United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Let it be said, however, that as our journey advanced the hoof, at first so tender from much poulticing, became firmer and firmer, and instead of increasing, the lameness rather grew less. We crossed our little market town of Charly amid dead silence. Not a light in a single window, not a sound anywhere.
Wyllard heard the splash of the lead as he and the white man, Charly, ate their breakfast in the little stern cabin. There was a clatter of blocks, and on going out on deck he found the men swinging a boat over. With Charly and two of the Indians he dropped into the boat, and Dampier, who had hove the schooner to, looked down on them over the vessel's rail.
Then he sat down on the sled, and Wyllard stood still looking at the holes in the snow. "Did you feel anything under you?" he asked at length in a jarring voice. "I didn't," said Charly simply. "It was only the trace saved me from dropping through altogether, but if I'd gone a little further I'd have been in the water. Kind of snow bridge over a crevice. We broke it up, and the sled fell through."
Wyllard, who had reasons for surmising that the few settlements on the coast were under strict official control, fancied that the store contained Government supplies, and had arranged that Charly and Lewson should break into it as soon as darkness fell, and pull off to the schooner with anything they could find inside.
It was very dark, but he fancied that the schooner's rail was in the sea, which was washing over her to weather, and that some of the others were struggling to get the mainsail off her. Then a man whom he supposed to be Charly ran into him. "Better come for'ard. Got to haul outer jib down before it blows away," he said.
They set up the wet tent behind a hummock, and crouched inside it upon a ground-sheet, while Charly boiled a kettle on the little oil blast stove. The wind hurled the snow upon the straining canvas, which stood the buffeting. When they had eaten a simple meal Charly put the stove out and the darkness was not broken except when one of them struck a match to light his pipe.
Then they set up the saturated tent behind a hummock, and crouched inside it upon a ground sheet while Charly boiled a kettle on the little oil blast stove, and the wind that screamed about it hurled the snow upon the straining canvas.
Dampier, however, kept away from him, partly to allow his senses to readjust themselves, and partly because he rather shrank from the coming interview. At length, when dusk was falling, Charly came up to say that Wyllard, who seemed quite sensible, insisted on seeing him, and Dampier went down with some misgivings into the little cabin.
Charly, who looked at Wyllard when he had heard the Indian's story, explained it concisely. "I'm worrying about the boat we left on the edge of the ice," he said. "I've had a notion all along it was going to make trouble. Dampier would see the wreckage when he ran in, and I guess it would only mean one thing to him. He'd make quite certain he was right when he didn't find us at the inlet."
With an expressionless face he sat down among the stones, and Charly decided that it was Wyllard's part to pick the trail. "You could beat me every time at trailing or shooting when we went ashore on the American side, and I'm not sorry to let it go at that now," he said. Wyllard smiled grimly. "And I've carried this rifle a week on top of my other load.
Word Of The Day