"It's not him they want--it's Bill! They're after Bill, out there!
That was Bill trying to get in. . . . Why didn't yer open? It was Bill,
I tell yer!"
At the first word the Snipe had wheeled right-about-face, and stood now,
pointing, and shaking like a man with ague.
"Matey . . . for the love of God . . ."
"I won't hush. There's something wrong here to-night. I can't sleep.
It's Bill, I tell yer. See his poor hammock up there shaking. . . ."
Cooney tumbled out with an oath and a thud. "Hush it, you white-livered
swine! Hush it, or by--" His hand went behind him to his knife-sheath.
"Dan Cooney"--the Gaffer closed his book and leaned out--"go back to
your bed."
"I won't, Sir. Not unless--"
"Go back."
"Flesh and blood--"
"Go back." And for the third time that night Cooney went back.
The Gaffer leaned a little farther over the ledge, and addressed the
sick man.
"George, I went to Bill's grave not six hours agone. The snow on it
wasn't even disturbed. Neither beast nor man, but only God, can break
up the hard earth he lies under. I tell you that, and you may lay to
it. Now go to sleep."
Long Ede crouched on the frozen ridge of the hut, with his feet in the
sleeping-bag, his knees drawn up, and the two guns laid across them.
The creature, whatever its name, that had tried the door, was nowhere to
be seen; but he decided to wait a few minutes on the chance of a shot;
that is, until the cold should drive him below. For the moment the
clear tingling air was doing him good. The truth was Long Ede had begun
to be afraid of himself, and the way his mind had been running for the
last forty-eight hours upon green fields and visions of spring.
As he put it to himself, something inside his head was melting.
Biblical texts chattered within him like running brooks, and as they
fleeted he could almost smell the blown meadow-scent. "Take us the
foxes, the little foxes . . . for our vines have tender grapes . . .
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon
. . . Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south . . . blow upon my
garden, that the spices thereof may flow out . . ." He was
light-headed, and he knew it. He must hold out. They were all going
mad; were, in fact, three parts crazed already, all except the Gaffer.
And the Gaffer relied on him as his right-hand man. One glimpse of the
returning sun--one glimpse only--might save them yet.
He gazed out over the frozen hills, and northward across the ice-pack.
A few streaks of pale violet--the ghost of the Aurora--fronted the moon.
He could see for miles. Bear or fox, no living creature was in sight.
But who could tell what might be hiding behind any one of a thousand
hummocks? He listened. He heard the slow grinding of the ice-pack off
the beach: only that. "Take us the foxes, the little foxes. . ."
This would never do. He must climb down and walk briskly, or return to
the hut. Maybe there was a bear, after all, behind one of the hummocks,
and a shot, or the chance of one, would scatter his head clear of these
tom-fooling notions. He would have a search round.
What was that, moving . . . on a hummock, not five hundred yards away?
He leaned forward to gaze.
Nothing now: but he had seen something. He lowered himself to the eaves
by the north corner, and from the eaves to the drift piled there.
The drift was frozen solid, but for a treacherous crust of fresh snow.
His foot slipped upon this, and down he slid of a heap.
Luckily he had been careful to sling the guns tightly at his back.
He picked himself up, and unstrapping one, took a step into the bright
moon-light to examine the nipples; took two steps: and stood
stock-still.
There, before him, on the frozen coat of snow, was a footprint.
No: two, three, four--many footprints: prints of a naked human foot:
right foot, left foot, both naked, and blood in each print--a little
smear.
It had come, then. He was mad for certain. He saw them: he put his
fingers in them; touched the frozen blood. The snow before the door was
trodden thick with them--some going, some returning.
"The latch . . . lifted . . ." Suddenly he recalled the figure he had
seen moving upon the hummock, and with a groan he set his face northward
and gave chase. Oh, he was mad for certain! He ran like a madman--
floundering, slipping, plunging in his clumsy moccasins. "Take us the
foxes, the little foxes . . . My beloved put in his hand by the hole of
the door, and my bowels were moved for him . . . I charge you, O
daughters of Jerusalem . . . I charge you . . . I charge you . . ."
He ran thus for three hundred yards maybe, and then stopped as suddenly
as he had started.
His mates--they must not see these footprints, or they would go mad too:
mad as he. No, he must cover them up, all within sight of the hut.
And to-morrow he would come alone, and cover those farther afield.
Slowly he retraced his steps. The footprints--those which pointed
towards the hut and those which pointed away from it--lay close
together; and he knelt before each, breaking fresh snow over the hollows
and carefully hiding the blood. And now a great happiness filled his
heart; interrupted once or twice as he worked by a feeling that someone
was following and watching him. Once he turned northwards and gazed,
making a telescope of his hands. He saw nothing, and fell again to his
long task.
Within the hut the sick man cried softly to himself. Faed, the Snipe,
and Cooney slept uneasily, and muttered in their dreams. The Gaffer lay
awake, thinking. After Bill, George Lashman; and after George? . . .
Who next? And who would be the last--the unburied one? The men were
weakening fast; their wits and courage coming down at the end with a
rush. Faed and Long Ede were the only two to be depended on for a day.
The Gaffer liked Long Ede, who was a religious man. Indeed he had a
growing suspicion that Long Ede, in spite of some amiable laxities of
belief, was numbered among the Elect: or might be, if interceded for.
The Gaffer began to intercede for him silently; but experience had
taught him that such "wrestlings," to be effective, must be noisy, and
he dropped off to sleep with a sense of failure . . .
The Snipe stretched himself, yawned, and awoke. It was seven in the
morning: time to prepare a cup of tea. He tossed an armful of logs on
the fire, and the noise awoke the Gaffer, who at once inquired for Long
Ede. He had not returned. "Go you up to the roof. The lad must be
frozen." The Snipe climbed the ladder, pushed open the trap, and came
back, reporting that Long Ede was nowhere to be seen. The old man
slipped a jumper over his suits of clothing--already three deep--reached
for a gun, and moved to the door. "Take a cup of something warm to
fortify," the Snipe advised. "The kettle won't be five minutes
boiling." But the Gaffer pushed up the heavy bolts and dragged the door
open.
"What in the! . . .Here, bear a hand, lads!"
Long Ede lay prone before the threshold, his out-stretched hands almost
touching it, his moccasins already covered out of sight by the powdery
snow which ran and trickled incessantly--trickled between his long,
dishevelled locks, and over the back of his gloves, and ran in a thin
stream past the Gaffer's feet.
They carried him in and laid him on a heap of skins by the fire.
They forced rum between his clenched teeth and beat his hands and feet,
and kneaded and rubbed him. A sigh fluttered on his lips: something
between a sigh and a smile, half seen, half heard. His eyes opened, and
his comrades saw that it was really a smile.
"Wot cheer, mate?" It was the Snipe who asked.
"I--I seen . . ." The voice broke off, but he was smiling still.
What had he seen? Not the sun, surely! By the Gaffer's reckoning the
sun would not be due for a week or two yet: how many weeks he could not
say precisely, and sometimes he was glad enough that he did not know.
They forced him to drink a couple of spoonfuls of rum, and wrapped him
up warmly. Each man contributed some of his own bedding. Then the
Gaffer called to morning prayers, and the three sound men dropped on
their knees with him. Now, whether by reason of their joy at Long Ede's
recovery, or because the old man was in splendid voice, they felt their
hearts uplifted that morning with a cheerfulness they had not known for
months. Long Ede lay and listened dreamily while the passion of the
Gaffer's thanksgiving shook the hut. His gaze wandered over their bowed
forms--"The Gaffer, David Faed, Dan Cooney, the Snipe, and--and George
Lashman in his bunk, of course--and me." But, then, _who was the
seventh?_ He began to count. "There's myself--Lashman, in his bunk--
David Faed, the Gaffer, the Snipe, Dan Cooney . . . One, two, three,
four--well, but that made _seven_. Then who was the seventh? Was it
George who had crawled out of bed and was kneeling there? Decidedly
there were five kneeling. No: there was George, plain enough, in his
berth, and not able to move. Then who was the stranger? Wrong again:
there was no stranger. He knew all these men--they were his mates.
Was it--Bill? No, Bill was dead and buried: none of these was Bill, or
like Bill. Try again--One, two, three, four, five--and us two sick men,
seven. The Gaffer, David Faed, Dan Cooney--have I counted Dan twice?
No, that's Dan, yonder to the right, and only one of him. Five men
kneeling, and two on their backs: that makes seven every time. Dear
God--suppose--"
The Gaffer ceased, and in the act of rising from his knees, caught sight
of Long Ede's face. While the others fetched their breakfast-cans, he
stepped over, and bent and whispered--
"Tell me. Ye've seen what?"
"Seen?" Long Ede echoed.
"Ay, seen what? Speak low--was it the sun?"
"The s--" But this time the echo died on his lips, and his face grew
full of awe uncomprehending. It frightened the Gaffer.
"Ye'll be the better of a snatch of sleep," said he; and was turning to
go, when Long Ede stirred a hand under the edge of his rugs.
"Seven . . . count . . ." he whispered.
"Lord have mercy upon us!" the Gaffer muttered to his beard as he moved
away. "Long Ede; gone crazed!"
And yet, though an hour or two ago this had been the worst that could
befall, the Gaffer felt unusually cheerful. As for the others, they
were like different men, all that day and through the three days that
followed. Even Lashman ceased to complain, and, unless their eyes
played them a trick, had taken a turn for the better. "I declare, if I
don't feel like pitching to sing!" the Snipe announced on the second
evening, as much to his own wonder as to theirs. "Then why in thunder
don't you strike up?" answered Dan Cooney, and fetched his concertina.
The Snipe struck up, then and there--"Villikins and his Dinah"!
What is more, the Gaffer looked up from his "Paradise Lost," and joined
in the chorus.
By the end of the second day, Long Ede was up and active again. He went
about with a dazed look in his eyes. He was counting, counting to
himself, always counting. The Gaffer watched him furtively.
Since his recovery, though his lips moved frequently, Long Ede had
scarcely uttered a word. But towards noon on the fourth day he said an
extraordinary thing.
"There's that sleeping-bag I took with me the other night. I wonder if
'tis on the roof still. It will be froze pretty stiff by this.
You might nip up and see, Snipe, and"--he paused--"if you find it, stow
it up yonder on Bill's hammock."
The Gaffer opened his mouth, but shut it again without speaking.
The Snipe went up the ladder.
A minute passed; and then they heard a cry from the roof--a cry that
fetched them all trembling, choking, weeping, cheering, to the foot of
the ladder.
"Boys! boys!--the Sun!"
Months later--it was June, and even George Lashman had recovered his
strength--the Snipe came running with news of the whaling fleet. And on
the beach, as they watched the vessels come to anchor, Long Ede told the
Gaffer his story. "It was a hall--a hallu--what d'ye call it, I reckon.
I was crazed, eh?" The Gaffer's eyes wandered from a brambling hopping
about the lichen-covered boulders, and away to the sea-fowl wheeling
above the ships: and then came into his mind a tale he had read once in
"The Turkish Spy." "I wouldn't say just that," he answered slowly.
"Anyway," said Long Ede, "I believe the Lord sent a miracle to us to
save us all."
"I wouldn't say just that, either," the Gaffer objected. "I doubt it
was meant just for you and me, and the rest were presairved, as you
might say incidentally."