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Updated: June 23, 2025
There was an Okotsk Russian with them, but he made no trouble for us. He was white, anyway, and it kind of seemed to me he didn't like one of the other men who got hurt that night on the beach." "Then some of them did get badly hurt?" Wyllard broke in. Lewson laughed, a little, almost silent laugh, which nevertheless sounded strangely grim.
Lewson; the Irish humour and the Irish accent both asserted themselves in his reply. "The curious old creature told me to my face I was a scamp. I took leave to remind her that it was the duty of a respectable person, like herself, to reform scamps; I also mentioned that I was going away, and she would be master and mistress too on my small property. That softened her heart towards me.
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 occurred to Wyllard that this was a thing very few men except sealers could have done had they been cast ashore without stores or tools to face the awful winter of the North. "How did you get through?" he asked. "Well," explained Lewson, "we had a rifle, and the ca'tridges weren't spoilt. The killers hadn't taken their cooking outfit, and by and by we got a walrus in an open lane among the ice.
To make things worse, they were drenched with rain half the time, and trails of dingy mist obscured their path, but they toiled on stubbornly through every obstacles, though it was only by the tensest effort that Wyllard kept pace with his companion. The gaunt, long-haired Lewson seemed proof against physical weariness, and there was seldom any change in the expression of his grim, lined face.
After what Overweg had once or twice told him, it was unthinkable that they should fall into Smirnoff's hands. Then Lewson and Charly melted away into the darkness, and Wyllard and the Siwash walked quietly down to the water's edge, a little up-stream of the schooner, as the stream was running strong.
The gaunt, long-haired Lewson seemed proof against physical weariness, and there was seldom any change in the expression of his grim, lined face. Now and then Wyllard felt a curious shrinking as he glanced at it, for its fixed look suggested what this man had borne in the awful solitudes of the frozen north.
What Lewson had had to face in the awful icy wastes to the north of them Wyllard could scarcely imagine, and Lewson could not tell, but he and his two other comrades had borne things almost beyond endurance since he began his search, and now there was far too much at stake for him to increase the odds against them by any undue precipitancy.
Then a faint gleam of resolution crept into his eyes. "The schooner the Russians seized lies in an inlet down the coast." Lewson made a sign of comprehension. "There are four of us. There will be birds by and bye. I can trap things." Then he flung himself down near his comrade, and for an hour neither of them said anything.
Wyllard was worn out physically and limp from the last few hours' mental strain, while Lewson very seldom said more than was absolutely necessary. They made a very frugal meal, and long afterwards Wyllard was haunted by the memory of that dreary afternoon during which he lay upon the shingle watching the slow pulsations of the dim, lifeless sea.
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