XXVI
It was bitter hard for Ned to fight his way back through death's twilight. The cold had hold of him, its triumph was near, and it would not let him go without a savage battle that seemed to wrack the man in twain. So far as his own wishes went, he only wanted to drift on, farther and farther into the twilight ocean, and never return to the cursed island again. But Bess was calling him, and he couldn't deny her. Perhaps in a distant cabin Lenore called him too.
Indeed, the call upon him was more urgent than ever before. Before, his thought had always been for Lenore, but Bess too was a factor now. In that utter darkness Ned saw more clearly than ever before in his life, and while his eyes searched only for Lenore, he kept seeing Bess too. Bess with her never-failing smile of encouragement, her soft beauty that had held him, in spite of himself, on their nights at Forks cabin. Her need of him was real, threatened by Doomsdorf as she was, and he mustn't leave her sobbing so forlornly on the ice above. Lenore was first, of course,—his duty to her reason enough for making a mighty fight. But Bess's pleading moved him deeply.
He summoned every ounce of courage and determination that he had and tried to shake the frost from his brain. “You'll have to work quick,” he warned again. His voice was stronger now, but softened with a tenderness beyond her most reckless dreams. “Don't be too hopeful—I haven't much left in me. What can you do?”
The girl who answered him was in no way the lost and hopeless mortal that had lain sobbing on the ice. Her scattered, weakened faculties had swept back to her in all their strength, at the first sound of his voice. He was alive, and it is the code of the North, learned in these dreadful months, that so long as a spark still glows the battle must not be given over. There was something to fight for now. The fighting side of her that Ned had seen so often swept swiftly into dominance. At once she was a cold blade, true and sure; brain and body in perfect discipline.
“How far are you?” she asked. “I can't see”
“About ten feet—but I can't get up without help.”
“Can you stand up?”
“Yes.” Forcing himself to the last ounce of his nerve and courage, he drew himself erect. Reaching upward, his hands were less than a yard from the top of the crevice.
Bess did not make the mistake of trying to reach down to him. She conquered the impulse at once, realizing that any weight at all, unsupported as she was, would draw her into the ravine. Even the rope would be of no use until she had something firm to which to attach it.
“I've dug holes most of the way up,” he told her. “I might try to climb 'em, with a little help”
“Are you at the bottom of the crevice?”
“The bottom is hundreds of feet below me. I'm on a ledge about three feet wide.”
“Then stand still till I can really help you. I can't pull you now without being pulled in myself, and if you'd fall back you'd probably roll off the ledge. The ice is like glass. Ned, are you good for ten minutes more”
“I don't know”
“It's the only chance.” Again her tone was pleading. “Keep the blood moving for ten minutes more, Ned. Oh, tell me you'll try”
Deep in the gloom she thought she heard him laugh—only a few, little syllables, wan and strange in the silence—and it was all the answer she needed. He would fight on for ten minutes more. He would struggle against the cold until she could rescue him.
“Here's a blanket,” she told him swiftly. “Put it around you, if you can, without danger of rolling off.”
She dropped him the great covering she had brought; then in a single, deerlike motion, she leaped the narrow crevice. On the opposite side she procured Ned's axe; then she turned, and half running, half gliding on the ice, sped toward the nearest timber,—a number of stunted spruce two hundred yards distant at the far edge of the glacier.
Bess had need of her woodsman's knowledge now. Never before had her blows been so true, so telling on the tough wood. Before, in the fuel cutting of months before, she had wielded the axe in fear of the lash, but to-day she worked for Ned's life, for the one dream that mattered yet. Almost at once she had done her work and was started back with a tough pole, eight feet long and four inches in diameter, balanced on her sturdy shoulder.
Ned was still strong enough to answer her call when she returned, and the dim light still permitted him to see her lay the pole she had cut as a bridge across the crevice, cutting notches in the ice to hold it firm. Swiftly she tied one end of her rope to the pole and dropped the other to him.
“Can you climb up?” she asked him. Everything had centered down to this—whether he still had strength to climb the rope.
“Just watch me,” was the answer.
From that instant, she knew that she had won. The spirit behind his words would never falter, with victory so near. He dug his moccasins into the holes he had hacked in the ice, meanwhile working upward, hand over hand. To fall meant to die,—but Ned didn't fall.
It was a hard fight, weakened as he was, but soon the girl's reaching hands caught his sleeve, then his coat; finally they were fastened firmly, lifting with all the girl's strength, under the great arms. His hand seized the pole, and he gave a great upward lunge. And then he was lying on the ice beside her, fighting for breath, not daring to believe that he was safe.
But the usual cool, half-mirthful remark that, in many little crises, Ned had learned to expect from Bess was not forthcoming to-night. Nor were the sounds in the twilight merely those of heavy breathing. The strain was over, and Bess had given way to the urge of her heart at last. Her tears flowed unchecked, whether of sorrow or happiness even she did not know.
The man crawled toward her, moved by an urge beyond him, and for a single moment his strong arms pressed her close. “Don't cry, little pal,” he told her. He smiled, a strangely boyish, happy smile, into her eyes. Very softly, reverently he kissed her wet eyelids, then stilled her trembling lips with his own. He smiled again, a great good-humor taking hold of him. “You're too big a girl to cry!”
It was he, to-night, who had to relieve with humor a situation that would have soon been out of bounds. Yet all at once he saw that the little sentence had meaning far beyond what he had intended. She had shown bigness to-night,—a greatness of spirit and strength that left him wondering and reverent. The battle she had fought to save his life was no less than his own waged with the white wolf, weeks before.
Here was another who had stood the gaff! She too knew what it was to take the fighting chance. Presently he knew, by light of this adventure on the ice, that Bess was more than mere companion in toil and hardship, some one to shelter and protect. She was a comrade-at-arms,—such a fortress of strength as the best of women have always been to the men they loved.
He did not know whether or not she loved him. It didn't affect the point that, in a crisis, she had shown the temper of her steel! He did not stand alone henceforth. In the struggle for freedom that was to come here was an ally on whom, to the very gates of death, he could implicitly rely.