_In Which One Hundred and Seventy-Three Men of the "Rough and
Tumble" are Plunged in the Gravest Peril of the Coast, Wandering
Like Lost Beasts, and Some Drop Dead, and Some are Drowned, and Some
Kill Themselves to be Done With the Torture They Can Bear No Longer_
They kept close, a hundred and seventy-three living men, to start with,
and then God knew how many!--kept close for comfort and safety; and they
walked warily, drunk and stupid in the wind, in dread of lakes and
blow-holes and fissures of water, and in living fear of crusts of snow,
wind-cast over pitfalls. And they died fast in the dark. In Archie
Armstrong's tortured mind childish visions of hell were revived--the
swish and sad complaint of doomed souls, winging round and round and
round in a frozen dark. It was like that, he thought.
Dawn delayed. It was night forever; and the dark was peopled--the throng
stirred, and was not visible; and from the black wraiths of men, moving
roundabout, never still, all driven round and round by the torture of
the night, came cries of pain--sobbing and wailing, rage and prayer, and
screams for help, for God's sake.
Many of the men wore out before dawn and were fordone: hands frozen,
feet frozen, lips and throat frozen--heart frozen. And many a man
dropped in his tracks, limp and spiritless as rags, and lay still, every
man in his own drift of snow; and his soul sped away as though glad to
be gone. Brothers, some, and fathers and sons--the one beating the other
with frozen hands, and calling to him to rouse and stand up lest he die.
Dawn came. It was just a slow, dirty dusk. And day was no better than
dusk. Still they walked blind and tortured in a frosty smother and
driving whirlwind of snow. Hands frozen, feet frozen--and the cold
creeping in upon the heart! They were numb and worn and sleepy. And
there was no rest for them. To pause was to come into living peril--to
rest was to sleep; and to sleep was death. Once more, then, when day was
full broken, Archie and Billy came on Jonathan Farr and Toby.
The old man was sheathed in snow and frozen spindrift. A hairy old
codger he was--icicles of his own frozen breath clinging to his long
white beard and icicles hanging from his bushy brows. And he was beating
Toby without mercy: for the lad would fall down, worn out, and whimper
and squirm; and the old man would jerk and cuff him to his feet, and
drive him on with cuffs from behind, stumbling and whimpering and
bawling.
It was a sad task that he had, done in pity--thus to cuff the little lad
awake and keep him moving; and Billy Topsail fancied that it was waste
pain. It seemed to him that the lad must die in the gale, soon or
late--no doubt about that, with stout men yielding to death roundabout.
Billy thought that it would be better to let him sleep and die and
suffer no more.
"I'm s' sleepy!" Toby complained to his grandfather. "Leave me sleep!"
"Get up!"
"Ah, jus' a minute, gran'pa!"
"Get up!"
"You c'n wake me 's easy----"
"Get up!"
"Ye hurt me, gran'pa!"
"Drive on!"
"You leave me alone!" Toby bawled, angrily. "Ye hurt!"
"Drive on!"
By this time the men had been more than twenty-four hours on the ice.
And they had no food. Hungry? No. They were cold. No man famished in
that gale. And they had yet a night of that gale to win through, though
they knew nothing about that at the time. They began to stray wide. And
they began to go blind. And some men fell in the water and were drowned.
Billy Topsail saw John Temple, of Heart's Island, drop through a crust
of snow and go down for good and all; and he saw Tom Crutch, of
Seldom-Come-By, stumble over the edge of a pan, and heard him screech
for help. They hauled him out--two men of his own harbour; and he was
frozen solid in half an hour.
Some men chose an end of torture and leaped into the water and killed
themselves. And as day drew on, others began to go mad. It was
horrible--like a madhouse. They babbled, stark mad--the harbours they
came from, and their mothers, their wives, their babies. And they had
visions, and were deluded--some saw a blaze of fire and set out to find
the glow, and called to the others, as they went off, to come and be
warm. And one saw the ship's lights, as in clear, dark weather, and
staggered away, bawling that he was coming, with a troop of poor madmen
in his wake.
This is the naked truth about that gale.