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Updated: May 2, 2025
The recurring bass figure of the presto sounded to him as though it were a gruesome, awed voice stammering out the fatal words: “Man, hold your breath, Man, hold your breath!” And he did hold his breath, full of unresting discomfort, while his inspiration hacked its way through the ice-locked region into which a passionate spell that was becoming more and more a part of his nature had driven it.
A dog-team swung across the surface of the ice-locked Athabasca, and took the steep slope at Fort McMurray on a long slant. Leaving the dogs in care of the musher, Pierre Lapierre loosened the thongs of his rackets, and, pushing open the door, stamped noisily into the detachment quarters of the Mounted and advanced to the stove where two men were mending dog-harness. The men looked up.
There would be no night. The ice-locked winter would be broken; the winds would blow and the forests answer; the land would bathe in the blessed sunshine, and life renew. Hand in hand, they would quit this horrid dream and journey back to the Southland. They lurched blindly forward, and their hands met their poor maimed hands, swollen and distorted beneath their mittens.
How easily does a wish become father to the thought! Ice lay north, open water south and west; and so south-west steered Hudson, standing by the wheel, though Juet, the old mate, raged in open mutiny because not enough provisions remained to warrant further voyaging, much less the wintering of a crew of twenty in an ice-locked world.
By October the Indians had scattered to their hunting-grounds like leaves to the wind. The ice thickened. By November the islands were ice-locked and snow had drifted waist-high through the forests. The voyageurs could still fish through ice holes for food; but where was young Jean who was to bring up provisions from Michilimackinac?
We picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest pealing, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth. One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb.
Outside, across the ice-locked lake and through the snow-burdened forest swept the wolf-like howl of the wind. Inside, there was the silence of a deeply troubled indecision. At last, Tom Burton said: "It's a right-hard thing to stake the welfare of a family on a boy's notion of his own greatness a notion that ain't never been tried out.
To the left on the ice-locked beach are two scows. It is warmer now for the road winds between the pines on both sides. The snow ceases gradually but we do not see the least brightness in the sky to show location of old Sol. We are making four versts an hour in spite of the hills and the cumbrous boots. The drivers are keeping up well.
Though I write this description coldly, let it not be supposed that I was not violently agitated and astonished almost into the belief that what I beheld was a mere vision, a phenomenon. The sight of the body I examined did not nearly so greatly astound me as the spectacle of this ice-locked schooner. It was easy to account for the presence of a dead man.
The trip was a bit shortened now because the lake was ice-locked and he could cross between the flag-marked holes of the pickerel-fishers. He had been afraid to speak of those things which were burning consumingly in his mind; afraid that if once he let slip the leash of restraint he would be carried away on a tide of passion.
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