thing I remember was the Lad's voice coming to me from his bed, “Don't
forget, Lucky, we'll get his pillar of fire out of him, too.”
PART II
THE PILLAR OF FIRE BY NIGHT
By next morning our storm of sleet had turned into a half-blizzard
of snow and we put another great birch log on the fire, got out a
new can of Prunier's favorite pipe tobacco, and generally made
ready to extract the rest of his story from him when he had finished
straightening up the kitchen.
“Yaas,” he said, “the next day to the day I was telling you about was
just such another as this. All that morning I walked toward _le bon
Dieu's_ pillar of smoke, and in the afternoon I reached it, rising from
the great whirling pool of steaming water into the gray sky that was
thickening for a great snow--the real beginning of winter.
“Not far from the Smoky Pool, just as the dead man had said it would
be, rode the schooner in the ice-locked cove where she had been
wrecked. All was as still as a scared mouse. Behind me rose that white
wavering pillar; and in front the vessel leaned a little, as if to
subside into a wave-trough that would never receive her. But silence
covered all, and I dreaded to enter that ship for fear of what I should
see.
“But the dead man had been a better brother than he had been a
ship-pilot, for he had left his sister most of the food; and when my
foot-falls sounded uncannily loud upon the deck, she came running out
of the cabin, a thin-cheeked, pale, slim woman. How she smiled! How the
smile died from her face when she saw it was not her brother, but a
stranger, torn, bloody-bandaged, ready to drop for fatigue!
“'Tell me, tell me quickly, what has happened. Who are you?' She
steadied herself against the cabin doorway. 'Is my brother--not living?'
“I had not the heart or the words to tell her at that moment that I had
left her brother closing his eyes in death in my little cabin so far
away. I think I asked _le bon Dieu_ to put words in my mouth that would
not cause her to faint. Anyway, the words came from me: 'Your brother
sent me. I left him--happy.'
“'I knew God would not desert me entirely,' she said. 'When will he
return?'
“'When _le bon Dieu_ leads the way,' I said, and I told her about the
pillar of cloud which had guided me to her.
“She pointed aloft, and I saw a lantern tied to the masthead. 'I have
put it there to light every night until he returns,' she said. 'It
will be lit many a night,' said I to myself; and I must have sighed
aloud, for she looked curiously at me. 'I am cruel!' she exclaimed; 'I
must show you your room.' She said it with almost a laugh, for it was
a funny little bunk she led me to. Into it I crawled, and off to sleep
I went, scarcely conscious that she washed the blood from my face and
ministered to my other wounds. When I woke, it was the next day.
“And such a day as it was! one thick smother of snow coming up the
great valley of the St. Lawrence on a bitter wind. And bitter cold it
was, too, in the little cabin of our schooner, though the fire in the
stove did its best. I was too sick, though, to know much what was going
on. Several times I heard the chopping of a hatchet. Several times she
came to me with hot food. And as the day passed, strength came back
to my blood and I got up. I surprised her lighting the lantern and
taking it out into the wild evening. I tried to stop that, fearing some
accident to her in the roar and rush of the storm, but she said her
brother must be lighted back, and so in the end it was I who had to
haul the swaying lantern to the masthead.
“For three days the snow flew by and heaped an ever-increasing drift
across the deck, around the cabin door. On the fourth day we looked
out on a scene of desolation. The sun shone dimly in skies of pinching
cold. There was no pillar of smoke, the pool having at last been frozen
over. There was a wide river of ice, piled in fantastic floes, a wider
plain, spotted here and there with thickets. And far off ran the
dark line of forest, inhabited by wolves which would speedily become
fiercer. In the forest far away stood my little cabin with its dead man
keeping guard. It would be long before I should see it, if I ever did.
Without snow-shoes, it would be impossible to cross the forest now;
without food, we could live only a short time longer on the ship. And
then I made the discovery that our stove fire was being maintained by
schooner wood. That had accounted for her chopping and for her grave
face as she carried in the wood. She had been breaking up a part of the
ship each day to keep the fire going!
“The responsibilities upon me made me forget my sorrows, the death
of ole Pierre, the lost time for trapping, the pinch of hunger. I
made a makeshift pair of skees from two plankings of the schooner,
and journeyed daily to some thicket by the shore wherein I had set my
snares, and we lived on rabbit stew. With much labor I cut a hole in
the ice, through which, with much patience, she fished. But days went
by when it was too stormy either to hunt or to fish, and we sat huddled
about the stove in which we burned as little wood as we could to keep
from freezing.
“During such times we talked, but not of the future, only of the past.
She told me how they, she and her brother, had set out on a rumor of
gold in the Laurentians; how the crew had deserted in a body with most
of the stores; how she and her brother had been unable to man the ship
sufficiently to keep it from this disaster. A dozen times she described
the scene where he had said farewell to her on the morning of the
day he had found me. A hundred times she asked me to tell her of our
meeting; and a thousand, I may well say, she wondered how soon he would
return.
“Every evening she had me hang the lantern to the mast to guide him
back. I could not prevent it, except by telling of his death, and that
I could not do. I feared that the news, coupled with our desperate
situation, would end her life. As it was, she was far too weak to
travel now, even if I had had the snow-shoes for her.
“Thus passed the first days. Then I saw that something must be done or
else we should soon have burned up the house that sheltered us, deck,
mast, and hull, before Christmas. Even then we were beginning on the
walls of the schooner, since she would not let me chop down the mast.
“'There will be no place to hang the lantern if you destroy that!' she
cried, when she had rushed out on deck one morning, to find me half-way
through the strong oak.
“'Your brother will not travel by night,' I said.
“'How do you know?' she asked, a new harshness in her tired voice;
'you, who will tell me so little about my brother!'
“This was an unkind reproach, for I had indeed stretched the facts too
much already in order to comfort her.
“'We cannot freeze,' I replied. 'You would not want him to arrive and
find us dead. I have measured out the fuel and know it is unwise not to
begin on these unnecessary parts of the ship first.'
“'Do you call my signal-mast unnecessary?' she called, her two thin
hands beating upon the wood. 'You are cruel. You would keep my brother
from me.'
“From that morning there began a sullenness between us, which was
nourished by too little food, and by being shut up in that bit of a
schooner cabin too long together. For relief's sake, when I was not
off snaring rabbits or looking for some stray up-river seal with my
revolver in my hand, I began building an igloo, a hut of snow you know,
not far from the ship. I thought that the time must be prepared for
when we should have chopped up our shelter, and have pushed our home
piecemeal into that devouring stove.
“She made no comment on my preparations. In fact, we did not talk
now, except to say the most necessary things. I was not sorry, for it
relieved me from telling over and over that impossible story of her
brother's return. I was convinced now that he had died, and my heart
grieved for her final discovery of the news. But the saddest thing was
to see the hunger for him grow daily stronger on her face. And it was
pitiful, too, to watch her light the lantern with hands weak enough to
tremble, to attach it to the signal-rope, and pull it to the masthead.
She would never let me assist her in this act.
“'To-morrow we must move,' I said one night. 'I have completed the
igloo. It will economize our fuel.'
“She nodded, weakly, as if she cared little what happened on the morrow.
“'And unless we catch a seal, we must save oil,' I added. The waste
of burning a lantern to attract a dead man's notice had got upon my
nerves. 'Please do not light it to-night, else we will go into the new
year dark.'
“'I shall not give up my brother!' she cried, with all her strength,
'for he will not give up me. But why does he not come? Why does he not
come?'
“It was heart-wringing to see her--to know what was in store. But it
would have been less kind of me to let this deception go on.
“'He will never come,' I said, as softly as I could; 'there is no use
in the light. Let us save oil.'
“Her weary, searching eyes questioned my face for the first time in
days, and then she struck a match and applied it to the wick.
“'He will come,' she said calmly, 'for God will guide him, and I am
helping God.' She went out into the dusk, and I heard the futile
lantern being pulled up to the masthead. I could not bear to interfere.
“So, since save fuel we must, I began practising deceit by stealing
out the next evening, lowering the signal and extinguishing it, then
hoisting the black lantern into place. But she guessed; and on the
second night, as I had my hand upon the rope to lower it, she grasped
my arm, her eyes flashing, her weak voice vibrant like the storm-wind.
“'Do you dare?' she said; 'do you dare betray me? You do not _want_
my brother.' And with fury she grasped the rope and jerked it from my
hand. A sudden anger filled me.
“'Unreasonable woman,' I cried, 'we must have the mast for firewood; we
must have the oil for light in the igloo! Let me alone.'
“'Let _me_ alone!' she screamed, struggling for the rope.
“It must have been insecurely fastened. At any rate, we had not been
contending many seconds in the darkness for the control of the light
above our heads when we heard a rattle and saw it coming down upon us.
I pushed her away just in time. The lantern struck some metal, burst,
and the spattering oil caught fire in the swiftness of a thought.
“For the first moment we were dumb; in the second, horror-struck. As
a serpent darts its tongue, rills of oil spread down the plank-seams
of the deck; and from each rill, flame leaped and ran about the ship.
With a wild shriek, the woman began to carry snow from a drift on the
prow and sprinkle it on the spreading conflagration. She might as well
have tried to extinguish it with her tears. In two minutes, yellow
tongues were running up the mast--that mast I had hoped would warm our
igloo for a fortnight. In three, there was no hope of a splinter of the
cold-dried boat remaining. I made one plunge into the cabin and grabbed
an arm-load of clothes and food, and ran with them to the igloo. But
when I had returned, there was no chance for a second try. The cabin
was a furnace of eager flame.
“The woman, the weeping cause of this, and I were beaten back by the
heat, and at the opening of our only refuge now, the hut of snow, we
stood and watched the swift destruction of the schooner's hulk. About
us, the night's darkness was driven to its dusky horizons. Overhead,
the zenith was lit by the up-roaring pillar of fire which had so lately
been a mast, a deck, a ship. We looked in silence, while the tower
of flame rushed into the sky, like a signal to the wilderness. But a
signal of what? Two houseless individuals, robbed of their store of
food, with no means of moving, and nowhere to move.”
Prunier paused, and Essex Lad drew a long breath. It was his first for
minutes.
“So that was your pillar of fire?” I said, “It seems to me more like
one of Satan's than the Lord's.”
Prunier made an expressive gesture with his pipe. “_Le bon Dieu_ does
all things for the best,” he said reverently. “_Alors._ We stood there
watching, the heat reaching us, and even eating maliciously into the
white walls of our last hiding-place. But that did not go on long, for
the ship was pouring its soul too lavishly into that hot pyre to last.
“'Quick,' I said to my fellow-outcast, 'drink in all the heat you can,
for this is the end.'
“'And it is my fault!' she said; 'can you forgive me?'
“'Can _you_?' I asked. 'We must be brave now. Let us warm ourselves
while there are coals to warm us. Let us warm our wits and think, for
before day dawns we must have a plan.'
“'It is too hard,' she said hopelessly.
“'Trust God for one night more. Perhaps I can make a sledge and pull
you to my cabin. There is food there.'
“'You are too weak,' she said. And I knew that she was right.
“As the pillar of fire died down until it was a mere bright spiral
of gilded smoke, and after the sides of the schooner had burned to
the water-line, leaving great benches of blackened ice about, we drew
nearer and nearer to the lessening warmth. Darkness and cold and the
northern silence shut us in.
“We spoke in whispers, but hope died in me with the fading fire. What
chance for escape was there with a half-starved woman across a great
snow-plain; and then through forests deep with the first snows and
roamed by wolves, whose savageries I had tasted?
“Luckily there was no wind. Smaller and smaller was the circle of
light, weaker and weaker the heat. And tireder and more tired grew our
heads that could see no light of safety ahead.
“I think, sitting close together there, we dozed. Certainly not for
long, however, because the pillar of fire, though now a mere thread,
was still pointing a finger into _le bon Dieu's_ heaven, when I heard a
_crunch_, _crunch_!
“'Wolves!' I said to myself, coming to my senses with a jerk. I felt
for a revolver, but the only one had been left in the cabin.
“'Dear Lord,' I prayed, 'spare us this.'
“But the crunch came nearer, nearer, like the soft foot-falls of many
beasts, yet not quite like them either. I grasped a black-charred
spar; ran it into a heap of red ashes to make it as deadly a weapon as
possible. A little flame sprang from the pile, and in its light I went
to grapple with this new danger.
“The woman had heard, and, with a little scream, sprang to her feet and
[Illustration: =“'You made a fine signal'.”=] (_page 165_)
quickly came up behind me, put her hand upon me, and cried: 'He has
come! It is my brother who has come!'
“And, as in the Bible, where Monsieur Moses spoke to the rock and the
water gushed from it, so the woman cried into the dark and an answering
voice sprang from it--a voice as from the dead.
“I stood trembling, too weak to move.
“'You made a fine signal,' the voice said. 'Thank God for it!'
“'Yes, thank _le bon Dieu_, for it was His pillar of fire,' I said.
'Who are you?'
“'The rescued come to rescue,' he replied; 'her brother.'
“His sister had sunk upon the snow. As he bent to pick her up, I saw
the extra pairs of snow-shoes on his back, I noticed my toboggan that
he was pulling, and the stores of food upon it.
“'You are strong again,' I said, wishing to pinch him to see whether he
was he, or a trick of some werewolf who was deceiving me.
“'Thanks to your food,' “'But you have been long coming, brother,' said
she, weakly. 'Why so long?'
“'All the bays are much alike,' he explained; 'and when the Smoky Pool
was frozen, I lost my only clue. I was getting always farther away on
my hunt, when the Lord turned and led me here by His pillar of fire.'
“And the three of us, standing there in the dark of earliest dawn
beneath the Great Bear, we keep still and say three--four prayers from
ourselves to that same Jehovah who had guided Monsieur Moses, for the
making of us safe.”
* * * * *
Prunier ceased abruptly and knocked out his pipe upon the hearth-side,
then gazed reminiscently out into the falling snow.
I was busy with the picture in my brain of that blackened hulk, the
frail woman and her almost helpless companion standing there in the
midst of that gray waste of coming dawn. But the Lad's mind had already
gone scouting on before.
“And were you made safe, Prunier?” he asked.
“Oh, _certainement_!” said the guide, almost drolly. “_Voyez_, I am
here.”
“Then tell us--” commanded the insatiable youth.
“_Mais, cette une longue histoire_,” was all we heard.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. What means does the author employ to lead naturally into the
story of romantic adventure?
2. What is the advantage of introducing two ordinary people in the
very beginning of the story?
3. What is the character of Prunier?
4. How do Prunier's peculiar characteristics aid the story?
5. How does the author indicate Prunier's way of speaking?
6. Why is the entire story not told in dialect?
7. How does the author present the setting of the story?
8. What part does the dog play in the story?
9. What part does superstition play?
10. Point out the three or four most exciting parts of the story.
11. Explain how the characters are saved from threatening dangers.
12. In what respects is the story a narrative of contest?
13. Why is the narrative divided into two sections?
14. Why are the two ordinary people mentioned throughout the story?
15. What part does religious faith play?
16. In what respects is the second part of the story more intense
than the first part?
17. What is the character of the sister?
18. What is the character of the brother?
19. How does misfortune turn into blessing?
20. How is the climax made emphatic?
21. What did Prunier omit?
22. Point out the most romantic episodes in the story.
23. Point out the most realistic touches in the story.
24. What noble qualities does the story emphasize?
25. How does the story affect the reader?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. Prunier's Return 11. Prunier's First Moose
2. The Brother's Adventures 12. Why Prunier Lived in
the North
3. The Story of the Shipwreck 13. The Sister's Return to
Civilization
4. The Mutiny of the Crew 14. In Prunier's Hut
5. Prunier's Boyhood 15. The Strange Visitor
6. How Prunier Obtained Pierre 16. The End of the Wolves
7. Prunier's Longest Journey 17. Prunier Tells Another Story
8. Why Prunier Was Superstitious 18. The Sister Tells a Story
9. The Rescue of Pierre 19. The Fate of the Deserters
10. How Prunier Lost a Companion 20. Prunier's Last Day
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
In the introduction of your romance use familiar scenes, events or
characters that will lead naturally to a narrative of startling events.
Say enough to indicate the setting of your story and to make it a
vital factor in producing effect but do not write any long-drawn
descriptions or explanations. Let your characters tell the story
and present its setting.
Make all the action hinge on worthy effort, and contribute to awakening
respect for the characters. Tell a series of most unusual events. In
telling every incident make full use of suspense and of climax. Tell
the incidents in such a way that one will lead naturally to another.
Your story will produce the most startling effect if you show your hero
apparently defeated but able, at the last moment, to find a means of
escape from danger.
Keep your story true to human nature, and to the best ideals of human
nature.
THE DIDACTIC ESSAY
THE AMERICAN BOY
By THEODORE ROOSEVELT
_(1858-1919). Twenty-sixth President of the United States. One of
the most vigorous, courageous and picturesque figures in the public
life of his day. Soon after his graduation from Harvard, and from
Columbia Law School he entered public life, and gave invaluable
service in many positions, becoming President in 1901, and again
in 1904. His work as an organizer of the “Rough Riders,” his skill
in horsemanship, his courage as an explorer and hunter, and his
staunch patriotism and high ideals all made him both interesting
and beloved. His work as an author is alone sufficient to make
him great. Among his many books are_ The Winning of the West; The
Strenuous Life; African Game Trails; True Americanism.
=_The American Boy_ is a didactic essay,--an essay that expresses
the writer's individuality and opinions and at the same time
conveys instruction in the form of inspiration. Such an essay
approaches the oration and the treatise. It differs from the
oration in being less strongly didactic, and from the treatise in
being less formal and comprehensive.=
=Mr. Roosevelt's personality is particularly evident in _The
American Boy_. In every paragraph the reader feels the virile
strength, the masterful force, the firm-set manhood, the
broad-minded attitude toward all things that are good, and the
intense hatred of cowardice and evil that always characterized Mr.
Roosevelt. The writer is not so much telling a boy what to do as he
is telling what sort of boy he admires.=
=The force of such an essay is great. No one, boy or man, can read
_The American Boy_ without being the better for it, without himself
admiring manliness, the right balance between athletics and study,
and the ideals of courage and fair-play.=
Of course, what we have a right to expect of the American boy is that
he shall turn out to be a good American man. Now, the chances are
strong that he won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a
boy. He must not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a
prig. He must work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and
clean-lived, and able to hold his own under all circumstances and
against all comers. It is only on these conditions that he will grow
into the kind of American man of whom America can be really proud.
There are always in life countless tendencies for good and for
evil, and each succeeding generation sees some of these tendencies
strengthened and some weakened; nor is it by any means always,
alas! that the tendencies for evil are weakened and those for good
strengthened. But during the last few decades there certainly have
been some notable changes for good in boy life. The great growth in
the love of athletic sports, for instance, while fraught with danger
if it becomes one-sided and unhealthy, has beyond all question had an
excellent effect in in-reared manliness. Forty or fifty years ago the
writer on American morals was sure to deplore the effeminacy and luxury
of young Americans who were born of rich parents. The boy who was well
off then, especially in the big Eastern cities, lived too luxuriously,
took to billiards as his chief innocent recreation, and felt small
shame in his inability to take part in rough pastimes and field sports.
Nowadays, whatever other faults the son of rich parents may tend to
develop, he is at least forced by the opinion of all his associates of
his own age to bear himself well in manly exercises and to develop his
body--and therefore, to a certain extent, his character--in the rough
sports which call for pluck, endurance, and physical address.