One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
"On these occasions Urbain's old devilish temper became roused, and he
broke forth into oaths, and even threats; so, ultimately, we left him to
proceed at his own slow pace as we struggled towards a wood, dragging
with us a seaman named Tom Dacres, who had been no longer able to
abstain from swallowing snow, by which his mouth was almost immediately
swollen, while he became speechless and all but paralysed.
"Yet on and on we toiled, dragging him by turns, our weary limbs sinking
deep at every step. When I look back to those sufferings, I frequently
think that I must have been partially insane; but it would seem that,
like one in a dream, I went through all the formula of life like a sane
person.
"On reaching the thicket, it proved to be one of old and half-decayed
firs; then we proceeded to suck portions of the bark greedily. After
this we became aware, for the first time, of the absence of Urbain
Gautier and little Willy.
"They had disappeared in the twilight!"
Here Captain Binnacle interrupted his narrative by expressing a fear
that he wearied us; but we begged of him to proceed, as we were anxious
to know how those adventures ended by the shore of the Unexplored Lake.
*CHAPTER XXVII.*
A still small voice spoke unto me,
"Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be!"
Then to the still small voice I said,
"Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made." TENNYSON.
"Nestling close to a rock, from the side of which the snow formed an
arch, we found some moss, which we ate with avidity, and then some
sprigs of savine, which generally grows in the clefts of the rocks all
over the island and the Labrador coast, yielding the berry from which
the spruce beer is made. With tears of thankfulness we devoured them,
and were surmising what had become of Urbain, when about nine o'clock by
the captain's watch he appeared, but without Scotch Willy, who had, he
said, died about an hour ago, and been buried by him among the snow.
"'Where?' asked the captain, in a low voice, for Dacres, and two others
of our famine-stricken band, were in a dying condition.
"'Did you observe an old peeled trunk of a tree about a mile distant?'
"'Yes.'
"'_Tres bien_--I buried him there,' replied Urbain, whose voice sounded
strong and full compared with what it was some hours ago. Captain
Benson remarked this, and said--
"'You have hunted and found something to eat?'
"'_Tonnerre de ciel_! Beelzebub--no. I left my gun with you.'
"True; did poor little Willy die easily?" I asked.
"'I wish we may all die so easily,' replied Urbain, with an impatient
oath, as he crept close to me for warmth, causing me, I know not why, to
shudder.
"I scarcely slept that night, though our snow cell was not destitute of
heat; but vague suspicions and solid terrors kept me wakeful. Willy's
sudden death appalled me; and something in the bearing and aspect of
Urbain filled me with dreadful conjectures, which, in the morning, I
communicated only to Bob Jenner.
"At dawn we found Tom Dacres dead, and two others dying; to leave the
latter would have been inhuman; the poor fellows were quite collected,
shook hands with us all round, shared their tobacco among us equally,
and while we all smoked for warmth, the captain repeated the Lord's
Prayer. After which, Jenner and I took our guns and went forth to
explore. With tacit but silent consent, we went straight to the old
bare skeleton tree. The snow around it was frozen hard, and was pure,
spotless, and untrodden, as when it fell some days before; so Urbain had
told a falsehood, and little Willy was not buried there. For a little
sustenance we now sucked the rags with which we oiled our guns, and
looked about us, tracing back our trail of the preceding evening a
little way.
"Suddenly we came upon the footmarks of Urbain, which diverged at an
acute angle from our several tracks, and those we followed for about
three hundred yards, to where a great rock rose abruptly from the snow,
which was all disturbed and discoloured about its base--discoloured, and
by--blood.
"Bob Jenner and I looked blankly at each other, and cold as our own
blood was, it seemed to grow colder still. There, in that awful
solitude of vast and snowy prairies, dwarf forests, unexplored lakes,
and untrodden land, a terrible tragedy had too surely been acted. He
had killed the boy--but why? Removing the snow with the butts of our
guns, a white man's hand appeared, an arm, and then we drew forth the
dead body of little Willy Ormiston. It had a strange and unnaturally
emaciated aspect. A livid bruise was on the right temple, and there was
a wound, a singular perforation under the right ear. These were all we
could discover at first; but there was much blood upon the snow around,
and on the poor boy's tattered clothing. Then a groan escaped us both,
when we found that his left sleeve had been ripped up, and that a great
piece of the arm was wanting, from the elbow to the shoulder, having
been sliced off literally and close to the bone.
"'A strange mutilation!' said I, while my teeth chattered with dismay,
and I evaded putting my thoughts in words. 'If wolves----'
"'Wolves never did this,' replied Jenner in a husky voice; 'but a knife
has been used.'
"'You mean--you mean----'
"'Look ye, shipmate, at that round wound in the neck.'
"'Well?'
"'After stunning him by a blow, Urbain Gautier has punctured the boy's
throat, and sucked his blood, like a weazel or a vampire, or some such
thing, and ended actually by cutting a slice from his arm!'
"The whole details of this act of horror seemed but too complete, and
gradually we were compelled to accept the fact, the more so when I
recalled his strange remark of the preceding evening. We became sick
and giddy; the white landscape swam round and round us, and while
covering up the remains with snow we fell repeatedly with excess of
weakness, and then returned to the little thicket--returned slowly, to
find that our band was lessened by three, for in addition to Tom Dacres,
two other poor fellows had just breathed their last. Urbain's fierce
black eyes questioned us in stern silence as we approached.
"'Did you find the boy?' asked Captain Benson, who had been singeing the
hair off a fur cap of Dacres, and cutting it into strips for us to chew,
which we did thankfully.
"'Yes, he is dead. Let us think no more of it at present,' said I.
"Black fury gathered in Urbain's sombre visage as we came close to him,
and he growled out--'I buried him at the foot of the old tree, shipmate;
so, _diable!_ say what you like, or that which is safer, think what you
like.'
"I was too weak to resent this, or to confront him, and so turned away.
The captain divided some of the dead men's clothes among us, but these
Urbain declined to share, or in the strips of scorched fur, for his
strength seemed to have been completely renovated during the night; and
after covering our poor companions with snow, we again set forth wearily
towards the south-east, and, weak though, we were, we cast many a
backward glance to the thicket where our three dead shipmates lay side
by side. About noon a covey of white winter grouse were near us; we all
fired at once. Whether it was that we were bad shots, that our hands
were weak, that our eyes miscalculated the distance, or our aim wavered,
I know not, but every bird escaped, and with moans of despair we
reloaded. Then, to add to our troubles, it was found that only three of
us, to wit, the captain, Urbain, and myself, had dry powder left. On
and on yet to the south-east, through the blinding and trackless waste
of snow!
"In a place where a grey scalp of rock was almost bare of drifted snow
we found the skeleton of a cariboo deer. It was pure white, and coated
with crystal frost. Wolfishly we eyed it, as if we would have sucked
the dry bones that several winters, perhaps, had bleached, for not a
vestige even of skin remained on them. Those whose ammunition failed
them, now cast away their guns and powder-horns as useless incumbrances.
We were all reduced to shadows, and two had to support their bending
forms on walking-sticks. Even our jolly captain was becoming quite
feeble, and the despondency of settled despair was creeping over us all.
"Urbain alone seemed hale, and stepped steadily, when others fell ever
and anon in utter weakness. There were times when I surveyed his vast
bulk, which loomed greater to my diseased eyesight, and I thought we had
the foul fiend himself journeying with us in the form of a man.
"What if all should perish--all but he and me? On we toiled towards
another thicket, where we proposed to search for roots or moss, on which
to make a meal, and to light a fire, for evening was approaching; and
now it was that Urbain seated himself on a piece of rock, swearing that
he would proceed no farther then, but would rejoin us in the thicket.
Captain Benson was too weak, or cared too little about him, to
remonstrate, so we passed on in silence to our halting place, where,
most providentially, we found some juniper bushes, which the snow had
preserved, and some soft fir bark, which we devoured greedily.
Refreshed by this, we lighted a fire by means of some gunpowder and a
percussion cap, and heaped the branches on it. A bird or two twittered
past; I fired mechanically--almost without aim--and was lucky enough to
knock over a large-sized pigeon-eagle, which was speedily divided and
devoured, half broiled, ere we thought that the feathers only had been
left for Urbain, of whose guilt Bob and I had informed our shipmates,
that all might be on their guard, and our narrative added to their
sufferings, for now we all feared to sleep, and had to cast lots for a
watcher.
"About dawn he returned, and when we all set forth again, though we had
been renovated by the heat of our fire and by the savage meal we had
made, he seemed, as usual, the freshest among us, and on this day we
observed, in whispers to each other, that he wore round his neck a
red-spotted handkerchief which we had left tied over the face of Tom
Dacres!
"He must have gone back to the thicket where the three dead men lay, but
for what purpose?
"About noon on this day we found ourselves on the summit of a
mountainous ridge of bare rock; it was without snow, which, however, lay
drifted deep around. It commanded an extensive view so far as from the
borders of the great Unexplored Lake on our right, to the head of
Smith's Sound on our left.
"There was no sign of a human habitation to be seen, and our eyes swept
in vain the horizon, where the white snow and blue sky met, for a
smoke-wreath indicating where a squatter's cabin stood.
"'Malediction!' said Urbain, hoarsely, 'if this continues I shall have
something to eat, _bon gre malgre!_--if it should be the flesh of a man.
You seem shocked mate,' said he to me, as I shrank back.
"'I am shocked,' said, I, quietly.
"'Well--_diable!_ don't be so,' he replied, mockingly, 'because it is
wonderful truly what you may bring your mind to, if you put your courage
to the test, and place yourself _en visage_ with your fate like a man.'
"'Or a devil--eh, Urbain Gautier?' said Captain Benson; 'but no more of
this, or----'
"'Don't threaten me, _mon petit capitaine_--my nice little man,'
interrupted the giant, with a horrible grimace, 'or----' and pausing, he
laid his hand significantly on his knife.
"Urbain now became surly, insolent, and ferocious; but knowing his
singular strength, which failed less than ours, and knowing the secret,
the loathsome and terrible means by which he maintained it--aware also
that he had plenty of ammunition--we dissembled alike our fears, our