream that mattered
yet. Almost at once she had done her work and was started back with a
tough pole, eight feet long and four inches in diameter, balanced on her
sturdy shoulder.
Ned was still strong enough to answer her call when she returned, and
the dim light still permitted him to see her lay the pole she had cut as
a bridge across the crevice, cutting notches in the ice to hold it firm.
Swiftly she tied one end of her rope to the pole and dropped the other
to him.
“Can you climb up?” she asked him. Everything had centered down to
this—whether he still had strength to climb the rope.
“Just watch me,” was the answer.
From that instant, she knew that she had won. The spirit behind his
words would never falter, with victory so near. He dug his moccasins
into the holes he had hacked in the ice, meanwhile working upward, hand
over hand. To fall meant to die,—but Ned didn’t fall.
It was a hard fight, weakened as he was, but soon the girl’s reaching
hands caught his sleeve, then his coat; finally they were fastened
firmly, lifting with all the girl’s strength, under the great arms. His
hand seized the pole, and he gave a great upward lunge. And then he was
lying on the ice beside her, fighting for breath, not daring to believe
that he was safe.
But the usual cool, half-mirthful remark that, in many little crises,
Ned had learned to expect from Bess was not forthcoming to-night. Nor
were the sounds in the twilight merely those of heavy breathing. The
strain was over, and Bess had given way to the urge of her heart at
last. Her tears flowed unchecked, whether of sorrow or happiness even
she did not know.
The man crawled toward her, moved by an urge beyond him, and for a
single moment his strong arms pressed her close. “Don’t cry, little
pal,” he told her. He smiled, a strangely boyish, happy smile, into her
eyes. Very softly, reverently he kissed her wet eyelids, then stilled
her trembling lips with his own. He smiled again, a great good-humor
taking hold of him. “You’re too big a girl to cry!”
It was he, to-night, who had to relieve with humor a situation that
would have soon been out of bounds. Yet all at once he saw that the
little sentence had meaning far beyond what he had intended. She _had_
shown bigness to-night,—a greatness of spirit and strength that left
him wondering and reverent. The battle she had fought to save his life
was no less than his own waged with the white wolf, weeks before.
Here was another who had stood the gaff! She too knew what it was to
take the fighting chance. Presently he knew, by light of this adventure
on the ice, that Bess was more than mere companion in toil and hardship,
some one to shelter and protect. She was a _comrade-at-arms_,—such a
fortress of strength as the best of women have always been to the men
they loved.
He did not know whether or not she loved him. It didn’t affect the point
that, in a crisis, she had shown the temper of her steel! He did not
stand alone henceforth. In the struggle for freedom that was to come
here was an ally on whom, to the very gates of death, he could
implicitly rely.