Harold Bindloss

“ Then he must shut his eyes tight to the hazards against him, or, and we can't all do that, look at them without wavering—the drought, the hail, the harvest frost. If his teams fall sick, or the season goes against him, he must work double tides. Still, it now and then happens that things go right, and the red wheat rolls ripe right back across the prairie. I don't know that any man could want a keener thrill than the one you feel when you drive the binders in!"
Agatha had imagination, and she could realise something of the toil, the hazard, and the clean thrill of that victory. ”

“ The night was clear and bitterly cold when Hawtrey and Sally Creighton drove away from Stukely's barn. Winter had lingered unusually long that year, and the prairie gleamed dimly white, with the sledge trail cutting athwart it, a smear of blue-grey, in the foreground. It was—for Lander's lay behind them with the snow among the stubble belts that engirdled it—an empty wilderness the mettlesome team swung across, and during the first few minutes the cold struck through them with a sting like the thrust of steel. ”

“ None of them had been trained as carpenters, but men who keep the sea for months in small vessels are necessarily handy at repairs, and they had all used axe and saw to some purpose in their time. In any case, Wyllard was satisfied when they thrashed the Selache out of the inlet under whole mainsail in a fresh breeze, and when evening came he sat smoking near the wheel in a contemplative mood as the climbing forests and snow-clad heights dropped back astern.
He wondered what his friends were doing upon the prairie, and whether Agatha had married Gregory yet. ”

“ Mrs. Hastings smiled. "I don't think you understand Sally as well as I do. Of course, like the rest of us, she falls a long way short of perfection, and—though it's a difficult subject—there's no doubt that her conduct in leading Gregory on while he was still engaged to you was hardly quite correct. After all, however, you owe her something for that."
"It isn't very hard to forgive her for it," said Agatha quietly.
"Well, I want you to realise Sally. Right or wrong, she's fond of the man. ”

“ After all, Gregory might possess a few good qualities that she had never discovered.
"Perhaps I did," she admitted. "I don't think it matters now."
"They're all of them mixed," persisted Sally. "One can't expect too much, but you can bear with a good deal when you're fond of any one."
Agatha sat silent awhile, for she was troubled by a certain sense of probably wholesome confusion. It seemed to her that Sally had the clearer vision. Love had given her discernment as well as charity, and, not expecting perfection, it was the man's strong points she fixed her eyes upon. ”

“ Men's lives were staked against the value of a fur, edicts were lightly contravened, and now and then a schooner barely escaped into the smothering fog with skins looted close aboard forbidden beaches. It was a perilous life, and a strenuous one, for they had every white man's hand against them, as well as fog and gale, and the reefs that lay in the tideways of almost uncharted waters; but Wyllard made the most of it. He kept the peace with jealous skippers who resented the presence of a man they might command as mate, but whose views they were forced to listen to when he spoke as supercargo ”

“ Wyllard, who was clad in oilskins, stood, a shapeless figure, by the wheel, with his face darkened and roughened by cold and stinging brine. There was an open sore upon one of his elbows, and both his wrists were raw. Forward, a white man and two Siwash were standing about the windlass, and when the bows went up a dreary stretch of slate-grey sea opened up beyond them beneath the dripping jibs. Then the bows would go down again, and all that was visible was the fore-shortened slope of deck and the breast of the big undulation that hove itself up ahead. ”

“ He pictured, in terse seaman's words, the little schooner plunging to windward over long phalanxes of icy seas, or crawling white with snow through the blinding fog. His companions saw the big combers tumbling ready to break short upon the dipping bows out of the dark, and half-frozen men struggling for dear life with folds of madly thrashing sail. The pictures were, however, necessarily somewhat blurred and hazy, for after all only an epic poet could fittingly describe the things that must be done and borne at sea, and epic poets—it is, perhaps, a pity—are not bred in the forecastle. ”

“ Fate seemed dead against them, as it was certain that, if their purpose was suspected, the hand of every white man they might come across would be; but they held on over leagues of empty ocean while the season wore away, until once more the wind freshened easterly, and they ran for a week under boom-foresail and a jib, with the big grey combers curling as they foamed by high above her rail. Then the wind fell, and Dampier, who got an observation, armed his deep-sea lead, and finding shells and shoal water came aft to talk to Wyllard with the strip of Dunton's chart. ”

“ Wyllard seemed unusually animated, and drew Mrs. Hastings into a bout of whimsical badinage, but he looked up sharply when, by and bye, a beat of hoofs rose from the prairie.
"Somebody's riding in; I wonder what he wants?" he said. "I certainly don't expect anybody."
The drumming of hoofs rang more sharply through the open windows, for the sod was hard and dry. Then it broke off, and Agatha saw Wyllard start as a man came into the room. He was a little, thick-set man with a weather-darkened face, dressed in rather old blue serge, and he looked and walked like a seaman. ”

“ Agatha grew a trifle pale. Gregory was horribly right, for she had no doubt now that he had merely thrust upon her a somewhat distressing truth. It was to save Wyllard's credit, and for that alone she had undertaken this most unpalatable task. She did not answer, and Hawtrey stood up.
"Wyllard has his faults, but there's this in his favour—he keeps a promise," he said. "One has a certain respect for a person who never goes back upon his word. Well, because I really think he would like it, I'll keep those men." ”

“ The big brass lamp overhead shed down a cheerful light, the birch billets in the stove snapped and crackled noisily, and its pipe, which was far too hot to touch, diffused a drowsy heat. One could lounge beside it contentedly, knowing that the stinging frost was drying the snow to dusty powder outside. That heightened the contrast, for Agatha pictured the little schooner bound fast in the Northern ice, and then two or three travel-worn men crouching in a tiny tent buffeted by an Arctic gale. She could see the poles bend, and the tricings strain. ”

“ They did it somehow, hanging on to the mast-hoops, buffeted and now and then enveloped by the madly flogging canvas, floundering below amidst a raffle of fallen gear, while the bitter spray lashed them, and the broken boom held up by the clew ring banged savagely to and fro. After that they trimmed her fore-staysail over, and there was by contrast a curious quietness as Dampier jammed his helm up, and the schooner swung off before the sea. Then somebody lighted a lantern, and Charly stooped over Wyllard, who lay limp and still beside the wheel. ”

“ He had heard from steam whaler skippers a little about the tundra that fringes the Polar Sea, the vast desolation frozen hard in summer a few inches below the surface, on which nothing beyond the mosses ever grew. It was easy to understand the brain-crushing sameness and monotony of an existence chequered only by times of dire scarcity on those lonely shores.
"How did you live?" he asked.
"There were the birds in summer, and fish in the rivers. In winter we killed things in the lanes in the ice, though there were weeks when we lay about the blubber lamp in the pits. ”

“ There was no sign of her, and as he gazed up the inlet, seeing only the dim glimmer of the water and the sliding mist, the suspense became almost intolerable. Minute slipped by after minute, and still nothing loomed out of the haze. The canvas rustled and banged above him, there was a growing splashing beneath the bows, and the schooner strained more heavily at her cable. Everything was ready, only his comrades did not appear. He clenched his hands and set his lips as he waited, and wondered at the Siwash who sat upon the rail, a dim, shapeless figure, impassively still. ”

“ He had the boat to think of, and she was somewhere to windward, hidden in the sudden darkness and the turmoil of the quickly rising sea, but in the meanwhile the schooner counted most of all. His crew could scarcely hear him through the uproar the thundering canvas made, and the screaming of the wind, but the orders were given, and from habit and the custom of their calling they knew what they must be.
They hauled a jib down, backed the fore-staysail, and got the boom-foresail sheeted in, but they let the rent mainsail bang, for it could do no more damage than it had already done. ”

“ He must, as they say out there, possess the capacity for staying with it; the grim courage to hold fast the tighter under each crushing blow, when his teams die, or the grain shrivels under the harvest frost, or ragged ice hurtling before a roaring blast does the reaping. It was, however, evident that this girl had an unquestioning faith in Gregory Hawtrey, and once more Wyllard felt compassionate towards her. ”

“ Agatha laughed as she caught Hastings's eye. She fancied that Sproatly would be sorry for his candour afterwards, but she understood what he was feeling to some extent. It was a revolt against cramping customs and conventionalities, and she partly sympathised with it, though she knew that such revolts are dangerous. Even in the West, those who cannot lead must march in column with the rank and file or bear the consequences of their futile mutiny. It is a hard truth that no man can live as he pleases. ”

“ The frost outside was bitter, and the prairie, which rolled back from Lander's in long undulations to the far horizon, gleamed white beneath the moon, but there was warmth and brightness in Stukely's wooden barn. It stood at one end of the little, desolate settlement, where the trail that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two wavy ribands that melted into a waste of snow. Lander's consisted then of five or six frame houses and stores, a hotel of the same material, several sod stables, and a few birch-log barns ”

“ There was an insistent crunching beneath the runners, and a fine mist of snow beat against the sleigh, but the girl leaning forward, a tense figure, with nerveless hands clenched upon the reins, saw nothing but the blue-grey riband of trail that steadily unrolled itself before her. At length, however, a blurred mass, which she knew to be a birch bluff, grew out of the white waste, and presently a cluster of darker smudges shot up into the shape of a log-house, sod stables, and strawpile granary. ”

“ Comfortless as the night's lair has been, the jaded body craves for such faint warmth as it afforded, and further rest, the brain is dull and heavy, and the aching limbs appear incapable of supporting the weight on them. Difficulties loom appallingly large in the faint creeping light, courage fails, and the will grows feeble. Wyllard and his companions felt all this, but it was clear to them that they could not dally, with their provisions running out, and staggering out of camp after a very scanty meal they hauled the sled through the slush they churned up for an hour or so. ”

“ There were marks in the sand which showed them where a boat had been drawn up not very long ago. The Selache had evidently been there, and had sailed away again.
Then Wyllard sat down limply upon the shingle, for all the strength seemed to suddenly melt out of him, and it was several minutes before he looked up. Lewson was still standing, a shapeless, barbaric figure in his garments of skins, with a dark lined face that had scarcely changed, gazing out to sea. The hide moccasins he wore had chafed through, and Wyllard noticed that the blood was trickling from one of his feet. ”

“ The Selache swung round, and he gasped with the effort to control her as she drove away furiously into the thickening snow. She was carrying far too much canvas, but they could not heave her to and take it off her now. The boat must be picked up first, and the veins rose swollen to Wyllard's forehead as he struggled with the wheel. There is always a certain possibility of bringing a fore-and-aft rigged vessel's mainboom over when she is running hard, and this is rather apt to result in disaster to her spars. ”

“ Hawtrey glanced about him as he strode down the street. It was wholly unpaved, and rutted deep, but the drifted snow had partly filled the hollows up, and it did not look very much rougher than it would have done if somebody had recently driven a plough through it. A rude plank sidewalk ran along both sides of it, raised a foot or two above the ground that foot-passengers might escape the mire of the thaw in spring, and immediately behind the sidewalk squat, weatherbeaten, frame houses, all of much the same pattern, rose abruptly. ”

“ She had also an ample share of the Western farmer's pride, which firmly declines to believe that there is any land to compare with the one the plough is slowly wresting from the wide white levels of the prairie.
"We make out well enough," she said with a snap in her eyes.
Hawtrey made a little whimsical gesture. "Oh, yes," he admitted; "it's in you. All you want to beat the wilderness and turn it into a garden is an axe, a span of oxen, and a breaker plough. You ought to be proud of it. Still, you see, our folks back yonder aren't quite the same as you." ”

“ Further away there rose another long building, apparently of sod, and a great shapeless yellow mound with a domed top towered behind the latter. It was most unlike a trim English rick, besides being bigger, and Agatha wondered what it could be. As a matter of fact, it was a not uncommon form of granary, the straw from the last thrashing flung over a birch-pole framing.
Behind that there ran a great breadth of knee-high stubble, blazing ochre and cadmium in the sunlight. It had evidently extended further than it did, for a blackened space showed where a fire had been lighted to destroy it. ”

“ Bred to the sea, and living on the seal and salmon, as he had done, an additional hazard or two or an extra strain on his tough body did not count for much with him. He had been accustomed to sleep wet through with icy water, and crouch for hours with numbed hands clenched on the steering-paddle while the long sea canoe scudded furiously over the big combers before bitter gale or driving snow. Wyllard, who rolled over, pulled a wet sleeping-bag across him, and after that there was silence in the little rocking tent. ”