Now I shall continue, said Lumley, with a satisfied clearing of the throat, the exposition of grossness,
Oh, pray spare me that, said I, quickly, but tell me, if you can, why it is that such a tremendous fire as that does not melt our snow walls.
Put your head nearer to it, Max, for some of the phrenological chambers must still be frozen, else it would be clear to you that the intensity of the cold is the reason. You see that only a small part of the snow quite close to the fire is a little softened. If the fire were hotter it would melt more of itmelt the whole hole and us too. But the cold is so great that it keeps the walls cool and us alsotoo cool indeed, for while my face and knees are roasting my back is freezing, so I shall rise and give it a turn. Now, he continued, rising and turning his back to the blaze as he spoke, I will resume my remarks on gross
Youve no objection to my making our bed while you lecture? said I, also rising.
Lumley had not the least objection, so, while he held forth, I spread a large green blanket over our carpet of pine-brush. A bundle of the same under the blanket formed a pretty good pillow. Wrapping myself tightly round in another blanket (for physical heat evaporates quickly in the frozen regions) I lay down. My friend lay down beside me, our feet being towards the fire.
After a silent interval, while lying thus, gazing up through the overhanging branches at the stars that twinkled in the clear frosty sky, our thoughts became more serious. The grandeur of creation led us to think and speak of the Creatorfor we were like-minded friends, and no subject was tabooed. We conversed freely about whatever chanced to enter our mindsof things past, present, and to come. We spoke of God the Saviour, of redemption and of sin. Then, with that discursive tendency to which most minds are prone, we diverged to home and civilised lands, contrasting these with life in the wild-woods of the Great Nor-west. After that we became sleepy, and our converse was more discursiveat times even incoherentin the midst of which Lumley reverted to his unfinished exposition of grossness, and, in the enthusiasm of his nature, was slowly working himself back into a wakeful condition, when I put an abrupt end to the discourse by drawing a prolonged snore. It was a deceptive snore, unworthy of success, yet it succeeded.
My friend turned round and, with a contented sigh, went to sleep. After a brief space the snore which had been a fiction became a reality, and thus, on our bed of snow, in the depths of an Arctic night, in the heart of the frozen wilderness, and while the mighty fire burned slowly down, we unitedly took our departure for the land of Nod.
Chapter Two.
The Winter Packet
On returning next morning towards the outpost from our encampment in the woods, Lumley and I made a discovery which excited us greatly. It was nothing more than a track in the snow, but there was a revelation in the track which sent the blood tingling through our veins.
It was not the track of a Polar bear. We should have been somewhat surprised, no doubt, but not greatly excited by that. Neither was it the track of a deer or an Arctic fox. It was only the track of a sledge!
Is that all? exclaims the reader. No, that is not all. But, in order that you may understand it better, let me explain.
Fort Dunregan, in which we dwelt, stood more than a thousand miles distant from the utmost verge of civilised life in Canada. We were buried, so to speak, in the heart of the great northern wilderness. Our nearest neighbour lived in an outpost between one and two hundred miles distant, similar to our own in all respects but even more lonely, being in charge of a certain Scotsman named Macnab, whose army of occupation consisted of only six men and two Indian women! The forests around us were not peopled. Those vast solitudes were indeed here and there broken in upon, as it were, by a few families of wandering Red-Indians, who dwelt in movable tentswere here to-day and away to-morrowbut they could not be said to be peopled, except by deer and bears and foxes and kindred spirits.
Of course, therefore, we were far beyond the every day influences of civilised life. We had no newspapers, no mails; no communication whatever, in short, with the outer world except twice in the year. The one occasion was in summer, when a brigade of boats arrived with our outfit of goods for the years trade with the few scattered Indians above referred to; the other occasion was in the depth of our apparently interminable winter, when a packet of letters was forwarded from outpost to outpost throughout the land by the agents of the Hudsons Bay Company which we served.
This half-yearly interval between mails had a double effect on our minds. In the first place, it induced a strange feeling that the great world and all its affairs were things of the past, with which we had little or nothing to doa sort of dreamand that the little world of our outpost, with its eight or ten men and three or four Indian women, its hunting, and trapping, and firewood-cutting, and fishing, and trading, and small domestic arrangements and dissensions, was the one place of vital importance and interest, before which empires and dynasties and the trifling matter of politics sank into mere insignificance! In the second place, it created an intense longinga hungering and thirstingfor news of our kindred at home.
Our chief, Mr Strang, and our two selves, with another fellow-clerk who was named Spooner, as well as most of our men, were from the old country, where we had left fathers, mothers, brothers, sistersin some cases sweetheartsbehind us. It may be conceived then with what anxiety and yearning we looked forward to the periodical break in the weary six months of total silence that had enveloped us. Men in civilised, or even semi-civilised communities, cannot understand this. Convicts on penal servitude for long periods may have some faint notion of it, but even these have periods of literary intercourse more frequently than we had. The reader must just take the statement on trust therefore, that our anxious yearnings were remarkably powerful. What might not have occurred in these six months of dark silence! Who might not have been married, born, laid low by sickness, banished to the ends of the earth like ourselves, or even removed by death!
Is it surprising, then, that we caught our breath and flushed, and that our hearts leaped when we came unexpectedly upon the track of the two men who had dragged news from home for hundreds of miles over the snow? We knew the tracks well. Our intimate acquaintance with every species of track that was possible in that particular region, rendered a mistake out of the question. There was the step of the leader, who wore a snow-shoe the shape of which, although not unknown, was somewhat unfamiliar to us. There was the print of the sled, or toboggan, which was different in pattern from those used at Dunregan, and there was the footprint of the man in rear, whose snow-shoe also made an unfamiliar impression.
The packet! exclaimed Lumley, opening his solemn grey eyes to their widest as he looked up from the track to me.
At last! I returned, unconsciously betraying the prolonged state of suspense with which my mind had been afflicted.
Come along! said my companion, starting off homeward at a pace that was almost too much for me.
We soon reached the outpost, and there stood the makers of the track which had roused in us so much excitement.
Two strong men, chosen expressly for a duty which required mental endurance and perseverance as well as physical vigour. They stood at the door of the entrance-hall, talking with Mr Strang, the one with his snow-shoes slung over his shoulder on the butt of his gun, the other using the same implements as a rest for his hands, while Spooner, in a state of great excitement, was hastily undoing the lashings of the sled, to get at the precious box which contained the packet.
Well, gentlemen, here it is at last, said our chief, with a genial smile as we came up.
Yes, we followed the track immediately we struck it, said Lumley, stooping to assist Spooner in his work.
We soon had the box carried to our chiefs private room, while the two strangers were had off by our men to their own house, there to be feasted on venison, ptarmigan, salt-pork, fish, and pease-pudding to satiety, and afterwards pumped to a state of exhaustion.
I followed our chief, who had a provokingly deliberate way of opening the packet and examining its contents, while my feverish agitation and expectancy increased. There was a humorous twinkle in his eye, I thought, which told of mischievous purpose, while he kept up a murmuring commentary.
Hm! as I expectedno news from Macnab. Whats this?ah! The Governor! A voluminous epistle, andhallo! Lumleys friends must be fond of him. His packet is the biggest in the box. And Spooner too, not so bad for him. Here, take these to them. Stayhere is a bundle of letters for the men. Youd better deliver these yourself.
I hesitated, while a mist of great darkness began to descend on my soul.
Nothing for me, sir? I asked faintly.
There seems to benothingstay! whats this?why, I thought it was a big book, but, yes, it is a packet for you, Mr Maxbythere!
My heart leaped into my mouthalmost out of itas I received a thick packet wrapped in newspaper.
Hastening to what was called the clerks winter house with these treasures I distributed them, and handed the mens packet to one of themselves, who was eagerly awaiting it. Then I went to my room and barricaded the door to prevent interruption.
In Bachelors Hall, as we styled our apartments, we had an inveterate habit of practical joking, which, however interesting and agreeable it might be at most times, was in some circumstances rather inconvenient. To guard against it at such times we were in the habit of retiring to our respective dens and barricading the doors, the locks being sometimes incapable of standing the strain brought to bear on them.
On this particular occasion I made my barricade stronger than usual; sat down on my bed and opened the packet from home.
But here I must let the curtain fall. I cannot suppose that the reader, however amiable, will sympathise with the joys and sorrows of an unknown family, interesting though they were to me. I may state, however, that before I got through the budget it was so late that I turned into bed and read the remainder there. Then, as the fire in the hall-stove sank low, the cold obliged me to put on above my voluminous blankets (we dared not sleep in sheets out there) a thick buffalo robe, which, besides having on the outside the shaggy hair of the animal to which it had belonged, was lined with flannel. Thus nestled into a warm hole, I read on until a shout arrested me and brought me suddenly back from the hills of bonny Scotland to the frozen wilderness.
I say, shouted Lumley at the back of the door, which he saluted with a kick, my sister is married!
Poor thing! said I. Who to?
Open the door.
I cant. Im in bed.
You must.
I wont.
No! then here goes.
He retired as he spoke, and, making a rush, launched himself against my door, which, however, withstood the shock.
Here, Spooner, I then heard him say, lend a hand; let us go at it together.
They went at it together. The lock gave way; the chest of drawers went spinning to the other side of the room, and Lumley tumbled over Spooner as both fell headlong to the floor.
As this was by no means an unfamiliar mode of entering each others rooms, I took no notice of it, but proceeded to inquire about the married sister; and Lumley, sitting down on my bed with Spooner, for neither of them had yet undressed, began to tell me of home and friends with as much eagerness as if I had been a member of both families. Young Spooner interrupted Lumley now and then when a touch of coincidence struck him with reference to his own family affairs, and I could not resist the pleasure of occasionally making some such remark as, How odd! thats very like what happened to my little brother Bob, etcetera, whereupon Spooner would immediately become excited and draw a parallel more or less striking in regard to his own kindred and so we went on far into the night, until we got our several families mixed up to such an extent that it became almost impossible to disentangle them; for, being three families, you know, we became inextricably confused as to which was which, though each was perfectly clear in regard to his own! Thus, to me, Jane Lumley became confused with Janet Spooner, so that Janet Lumley and Jane Spooner were always tripping over each other in my brain, while my dear cousin Maggie Maxby became a Maggie Spooner to Lumley, and a Maggie Lumley to Spooner, and to each sometimes a Janet or a Jane respectively. If the reader will multiply into this question two mothers and three fathers, four brothers and six sisters, besides numberless aunts, uncles, and cousins, male and female, he will easily perceive how between mental perplexity and a tendency to slumber, we at last gave the matter up in a sort of jovial despair.
We were startled suddenly from this condition by a crash and an exceedingly sharp and bitter cry.
It must be remarked here, that, in order to subdue King Frost in those northern strongholds of his, we had, besides double doors and double windows and porches, an enormous cast-iron stove from the famous Carron foundry. It stood in the centre of our hall, so that its genial favours might be distributed with equal justice to the various sleeping-rooms that opened out of the hall all round. From this stove an iron pipe arose, and, turning at a right angle when within a couple of feet of the ceiling, proceeded to the chimney at the upper end of the hall. When the thermometer stood much below zero, we were accustomed to raise the stove and part of its pipe to a dull-red heat, which had the effect of partially melting the contents of the water-jugs in our bedrooms, and of partially roasting the knees of our trousers. To keep this stove up to its work was the duty of an Indian youth, whom we styled Salamander, because he seemed to be impervious to heat. He was equally so to cold. When I first went to Dunregan I used to pity Salamander, on hearing him every morning enter our hall with a gust of air that seemed cold enough to freeze a walrus, and proceed to strike a light and kindle our fire. My own nose, and sometimes an eye, was all that protruded from the buffalo robe at such times. But Salamander never shivered, and always grinned, from which I came to understand that my pity was misplaced. About nine oclock each night he left us to look after the great Carron stove ourselves, and we were all pretty good stokers. Self-interest kept us up to duty. Sometimes we overdid it, raising the dull-red to brightness now and then.
On this particular occasion, in the exuberance of his feelings, Lumley, before bursting into my room, had heaped on as much dry wood as the stove could hold. It chanced to be exceedingly resinous wood. He also opened the blow-hole to its utmost extent. Being congregated in my bedroom, as I have described, deeply engaged in eager comments and family reminiscences, we failed to observe that the great Carron stove roared like a wrathful furnace, that it changed from a dull to a bright red in its anger, and eventually became white with passion. As evil communications have a tendency to corrupt, the usually innocent pipe became inflamed. It communicated the evil to the chimney, which straightway caught fire, belched forth smoke and flames, and cast a ruddy glare over the usually pallid snow. This chanced to meet the eye of Salamander as he gazed from his bunk in the mens house; caused him to bounce up and rush outfor, having a taste for sleeping in his clothes, he was always ready for actionburst open our door with a crash, and rudely dispel our confusedly pleasant intercourse with the exceedingly sharp and bitter cry before mentioned.