Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador
Page 41
CHAPTER XXXIX
_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 theywalked warily, drunk and stupid in the wind, in dread of lakes andblow-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 ArchieArmstrong's tortured mind childish visions of hell were revived--theswish and sad complaint of doomed souls, winging round and round andround in a frozen dark. It was like that, he thought.
Dawn delayed. It was night forever; and the dark was peopled--the throngstirred, and was not visible; and from the black wraiths of men, movingroundabout, never still, all driven round and round by the torture ofthe night, came cries of pain--sobbing and wailing, rage and prayer, andscreams 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 mandropped in his tracks, limp and spiritless as rags, and lay still, everyman in his own drift of snow; and his soul sped away as though glad tobe gone. Brothers, some, and fathers and sons--the one beating the otherwith 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 thandusk. Still they walked blind and tortured in a frosty smother anddriving whirlwind of snow. Hands frozen, feet frozen--and the coldcreeping in upon the heart! They were numb and worn and sleepy. Andthere was no rest for them. To pause was to come into living peril--torest was to sleep; and to sleep was death. Once more, then, when day wasfull broken, Archie and Billy came on Jonathan Farr and Toby.
The old man was sheathed in snow and frozen spindrift. A hairy oldcodger he was--icicles of his own frozen breath clinging to his longwhite beard and icicles hanging from his bushy brows. And he was beatingToby without mercy: for the lad would fall down, worn out, and whimperand squirm; and the old man would jerk and cuff him to his feet, anddrive him on with cuffs from behind, stumbling and whimpering andbawling.
It was a sad task that he had, done in pity--thus to cuff the little ladawake and keep him moving; and Billy Topsail fancied that it was wastepain. It seemed to him that the lad must die in the gale, soon orlate--no doubt about that, with stout men yielding to death roundabout.Billy thought that it would be better to let him sleep and die andsuffer 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 inthat gale. And they had yet a night of that gale to win through, thoughthey knew nothing about that at the time. They began to stray wide. Andthey 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 crustof snow and go down for good and all; and he saw Tom Crutch, ofSeldom-Come-By, stumble over the edge of a pan, and heard him screechfor help. They hauled him out--two men of his own harbour; and he wasfrozen solid in half an hour.
Some men chose an end of torture and leaped into the water and killedthemselves. And as day drew on, others began to go mad. It washorrible--like a madhouse. They babbled, stark mad--the harbours theycame from, and their mothers, their wives, their babies. And they hadvisions, and were deluded--some saw a blaze of fire and set out to findthe glow, and called to the others, as they went off, to come and bewarm. And one saw the ship's lights, as in clear, dark weather, andstaggered away, bawling that he was coming, with a troop of poor madmenin his wake.
This is the naked truth about that gale.