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I fling but the helve after the hatchet that has sunk into the silent stream. I want the other half of the weapon that is buried fathom deep, and for want of which the thick woods darken round me by the Sacred River, and I can catch not a glimpse of the stars." "In plain English," said Audley Egerton, "you want " he stopped short, puzzled.
"I want my purpose and my will, and my old character, and the nature God gave me. I want the half of my soul which has fallen from me. I want such love as may replace to me the vanished affections. Reason not, I throw the helve after the hatchet."
All such considerations vanish in the fierce energy of the thorough partisan, who, without grudging or remorse, casts the axe-head after the helve; but I speak, now, of men whose sympathies at the commencement of the war were almost neutral, and who began to suffer in the way above described before the bias of feeling had time to determine itself.
This I know, as I know all, not only from him of Ghent, but from him of Peterborough, Ascelin's uncle." Hereward laughed a laugh of cynical triumph, pardonable enough in a broken man. "Gospatrick! the wittol! the woodcock! looking at the springe, and then coolly putting his head therein. Throwing the hatchet after the helve! selling his soul and never getting the price of it!
He dropped his flashlight, but as he left the boat his free arm swung out and his hand touched something which he seized in an instant. It was the short hatchet on the thwart and he had seized it by the helve, well up toward the top. With the swiftness of thought itself he realized what had happened.
The helve of the axe caught my eye, and in an instant by an association of ideas it flashed across me that in the pocket of my dress there was a small knife another sharp instrument by which I could extricate myself.
The helve of the axe was stained with blood, and clung to his grasp as if his palms were glued. His blows grew altogether ineffectual The axe fell sideways often, and at such times the blow jarred him to the spine. 'You will come down, he said, 'if I die for it' He went back to the tent, and casting himself on the turf before it, laved his hands in the ice-cold mountain-stream.
"The Long Knives!" not knowing whether to stand or fly. Girty, meantime, had been left unharmed; although the shivering of the helve of the tomahawk in his hand, in front of his breast, showed him he had been a target for no mean marksman, and that his life had been preserved almost by a miracle.
This tool is either used in the hand like a chisel, or inserted into a conical hole burnt through a tree-branch, and the shape of the aperture makes every blow tighten the hold. The people mount it in two ways, either as an axe in line with, or as an adze at a right angle to, the helve. At Akankon I obtained from Mr. Amondsen a stone-implement of novel shape, not seen by me elsewhere.
The natural oil of the skin, which gives to the hand its beautiful suppleness and delicate sense of touch, was gone like the sap in the tree he was felling, for it was early in the winter. However the brow might perspire, there was no dampness on the hand, and the helve of the axe was scarcely harder and drier.
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