continued their work. Marion was the first to finish, and triumphantly she held up her snow-shoes for inspection. They were but poor clumsy affairs, yet they were to serve as means of deliverance.
Although contending with many difficulties, there was never one word of complaint uttered. The cold was intense, which even the fire could not overcome. Huddled as close as possible to the heat, their faces would be hot while their backs were chilled. No blankets had they to wrap about their bodies. Fir boughs were their only protection, and an abundance of these the men banked up around Marion, and then made a shelter for themselves on the opposite side of the fire. That night while the sergeant worked constructing a little rude toboggan out of a number of sticks and a portion of the frozen moose skin, Rolfe repeated numerous poems, to which Marion listened with much interest. Piece after piece he recited, grave, stirring and gay.
“Poetry has always been my reserve power,” he explained. “When I get downhearted, or in a tight place, a noble poem stirs me like martial music. There are two, especially, which have never failed me yet. The first is Newbolt’s ‘Play up, play up, and play the game.’ The other is Henley’s masterpiece, ‘The Captain.’ No doubt you know it, Miss Brisbane, but just listen to these words:
“‘Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Beneath the bludgeonings of fate,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.’”
