Chaining

“ It was like the ebb of a broken wave to those who had heard the sea. Turning about, as the candles on the table blinked, the young man lazily dashed the rain and sleet from his beard and breast, and lay down again on the settle, with something between a shiver and a yawn. “Cruel night, this,” he muttered, and so saying, he returned to his normal condition of somnolence.
The opening and the closing of the door, together with the draught of cold air, had awakened a little man who occupied that corner of the chimney nook which faced old Matthew. ”

“ An unusual noise is heard; and round the bend glides a bark canoe with sound of human voices. Away go the brood together, the river behind them foaming like the wake of a tiny steamer as the swift-moving feet lift them almost out of water. Visions of ocean, the guns, falling birds, and the hard winter distract the poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood, now leading, now bravely facing the monster; now pushing along some weak little loiterer, now floundering near the canoe as if wounded, to attract attention from the young. ”

“ For though it sent men hurrying out into the storm, to drive the cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snow-wreaths, and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice and snow;—yet all knew that after the snow would come the keen frost and the bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and the fenman’s yearly holiday, when, work being impossible, all gave themselves up to play, and swarmed upon the ice on skates and sledges, and ran races, township against township, or visited old friends full forty miles away ”

“ Early this morning this deed was performed, and now, perchance, these tired women and this boy, their clothes stained with blood, and their minds racked with alternate resolution and fear, are making a hasty meal of parched corn and moose-meat, while their canoe glides under these pine roots whose stumps are still standing on the bank. They are thinking of the dead whom they have left behind on that solitary isle far up the stream, and of the relentless living warriors who are in pursuit. ”

“ It had been a very dry season, the rough shingles were like tinder, and the inflammable material burst quickly into great flames, lighting up the valley as far as the edge of the forest. It was an awe-inspiring and a horrible spectacle. ”

“ These poor creatures, marching from ten to twenty-five miles a day, for twenty-two days, through muddy sloughs, swollen rivers, in tempests and floods and dreary cold, leaving their wives and their children dead by the way—dead of the sufferings of the march—are yet docile, obedient, and “work splendidly!” ”

“ Our trail had closed like a grave behind us, and our horses were now floundering helplessly in the snow. Again English struggled on; but at three in the evening, standing up to the waist in the snow beside his prostrate horse, he shouted for us to approach. We did so, but could scarcely see each other's faces as we pushed against the storm. We held our heads bowed and necks bent, as you have seen cattle at such times in a barnyard.
"H——'s to pay, boys! I tell you, h——'s to pay; and if we don't keep our heads level, we'll go up the flume like a spring salmon. ”

“ Because Winter is like a jailer, like the keeper of a prison. He fastens up, or imprisons, the rivers, lakes, and ponds with ice. So he is described as a keeper of prisoners,—with manacles or handcuffs hanging to his waist, ready for use. Ice striking against ice makes a ringing noise, very much like iron—sometimes. ”

“ But a congé in a canoe was a very different affair: man’s presence leaves no token upon the water: like a bubble or a drop of rain, his traces vanish from the surface, or sink into the depths of the subtle element—an emblem of his own vain nothingness! ”

“ Like velvet rubbed on velvet the canoe brushed across the sand. He staggered to his feet, stumbled out, dragged the canoe high up under the trees, turned it bottom upward, and sank beside it, face downward in the sand. Sleep came to drive away the fear of fear, but hunger, thirst, and fever fought with sleep, and he dreamed—dreamed of a rope that sawed his neck, of the fight in the woods, and the shots. He dreamed, too, of the camp, of his forty [198] pounds of spruce gum, of Tully, and of Bates. ”

“ A chain that is blown away by the wind and melted by the sun, links with pairs of parallel dots the gaps of farm fences, and winds through and along walls and zigzag lines of rails, is likely to be the most visible sign that you will find in winter of one bold and persistent little hunter's presence. ”

“ In comfortable tourist faith, unthinking, unfearing, down go men, women, and children on whatever is offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if saying with Jean Paul, “fear nothing but fear”—not without reason, for these cañon trails down the stairways of the gods are less dangerous than they seem, less dangerous than home stairs. ”

“ A dim, mysterious, divine majesty seems to have come down on all the troubled world. The moon is shining full on her face. She hears marching on the crinkling snow—the band of the guard are crossing the avenue to take up the place assigned to them on the officers’ tennis-court. Behind them there is the shuffling of irregular feet—her farm-hands are following. ”

“ She was no longer a restless gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy, but a weak, patient, blind maiden, conscious of her great infirmity, humbled by it, and thinking shame of it.
One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out with the children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered far down the banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced, the little black people plucked the wild flowers, and called to the cattle and the sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets that whistled to their young. ”

“ Every morning after breakfast they disappeared and spent the day at opposite ends of a canoe. She, knowing nothing of a canoe, was happy in stabbing the waters with her paddle while he told her how he loved her and at the same time, with anxious eyes on his own paddle, skilfully frustrated her efforts to drown them both. ”

“ Consequently, in winter, one can see tramps sitting comfortably on benches drawn close to the fire, and reading their morning paper, and smoking their after-breakfast pipe, as complacently and calmly as the merchant in his counting-room. Here they find refuge from the storms of winter, and make themselves entirely at home. ”

“ And so on again presently, crashing and pounding, the boys towelling their cattle for mere exercise of their own numbed fingers, the cat-ice splintering in the ruts, the chaise dancing wildly in its straps.
Fortunately there was no snow; though the sky bore evidence in its appearance of such garnered stores of it as could, at a nod, sow the world with winter. ”

“ The hunters have then no child’s play before them. Regardless of everything but pain and fury, the animal rushes at the canoe, tries to knock it to pieces by blows from his enormous head, or seizes the edge in his jaws, and tears out the side. Should he succeed in capsizing or destroying the canoe, the hunters have an anxious time to pass; for if the furious animal can gripe one of them in his huge jaws, the curved, chisel-like teeth inflict certain death, and have been known to cut an unfortunate man fairly in two. ”

“ If he were to survive a winter in this country it was high time he built a shack and started smoking and drying a supply of fish and game. He had seen many game-signs in the valley, in fact had been gorging on moose-meat after a summer of semi-starvation and had intended to winter on the headwater lakes of the river. And now, here was this canoe! ”

“ Marching all night without rations, sleeping in the water, forbidden to light a fire, when preparing for showers of grape and canister, all this took away any inclination to sing, we were glad to pull our shoes out of the holes in which they were buried at every step, and chilled and drenched to our waists by the wet grain, the hardiest and most courageous among us wore a discontented air. ”

“ They are up to all kinds of tricks. For instance, at night they are turned loose to feed. A heavy, trailing chain is attached to them, and as they move about, the chain drags on the ground and leaves a trail, by means of which they are traced in the morning. ”

“ Not many days after the events recorded in the foregoing chapter the people of Man awoke to the joyful certainty that the sweating sickness had disappeared. The solid wave of heat had gone; the ground had become dry and the soil light; and no fetid vapors floated over the Curraghs at midday. Also the air had grown keener, the nights had sharpened, and in the morning the fronds of hoar-frost hung on the withering leaves of the trammon.
Then the poor folk began to arrange their thoughts concerning the strange things that had happened; to count up their losses by death ”

“ The morning dawned upon his disturbed slumbers, and the dim light which reached his dungeon through a narrow aperture in the wall roused him from the damp earth upon which he had cast himself for the last time. He arose feverish and unrefreshed. His hands were cold as the stones by which he was surrounded, but his temples were painfully hot, and throbbed almost audibly. He tried to summon resolution to appear before the court with composure, but nature mastered all his energies, and he gave way at length to a violent burst of emotion. ”

“ Chains, thick as a man's arm, hung upon the walls and pillars, which were running with moisture, and in these fetters were figures, in sitting, standing, and kneeling postures, of which the outline was that of human beings, but, whether living or dead, the imperfect lamp-light rendered it impossible to distinguish. ”

“ It fits into the scene, and does not appear to lead a beggarly and disconsolate life, like most of our winter residents. During the ice-harvesting on the river, I see them flitting about among the gangs of men, or floating on the cakes of ice, picking and scratching amid the droppings of the horses. ”

“ In the early morning, when the air is still pure and clear after the coolness of the night, and when the sun is low, the cañon lies in deep gloom, and behind the brightly lighted tops of the columns the shadows lie as black as soot. ”

“ To any but a cowman of the mountains, the trip would have been hazardous in the extreme. The little cañon was in shadow, except where, far below, the moon shone on on bottomless cliffs. To the left was the wall of the mountain, icy and dim. The cold was intense. ”

“ This done, they were to find a horse, strap the fettered man to its back, fetch him into the mountains in the dark hours of the night, and at daybreak try him solemnly and justly on the issue they had hit upon of life or death. ”

“ Judging by the alternations of the cold and hot seasons, we have now been on this weird and pointless journey for more than ten years. Oddly enough, we do not suffer physically, although the interminable rushing up and down these caverns under the streets becomes boring. ”

“ Another day, the sixth of the interminable gale. Will it never end? The wind and drift continue with unabated violence. For some three hours to-day, I pushed, and butted, and at times almost crawled on hands and knees, back and forth across the small floe on which we are camped. ”

“ It is when the rain falls, and wind and sea arise together—when, sheltered among the caverns in the side of the precipice, I look out upon the dreary waves and the leaping spray—that I feel the unknown dangers which hang over my head in all the horror of their uncertainty. ”

“ In an agony of dread I looked, and the blood within me paled to water at the sight that met my gaze. Something—something with but a single hand and foot—emerged from the shadows of the back of the cavern and began to come forward, leaning heavily upon a rough staff for support. ”

“ These rushes were, and are now, cut in our rivers, preferably in the early autumn, before they begin to rot, and sold by a peculiar measure—a bolt—which is as much as a man can clasp of rushes, when dried, within his arms. ”

“ Things have come to a pretty pass if all of you together can't keep the run of one child while I'm off on the plantation working like a horse to put bit and sup into your mouths. Chaney tells me she saw her go off towards the woods right after dinner, with a book under her arm and her knitting in her hand. ”

“ We are behind a curve in the cañon, and cannot see up to where we left them, and so we wait until their coming seems hopeless, and push on. [Pg 165]
And now we have a succession of rapids and falls until noon, all of which we run in safety. Just after dinner we come to another bad place. A little stream comes in from the left, and below there is a fall, and still below another fall. Above, the river tumbles down, over and among the rocks, in whirlpools and great waves, and the waters are lashed into mad, white foam. ”

“ At times one is borne so near the brink of the awful chasm as to make the passage rather exciting. It must be admitted that a single misstep on the part of the animal which bears him would hurl horse and rider two thousand feet down the cañon to instant destruction. ”

“ The horse began tearing at the leaves of a small tree, thereby making a noise which seemed to us, cowering under cover, as if it might be caused by the man trying to force his way into our hiding-place.
We lay absolutely still, but we felt very uncomfortable, especially as the contents of our bags were mostly strewn about the ground drying. We should never have had time to collect our belongings together and bolt if an intrusion resulted in our hiding-place being exposed. ”