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 towardle bon Dieu'spillar 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 askedle bon Dieuto 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?'
“'Whenle bon Dieuleads 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 tomyself; 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 notwantmy 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.'
“'Letmealone!' 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, thewoman 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 Dieudoes 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?'
“'Canyou?' I asked. 'We must be brave now. Let us warm ourselves while there are coals to warm us. Let uswarm 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 intole bon Dieu'sheaven, when I heard acrunch,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.