FACING THE END
Below the hill on one side flickered the moving torches of the
hostiles. On the other side, where the cliff fell sheer away, lay the
red-dyed snows with misty shapes moving through the frosty valley.
A wind of sighs swept across the white wastes. Short, sharp barkings
rose from the shadowy depth of the ravine. Then the silence of
desolation . . . then the moaning night-wind . . . then the shivering
cry of the wolf-pack scouring on nightly hunt.
For a moment neither Godefroy nor I spoke. Then the sinews, cutting
deep, wakened consciousness.
"Are they gone?" asked Godefroy hoarsely.
"Yes," said I, glancing to the valley.
"Can't you break through the thongs and get a hand free?"
"My back is to the tree. We'll have to face it, Godefroy--don't break
down, man! We must face it!"
"Face what?" he shuddered out. "Is anything there? Face what?" he
half screamed.
"The end!"
He strained at the thongs till he had strength to strain no more. Then
he broke out in a volley of maledictions at Jack Battle and me for
interfering with the massacre, to which I could answer never a word;
for the motives that merit greatest applause when they succeed, win
bitterest curses when they fail.
The northern lights swung low. Once those lights seemed censers of
flame to an invisible God. Now they shot across the steel sky like
fiery serpents, and the rustling of their fire was as the hiss when a
fang strikes. A shooting star blazed into light against the blue, then
dropped into the eternal darkness.
"Godefroy," I asked, "how long will this last?"
"Till the wolves come," said he huskily.
"A man must die some time," I called back; but my voice belied the
bravery of the words, for something gray loomed from the ravine and
stood stealthily motionless in the dusk behind the trader.
Involuntarily a quick "Hist!" went from my lips.
"What's that?" shouted Godefroy. "Is anything there?"
"I am cold," said I.
And on top of that lie I prayed--prayed with wide-staring eyes on the
thing whose head had turned towards us--prayed as I have never prayed
before or since!
"Are you sure there's nothing?" cried the trader. "Look on both sides!
I'm sure I feel something!"
Another crouching form emerged from the gloom--then another and
another--silent and still as spectres. With a sidling motion they
prowled nearer, sniffing the air, shifting watchful look from Godefroy
to me, from me to Godefroy. A green eye gleamed nearer through the
mist. Then I knew.
The wolves had come.
Godefroy screamed out that he heard something, and again bade me look
on both sides of the hill.
"Keep quiet till I see," said I; but I never took my gaze from the
green eyes of a great brute to the fore of the gathering pack.
"But I feel them--but I hear them!" shouted Godefroy, in an agony of
terror.
What gain to keep up pretence longer? Still holding the beast back
with no other power than the power of the man's eye over the brute, I
called out the truth to the trader.
"Don't move! Don't speak! Don't cry out! Perhaps we can stare them
back till daylight comes!"
Godefroy held quiet as death. Some subtle power of the man over the
brute puzzled the leader of the pack. He shook his great head with
angry snarls and slunk from side to side to evade the human eye, every
hair of his fur bristling. Then he threw up his jaws and uttered a
long howl, answered by the far cry of the coming pack. Sniffing the
ground, he began circling--closing in--closing in----
Then there was a shout--a groan, a struggle--a rip as of teeth--from
Godefroy's place!
Then with naught but a blazing of comets dropping into an everlasting
dark, with naught but a ship of fire billowing away to the flame of the
northern lights, with naught but the rush of a sea, blinding,
deafening, bearing me to the engulfment of the eternal--I lost
knowledge of this life!