Poleaxe

“ They had left the axe in the canoe, and it was now somewhere at the bottom of the river. They could better have spared one of the guns, but they were thankful that their loss had been no greater.
"If we had left the foxes in the canoe," said Fred, "they'd have been drowned, sure!"
Horace had waded ashore, and now had a brisk fire going. Fred and Macgregor joined him, and the three boys stood shivering by the blaze, with their wet clothes steaming.
"We're well out of it," said Horace, with chattering teeth. "The worst is the loss of the axe. It won't be easy to make fires from now on." ”

“ Destitute of an axe, they would have to make a camp where they could find fuel, and they scattered to look for it. It was rapidly growing too dark to search, but Fred presently came upon a large, dead spruce, lying half buried in snow, but spiked thickly with dry branches. He was breaking these off by the armfuls when the other boys came up in answer to his calls.
They trampled down the snow, gathered birch bark and spruce splinters, and laid the kindling against the big back log. Maurice set about pulling twigs for a couch, in case the temperature permitted them to sleep. ”

“ He has courage, spirit, and strength; but, cursed with instability, that courage, strength, and energy have neither method nor guidance; for the Pole displays a variability resembling that of the winds which blow across that vast plain broken with swamps; and though he has the impetuosity of the snow squalls that wrench and sweep away buildings, like those aerial avalanches he is lost in the first pool and melts into water. Man always assimilates something from the surroundings in which he lives. Perpetually at strife with the Turk, the Pole has imbibed a taste for Oriental splendor ”

“ Cautious signals are exchanged ere they meet behind a screen of bushes, and are repeated as they stealthily patrol the riversides. Then away in the woods near the stepping-stones the axe is plied with muffled vigour; the branches rustle with their neighbours as, the stem being severed, they are drawn downward. The steel is scarcely audible as the lesser limbs are struck away and the net-pole prepared. With hardly a sound the poacher threads his way through the coppices, and he is soon again by the pool’s marge. ”

“ He started down the river at a swinging trot, still listening over his shoulder, when the ice suddenly gave way under his feet, and he went down with so swift a plunge that he had time for only a shuddering gasp.
He had stepped on an airhole lightly crusted over with snow. He went down to his neck without touching bottom, and the black water surged up to his face. It was the gun that saved him; it caught across the hole, and he clung to it fiercely. As the current fortunately was not rapid, he was able to draw himself up and out upon the ice. ”

“ The sledge grew lighter as the provisions were consumed, and there were few marches that did not cover forty miles. Polaris slept with the dogs, huddled in robes. The very food they ate they must warm with the heat of their bodies before it could be devoured. There was no vestige of anything to make fuel for a camp-fire.
He had covered some hundreds of miles when he found the contour of the country was changing. The chain of the hills swung sharply away to the east, and the path broadened, fanwise, east and west. An undulating plain of snow and ice-caps, rent by many fissures, lay ahead. ”

“ Knowing his foe aforetime, Polaris took that opportunity to deliver his own charge. He bounded forward and drove his tough spear with all his strength into the white chest below the throat. Balanced as it was on its haunches, the shock of the man's onset upset the bear, and it rolled backward, a jet of blood spurting over its shaggy coat and dyeing the snow.
Like a flash the man followed his advantage. Before the brute could turn or recover Polaris reached its back and drove his long-bladed knife under the left shoulder. ”

“ Like mighty fans rose she, still gripping the struggling polecat hard by the back in a locked clutch of steel—up and up, and out over the estuary, growing slowly from a great bird to a medium-sized one, to a smaller, and a smaller, all the time fighting, it seemed, like a mad creature, to gain the upper air, to climb to the clouds, as a drowning man fights his way upwards in the water. And there was reason—the old polecat's jaws were fast shut in a vise-grip, as of a Yale lock, upon her throat. ”

“ The pole-axe should be of the American pattern, which has a head hollow and very sharp round the periphery. The practise is, after the blow is struck and the animal felled, to plunge a thin cane into the wound, which passes down the spine, causing instantaneous death whilst the animal is lying stunned. ”

“ Glancing over his shoulder, Fred saw the three trappers running down the shore, and firing as they ran. But in another moment the canoe swept round a bend in the river, and was screened from the trappers by the wooded shore.
"Keep it up! Make all the speed you can!" cried Horace.
Down the fast current they shot like an arrow. As they went round another curve, they heard the roar of rushing water ahead; a short but turbulent rapid confronted them. There the river, foaming and surging, dashed down over the black rocks; the shore was rough and covered with dense thickets. ”

“ Like wild beasts the Polacks surged upon them. Keating tried to regain his feet—but he got no further than his knees as a swinging blow from a pick-handle aught him on his head. Half-stunned, he sank back and, as consciousness left him, he heard Spirlaw's great voice roar out like the maddened bellow of a bull, saw the giant form rise with, it seemed, a dozen Polacks clinging to neck and shoulders, legs and body, saw him shake them off and the massive arms rise and fall—and all was a blur, all darkness. ”

“ You bloody Polak coward!"
and with a speed in comparison to which lightning is snail-like the tower reached twice for the peaches-and-cream cheeks of the prone victim; who set up a tragic bellowing of his own, writhed upon his somewhat dislocated paillasse, raised his elbows shieldingly, and started to get to his feet by way of his trembling knees—to be promptly knocked flat. Such a howling as The Young Pole set up I have rarely heard: he crawled sideways; he got on one knee ”

“ At Philadelphia I once saw a great number of people on a market day throwing at a dog that was so unfortunate as to have been engaged with a polecat just before, and to carry about him the tokens of its displeasure. Persons when travelling through a forest are often troubled with the stink which this creature makes; and sometimes the air is so much infected that it is necessary to hold ones nose. If the wind blows from the place where the polecat has been, or if it be quite calm, as at night, the smell is more strong and disagreeable. ”

“ The polecat chiefly haunts small dark fir-woods, where the surface is rough and broken, and much overgrown with tangled and inhospitable brake. If such a clump of trees be situated at the corner of a field or along some irregular farm-road, it has additional recommendations. In the hilly uncultivated parts, the streams invariably pursue a troubled course through rough and broken ground, where large boulders and low thickly bristling brake alternate with gorse and bracken-covered level ground. ”

“ Pokkes, s. pl. pocks, pustules, C 358. A.S. poc; Du. pok, a pock, pustule. Small pox is a corrupt form of 'the small pocks.'
Pol (1) , s. pole, long stick; Pole, dat. L. 2202.
Pol (2) , s. pole (of the heavens) , A. i. 14. 6; Pool, A. i. 18. 13; B 4. m 5. 3.
Polax, s. pole-axe, L. 642; Pollax, A 2544.
Polcat, s. polecat, C 855.
Policye, s. public business, C 600.
Polished, pp. E 1582; Polisshed, D 1742.
Pollax, s. pole-axe, A 2544; Polax, L. 642.
Pollucioun, s. pollution, I 912.
Polut, pp. polluted, B 1. p 4. 180. ”

“ The cleat is for the purpose of tying the halyard to a few feet from the base of the pole. The majority of poles have iron braces for support connected about six (6) feet up from the base of the pole.
From experience I find the steel pole the most dangerous. In my opinion it is [81] more dangerous than the wooden pole for the reason that rust forms inside of the steel pole and around the bands where it is connected, and in the winter time it is easily broken by the cold weather if any weight is put on it, whereas the wooden pole can be tested by sounding it as to its condition. ”

“ The Polecat had lived all his life in the forests, thieving, cheating, robbing when a safe chance offered. He could “burr” like a goat-sucker and scream like a jay, tell the age of a deer from its slot and its dung, and judge just how high the pheasants would be roosting on a certain night. The Polecat had hunted in all the forests in Hampshire, Sussex, and Surrey, and he would slip from one to the other if it happened that the nose of the Law had smelt spilt blood.
In Blackbottom Gill five figures were grouped before a fire in the thick of the gloom of the hollies. ”

“ Also, it hurt, and the polecat did not lose his hold.
Then, maddened, wild with rage, the rage of one who expects a walk-over and receives a bad jolt instead, that old she-otter really got to work. She recoiled like a coiled snake, and the polecat felt fire in one loin.
It looked like the contortions of one big, furry beast twisted with cramp, by the moonlight. You could not possibly separate the combatants, or tell that there were two. But the polecat only fought because he dared not expose his flank with the foe facing him. ”

“ Polecat uses except himself. I suppose he must like it or he wouldn't be so free with it. But other people go away when he uses it—mostly in the direction the wind's blowing from—and in a hurry, as if they were afraid they'd miss a train. Even Mr. Dog doesn't stop to argue with Mr. Polecat. Nobody does, and all the other deep woods people do their best to make him happy and [Pg 110] to keep him in a good humor whenever he comes about, and give him their nicest things to eat and a lot to carry home with him, so he'll start just as soon as possible. ”

“ Whoever had cut the way in the rock in the long ago had left, almost at the very edge, a cleft in each side that was large enough for hand-grip. Very probably they were the holds by which the artisans steadied themselves while they hewed and polished the stone of the chute.
In those clefts the groping fingers of Polaris caught and held. The impetus of his body would have torn away the hold of a man less splendidly muscled than the son of the snows; but with a mighty wrench of his arms he stayed his progress and hung with head projected over the brink of the pit. ”

“ Poleing is the next process, which is performed in April, before the hop begins to shoot. The pole, or stake, from eight to ten feet high, furnishes a support to the climbing vine of the plant; several are fixed in one hill, and it requires strong muscular exertions to do so. It is invariably performed by the man, who, however, receives assistance from his wife, his son, and sometimes his daughter. ”

“ Time was quickly passing, and we had a terrible fight to reach the head of the couloir. The rocks now shaded us from the sun's rays, and soon our hats, coats, and the rope were frozen as stiff as boards, while the cold was so intense as to cause the skin of our hands to adhere to the steel of the ice-axes. ”

“ All had happened in the space that a man might count ten. In one glance Polaris accepted the situation. His head shot forward, every muscle in his body flexed, his face hardened and under his white-furred frontlet his tawny eyes blazed like molten brass. He leaped from the side of the sledge with lightning swiftness, cleared the space intervening with a single bound, and tore the lifted spear from the hand of Morolas. He threw the weapon on the ground, and for an instant the two men faced each other, foot to foot and eye to eye. ”

“ They have nothing in the world but a pole with a home-made iron hook at the end of it, and a pickaxe, but in desperately willing hands those tools are sufficient to win a loaf with. They brake up the ice, the poleman and his mates; they smash it into convenient pieces, and with icicles dangling from the fringe of their ragged trousers, turned up higher than their knees, they plash and dabble in the deadly cold water to bring the ice ashore, and they help to pack it into the carts at a charge of fourpence per load. ”

“ The usual weight of the pollack is six or seven pounds, but it sometimes much exceeds this. In the Baltic Sea and the Northern Ocean, particularly in those parts where the bottom is rocky, and the sea much agitated, these fish appear, at stated seasons, in great shoals, playing about on the surface in all directions and in the most sportive and agile manner. Near Lubec and Heligoland they are sometimes caught, in immense numbers, in nets, or with lines and hooks baited with a feather, a small fish, or a bit of the skin of an eel. ”

“ Straight at the man it shot, and as it reached him he sprang aside.
The same mischance that had upset the animal now proved the undoing of the man's well-aimed thrust. As he drew back his arm to strike, Polaris felt his feet flying from under him.
By exercising all of his tigerish agility he prevented himself from rolling right under the ponderous body of his antagonist. Backward he threw himself, struck a softer spot in the snow crust, and disappeared in it up to his shoulders. ”