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Before our own supper of pemmican, half-baked bread, and tea had been discussed, we always drove the band of horses down to some frozen lake hard-by, and Daniel cut with the axe little drinking holes in the ever-thickening ice; then up would bubble the water and down went the heads-of the thirsty horses for a long pull at the too often bitter spring, for in this region between the Assineboine and the South Saskatchewan fully half the lakes and pools that lie scattered about in-vast variety are harsh with salt and alkalis.
Whilst I was in the storm of it, cursing the lawyer by every shouted epithet I could lay tongue to, a miracle was wrought and Richard Jennifer and Ephraim Yeates pushed their way through the ever-thickening ring of onlookers; the latter to range himself beside me with his brown-barreled rifle in the hollow of his arm, and my dear lad to fling himself upon me in a bear's hug of joyous recognition and greeting.
But all was perfectly still about where he lay, while the sound of musketry came rolling and echoing along the narrow ravine; and above the trees, in the direction in which his friends must be, there was a rising and ever-thickening cloud of smoke.
Very soon, the sun was obscured by ever-thickening clouds, John happened to provoke the antipathy of a lout in his form known as Lubber Sprott. Sprott began to persecute him with a series of petty insults and injuries. He accused him of "sucking up" to a lord, of putting on "lift" because he was the youngest boy in the Upper Remove, of kow-towing to the masters and so forth.
The rolling clouds, the dark wilderness, and the watery waste shine out every moment in the wide gleam of lightnings still hidden by the wood, and are wrapped again in ever-thickening darkness over which thunders roll and jar, and answer one another across the sky. Then, like a charge of ten thousand lancers, come the wind and the rain, their onset covered by all the artillery of heaven.
All these conclusions made Mary anxious, by wrapping her husband round with common domestic cares and a web of daily, social incident, to bury the memory of this Stella beneath ever-thickening strata of forgetfulness; not that in themselves these reminiscences, however hallowed, could do her any further actual harm; but because the train of thought evoked thereby was, as she conceived, morbid, and dangerous to the balance of his mind.
Thus employed, the short remainder of the Arctic summer swiftly passed away; the sun daily sank nearer and nearer the horizon; the temperature fell; frost made its appearance, hardening the soil beneath the tread and coating the pools and puddles and morasses with an ever-thickening sheet of ice and the vegetation with a delicate tracery of silver; and at length the day came when the anchor was lifted and the Flying Fish moved some few miles out to sea to enable her occupants to witness the final disappearance of the sun beneath the southern horizon.
Buzzby was at the starboard, and Peter Grim at the larboard gangway, while the men stood in two rows, extending from each to the main hatch, up which ever-thickening clouds of dark smoke were rolling. Bucket after bucket of water was passed along and dashed into the hold, and everything that could be done was done, but without effect. The fire increased.
The first speaker was one of the ship's officers, and the other was Tom Swift, who, accompanied by his chum, was trying to get past a rope that had been hastily stretched in front of the hold where the smoke was rolling up in ever-thickening clouds. "It's important that you stay where you are," insisted the officer. "Look here young man, do you want to start a panic?
Some three hundred yards of open space lay between them and the port-locks. Friday now led the way, weighted down under the heavy suits; the scientist came next and then the Hawk, his sole remaining gun replying at intervals to the ever-thickening barrage from behind. They had covered perhaps a half of that distance when the negro's steps suddenly faltered and he halted. "Look there!" he groaned.
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