THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE
"--paa dit Firmament
Den klare Nordlyslampe taendt...."
Innocently thinking that they had seen Arctic travelling at its worst,
and secretly looking upon themselves as highly accomplished trailmen,
they had covered the forty-one miles from Holy Cross to Anvik in less
than three days.
The Colonel made much of the pleasant and excellent man at the head of
the Episcopal mission there, and the Boy haunted Benham's store,
picking up a little Ingalik and the A. C. method of trading with the
Indians, who, day and night, with a number of stranded Klondykers,
congregated about the grateful warmth of the big iron stove.
The travellers themselves did some business with the A. C. agent,
laying in supplies of fresh meat, and even augmenting their hitherto
carefully restricted outfit, for they were going far beyond the reach
of stores, or even of missions. Anvik was the last white settlement
below Nulato; Nulato was said to be over two hundred miles to the
northward.
And yet after all their further preparation and expense, each man kept
saying in his heart, during those first days out from Anvik, that the
journey would be easy enough but for their "comforts"--the burden on
the sled. By all the rules of arithmetic, the daily subtraction of
three meals from the store should have lightened the load. It seemed to
have the opposite effect. By some process of evil enchantment every
ounce grew to weigh a pound, every pound a hundredweight. The sled
itself was bewitched. Recall how lightsomely it ran down the snowy
slope, from the Big Chimney Cabin to the river trail, that morning they
set forth. The Boy took its pretty impetuosity for a happy augury--the
very sled was eager for the mighty undertaking.
But never in all that weary march did it manifest again any such modest
alacrity. If, thereafter, in the long going "up river" there came an
interval of downhill, the sled turned summersaults in the air, wound
its forward or backward rope round willow scrub or alder, or else
advanced precipitately with an evil, low-comedy air, bottom side up, to
attack its master in the shins. It either held back with a power
superhuman, or it lunged forward with a momentum that capsized its
weary conductor. Its manners grew steadily worse as the travellers
pushed farther and farther into the wilderness, beyond the exorcising
power of Holy Cross, beyond the softening influences of Christian
hospitality at Episcopal Anvik, even beyond Tischsocket, the last of
the Indian villages for a hundred miles.
The two who had been scornful of the frailty of temper they had seen
common in men's dealings up here in the North, began to realize that
all other trials of brotherhood pale before the strain of life on the
Arctic trail. Beyond any question, after a while something goes wrong
with the nerves. The huge drafts on muscular endurance have, no doubt,
something to do with it. They worked hard for fourteen, sometimes
seventeen, hours at a stretch; they were ill-fed, suffering from
exposure, intense cold, and a haunting uncertainty of the end of the
undertaking. They were reasonable fellows as men go, with a respect for
each other, but when hardship has got on the nerves, when you are
suffering the agonies of snow-blindness, sore feet, and the pangs of
hunger, you are not, to put it mildly, at your best as a member of the
social order. They sometimes said things they were ashamed to remember,
but both men grew carefuller at crucial moments, and the talkative one
more silent as time went on.
By the rule of the day the hard shift before dinner usually fell to the
Boy. It was the worst time in the twenty-four hours, and equally
dreaded by both men. It was only the first night out from Anvik, after
an unusually trying day, the Boy was tramping heavily ahead, bent like
an old man before the cutting sleet, fettered like a criminal, hands
behind back, rope-wound, stiff, straining at the burden of the slow and
sullen sled. On a sudden he stopped, straightened his back, and
remonstrated with the Colonel in unprintable terms, for putting off the
halt later than ever they had yet, "after such a day."
"Can't make fire with green cotton-wood," was the Colonel's rejoiner.
"Then let's stop and rest, anyhow."
"Nuh! We know where that would land us. Men who stop to rest, go to
sleep in the snow, and men who go to sleep in the snow on empty
stomachs don't wake up."
They pushed on another mile. When the Colonel at last called the halt,
the Boy sank down on the sled too exhausted to speak. But it had grown
to be a practice with them not to trust themselves to talk at this
hour. The Colonel would give the signal to stop, simply by ceasing to
push the sled that the boy was wearily dragging. The Boy had invariably
been feeling (just as the Colonel had before, during his shift in
front) that the man behind wasn't helping all he might, whereupon
followed a vague, consciously unreasonable, but wholly irresistible
rage against the partner of his toil. But however much the man at the
back was supposed to spare himself, the man in front had never yet
failed to know when the impetus from behind was really removed.
The Boy sat now on the sled, silent, motionless, while the Colonel
felled and chopped and brought the wood. Then the Boy dragged himself
up, made the fire and the beef-tea. But still no word even after that
reviving cup--the usual signal for a few remarks and more social
relations to be established. Tonight no sound out of either. The
Colonel changed his footgear and the melted snow in the pot began to
boil noisily. But the Boy, who had again betaken himself to the sled,
didn't budge. No man who really knows the trail would have dared, under
the circumstances, to remind his pardner that it was now his business
to get up and fry the bacon. But presently, without looking up, the
hungry Colonel ventured:
"Get your dry things!"
"Feet aren't wet."
"Don't talk foolishness; here are your things." The Colonel flung in
the Boy's direction the usual change, two pairs of heavy socks, the
"German knitted" and "the felt."
"Not wet," repeated the Boy.
"You know you are."
"Could go through water in these mucklucks."
"I'm not saying the wet has come in from outside; but you know as well
as I do a man sweats like a horse on the trail."
Still the Boy sat there, with his head sunk between his shoulders.
"First rule o' this country is to keep your feet dry, or else
pneumonia, rheumatism--God knows what!"
"First rule o' this country is mind your own business, or else--God
knows what!"
The Colonel looked at the Boy a moment, and then turned his back. The
Boy glanced up conscience-stricken, but still only half alive, dulled
by the weight of a crushing weariness. The Colonel presently bent over
the fire and was about to lift off the turbulently boiling pot. The Boy
sprang to his feet, ready to shout, "You do your work, and keep your
hands off mine," but the Colonel turned just in time to say with
unusual gentleness:
"If you _like_, I'll make supper to-night;" and the Boy, catching his
breath, ran forward, swaying a little, half blind, but with a different
look in his tired eyes.
"No, no, old man. It isn't as bad as that."
And again it was two friends who slept side by side in the snow.
The next morning the Colonel, who had been kept awake half the night by
what he had been thinking was neuralgia in his eyes, woke late, hearing
the Boy calling:
"I say, Kentucky, aren't you _ever_ goin' to get up?"
"Get up?" said the Colonel. "Why should I, when it's pitch-dark?"
"_What?_"
"Fire clean out, eh?" But he smelt the tea and bacon, and sat up
bewildered, with a hand over his smarting eyes. The Boy went over and
knelt down by him, looking at him curiously.
"Guess you're a little snow-blind, Colonel; but it won't last, you
know."
"Blind!"
"No, no, only _snow_-blind. Big difference;" and he took out his rag of
a handkerchief, got some water in a tin cup, and the eyes were bathed
and bandaged.
"It won't last, you know. You'll just have to take it easy for a few
days."
The Colonel groaned.
For the first time he seemed to lose heart. He sat during breakfast
with bandaged eyes, and a droop of the shoulders, that seemed to say
old age had come upon him in a single night. The day that followed was
pretty dark to both men. The Boy had to do all the work, except the
monotonous, blind, pushing from behind, in whatever direction the Boy
dragged the sled.
Now, snow-blindness is not usually dangerous, but it is horribly
painful while it lasts. Your eyes swell up and are stabbed continually
by cutting pains; your head seems full of acute neuralgia, and often
there is fever and other complications. The Colonel's was a bad case.
But he was a giant for strength and "sound as a dollar," as the Boy
reminded him, "except for this little bother with your eyes, and you're
a whole heap better already."
At a very slow rate they plodded along.
They had got into a region where there was no timber; but, as they
couldn't camp without a fire, they took an extra rest that day at four
o'clock, and regaled themselves on some cold grub. Then they took up
the line of march again. But they had been going only about half an
hour when the Colonel suddenly, without warning, stopped pushing the
sled, and stood stock-still on the trail. The Boy, feeling the removal
of the pressure, looked round, went back to him, and found nothing in
particular was the matter, but he just thought he wouldn't go any
further.
"We can camp here."
"No, we can't," says the Boy; "there isn't a tree in sight."
But the Colonel seemed dazed. He thought he'd stop anyhow--"right where
he was."
"Oh, no," says the Boy, a little frightened; "we'll camp the minute we
come to wood." But the Colonel stood as if rooted. The Boy took his arm
and led him on a few paces to the sled. "You needn't push hard, you
know. Just keep your hand there so, without looking, you'll know where
I'm going." This was very subtle of the Boy. For he knew the Colonel
was blind as a bat and as sensitive as a woman. "We'll get through all
right yet," he called back, as he stooped to take up the sledrope. "I
bet on Kentucky."
Like a man walking in his sleep, the Colonel followed, now holding on
to the sled and unconsciously pulling a little, and when the Boy, very
nearly on his last legs, remonstrated, leaning against it, and so
urging it a little forward.
Oh, but the wood was far to seek that night!
Concentrated on the two main things--to carry forward his almost
intolerable load, and to go the shortest way to the nearest wood--the
Boy, by-and-by, forgot to tell his tired nerves to take account of the
unequal pressure from behind. If he felt it--well, the Colonel was a
corker; if he didn't feel it--well, the Colonel was just about tuckered
out. It was very late when at last the Boy raised a shout. Behind the
cliff overhanging the river-bed that they were just rounding, there,
spread out in the sparkling starlight, as far as he could see, a vast
primeval forest. The Boy bettered his lagging pace.
"Ha! you haven't seen a wood like this since we left 'Frisco. It's all
right now, Kentucky;" and he bent to his work with a will.
When he got to the edge of the wood, he flung down the rope and
turned--to find himself alone.
"Colonel! Colonel! Where are you? _Colonel!_"
He stood in the silence, shivering with a sudden sense of desolation.
He took his bearings, propped a fallen fir sapling aslant by the sled,
and, forgetting he was ready to drop, he ran swiftly hack along the way
he came. They had travelled all that afternoon and evening on the river
ice, hard as iron, retaining no trace of footprint or of runner
possible to verify even in daylight. The Yukon here was fully three
miles wide. They had meant to hug the right bank, but snow and ice
refashion the world and laugh at the trustful geography of men. A
traveller on this trail is not always sure whether he is following the
mighty Yukon or some slough equally mighty for a few miles, or whether,
in the protracted twilight, he has not wandered off upon some frozen
swamp.
On the Boy went in the ghostly starlight, running, stumbling, calling
at regular intervals, his voice falling into a melancholy monotony that
sounded foreign to himself. It occurred to him that were he the Colonel
he wouldn't recognise it, and he began instead to call "Kentucky!
Ken-tuck-kee!" sounding those fine barbaric syllables for the first
time, most like, in that world of ice and silence.
He stood an instant after his voice died, and listened to the quiet.
Yes, the people were right who said nothing was so hard to bear in this
country of hardship--nothing ends by being so ghastly--as the silence.
No bird stirs. The swift-flashing fish are sealed under ice, the wood
creatures gone to their underground sleep. No whispering of the pointed
firs, stiff, snowclotted; no swaying of the scant herbage sheathed in
ice or muffled under winter's wide white blanket. No greater hush can
reign in the interstellar spaces than in winter on the Yukon.
"Colonel!"
Silence--like a negation of all puny things, friendship, human life--
"Colonel!"
Silence. No wonder men went mad up here, when they didn't drown this
silence in strong drink.
On and on he ran, till he felt sure he must have passed the Colonel,
unless--yes, there were those air-holes in the river ice ... He felt
choked and stopped to breathe. Should he go back? It was horrible to
turn. It was like admitting that the man was not to be found--that this
was the end.
"Colonel!"
He said to himself that he would go back, and build a fire for a
signal, and return; but he ran on farther and farther away from the
sled and from the forest. Was it growing faintly light? He looked up.
Oh, yes; presently it would be brighter still. Those streamers of pale
light dancing in the North; they would be green and scarlet and orange
and purple, and the terrible white world would be illumined as by
conflagration. He stopped again. That the Colonel should have dropped
so far back as this, and the man in front not know--it was incredible.
What was that? A shadow on the ice. A frozen hummock? No, a man. Was it
really....? Glory hallelujah--it _was!_ But the shadow lay there
ghastly still and the Boy's greeting died in his throat. He had found
the Colonel, but he had found him delivered over to that treacherous
sleep that seldom knows a waking. The Boy dropped down beside his
friend, and wasn't far off crying. But it was a tonic to young nerves
to see how, like one dead, the man lay there, for all the calling and
tugging by the arm. The Boy rolled the body over, pulled open the
things at the neck, and thrust his hand down, till he could feel the
heart beating. He jumped up, got a handful of snow, and rubbed the
man's face with it. At last a feeble protest--an effort to get away
from the Boy's rude succour.
"Thank God! Colonel! Colonel! wake up!"
He shook him hard. But the big man only growled sullenly, and let his
leaden weight drop back heavily on the ice. The Boy got hold of the
neck of the Colonel's parki and pulled him frantically along the ice a
few yards, and then realised that only the terror of the moment gave
him the strength to do that much. To drag a man of the Colonel's weight
all the way to the wood was stark impossibility. He couldn't get him
eighty yards. If he left him and went for the sled and fuel, the man
would be dead by the time he got back. If he stayed, they would both be
frozen in a few hours. It was pretty horrible.
He felt faint and dizzy. It occurred to him that he would pray. He was
an agnostic all right, but the Colonel was past praying for himself;
and here was his friend--an agnostic--here he was on his knees. He
hadn't prayed since he was a little chap down in the South. How did the
prayers go? "Our Father"--he looked up at the reddening aurora--"Our
Father, who art in heaven--" His eyes fell again on his friend. He
leapt to his feet like a wild animal, and began to go at the Colonel
with his fists. The blows rained thick on the chest of the prostrate
man, but he was too well protected to feel more than the shock. But now
they came battering down, under the ear--right, left, as the man turned
blindly to avoid them--on the jaw, even on the suffering eyes, and that
at last stung the sleeper into something like consciousness.
He struggled to his feet with a roar like a wounded bull, lunging
heavily forward as the Boy eluded him, and he would have pounded the
young fellow out of existence in no time had he stood his ground. That
was exactly what the Boy didn't mean to do--he was always just a little
way on in front; but as the Colonel's half-insane rage cooled, and he
slowed down a bit, the Boy was at him again like some imp of Satan.
Sound and lithe and quick-handed as he was, he was no match for the
Colonel at his best. But the Colonel couldn't see well, and his brain
was on fire. He'd kill that young devil, and then he'd lie down and
sleep again.
Meanwhile Aurora mounted the high heavens; from a great corona in the
zenith all the sky was hung with banners, and the snow was stained as
if with blood. The Boy looked over his shoulder, and saw the huge
figure of his friend, bearing down upon him, with his discoloured face
rage-distorted, and murder in his tortured eyes. A moment's sense of
the monstrous spectacle fell so poignant upon the Boy, that he felt
dimly he must have been full half his life running this race with
death, followed by a maniac bent on murder, in a world whose winter was
strangely lit with the leaping fires of hell.
At last, on there in front, the cliff! Below it, the sharp bend in the
river, and although he couldn't see it yet, behind the cliff the
forest, and a little hand-sled bearing the means of life.
The Colonel was down again, but it wasn't safe to go near him just yet.
The Boy ran on, unpacked the sled, and went, axe in hand, along the
margin of the wood. Never before was a fire made so quickly. Then, with
the flask, back to the Colonel, almost as sound asleep as before.
The Boy never could recall much about the hours that followed. There
was nobody to help, so it must have been he who somehow got the Colonel
to the fire, got him to swallow some food, plastered his wounded face
over with the carbolic ointment, and got him into bed, for in the
morning all this was seen to have been done.
They stayed in camp that day to "rest up," and the Boy shot a rabbit.
The Colonel was coming round; the rest, or the ointment, or the
tea-leaf poultice, had been good for snowblindness. The generous
reserve of strength in his magnificent physique was quick to announce
itself. He was still "frightfully bunged up," but "I think we'll push
on to-morrow," he said that night, as he sat by the fire smoking before
turning in.
"Right you are!" said the Boy, who was mending the sled-runner. Neither
had referred to that encounter on the river-ice, that had ended in
bringing the Colonel where there was succour. Nothing was said, then or
for long after, in the way of deliberate recognition that the Boy had
saved his life. It wasn't necessary; they understood each other.
But in the evening, after the Boy had finished mending the sled, it
occurred to him he must also mend the Colonel before they went to bed.
He got out the box of ointment and bespread the strips of torn
handkerchief.
"Don't know as I need that to-night," says the Colonel. "Musn't waste
ointment." But the Boy brought the bandages round to the Colonel's
side of the fire. For an instant they looked at each other by the
flickering light, and the Colonel laid his hand on the Boy's arm. His
eyes looked worse for the moment, and began to water. He turned away
brusquely, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe on a log.
"What in hell made you think of it?"
"Ask me an easy one," says the Boy. "But I know what the Jesuit Fathers
would say."
"Jesuits and George Warren! Humph! precious little we'd agree about."
"You would about this. It flashed over me when I looked back and saw
you peltin' after me."
"Small wonder I made for you! I'm not findin' fault, but what on earth
put it into your head to go at me with your fists like that?"
"You'll never prove it by me. But when I saw you comin' at me like a
mad bull, I thought to myself, thinks I, the Colonel and the Jesuits,
they'd both of 'em say this was a direct answer to prayer."