At a Winter's Fire Part 29

Dinah paused to light another cigarette, and to inhale the ecstasy of the first puff or so before she continued. Up through the still evening, from a curve of the main road that crooked an elbow to her front garden, came what sounded like the purring of a great cat--the wind in the telegraph wires.

"And I am now to tell you," she said, "about the mastodon?"

"As you please," I answered.

"I do please; for why should I keep it to myself? It makes no difference; only I warn you, if you quote me, you will be writ down a fool or a maniac. This relation lacks witnesses, for the whaler--that I subsequently quitted for another homing vessel--was never heard of in port any more."

She looked at me with some serious scrutiny before she went on.

"For these regions, it had been an extraordinarily hot summer--phenomenally hot, I understand; and to this--to the melting and breaking away of the ice from hitherto century-locked fastnesses, the captain attributed the wonderful experience that befell us. The sea was strewn with blocks and bergs, all hurrying onwards in the strong currents, as if in haste to escape the pursuing demon of frost that should re-fetter them; and their mult.i.tude kept the steersman's arms spinning till the man would fall half-fainting over the spoke-handles.

"Now, one morning early in September, a dense bright fog dropped suddenly upon the waters. We were making what sail we could--with our crippled spars and stunted trees of masts--and this it were useless to shorten, and so invite a rearward bombardment from the chasing hummocks. So we kept our course by the compa.s.s, and trailed on through a blind mist while fear drummed in our throats. The demoralization of my friend was by this time complete. For myself, I seldom had a thought but that Nature would sheathe her claws when she played with me.

"'This cannot last long!' said the captain.

"The words were on his lips when we struck with a noise like the splintering of gla.s.s. We were all thrown down, and my companion screamed like a mad thing. The captain rose and ran to the bows; and in a moment he came back and his beard was shaking.

"'G.o.d save us!' he cried, 'and fetch aft the rum!'

"There you have man in his invincible moods. They drank till they were in a condition to face death; and then they found that our situation was rather improved than otherwise by the collision. For--so it appeared--we had run full tilt for a perpendicular fissure in a huge block, and into that our bows were firmly wedged, the nature of the impact distributing the shock, and the berg itself carrying us along with it and protecting us.

"Now the dipping motion of the vessel was exchanged for a heavy regular wash along its stern quarters; for the bows were so much raised as that I felt a little strain on my knees as I went forward to satisfy my curiosity with a view of the icy ma.s.s into which we were penetrated. I waited, indeed, until the crew were come aft again from looking, and my friend crept timidly at my shoulder; but when we reached the stem, there was one of the hands, a little soberer than his fellows, sprawled over the bulwarks, and staring with all his eyes into the green lift of the wall against him.

"'Is it a mermaid you see, Killigrew?' I asked.

"The man shifted his gaze to me slowly and solemnly.

"'Nowt, nowt,' said he; 'but a turble monster, like a pram stuck in jelly.'

"I laughed, and went to his side. The fog, as I have said, was dense and bright, and one could see into it a little way, as into a milky white agate. But now and again a film of it would pull thin, and then sunlight came through and made a dim radiance of the ice.

"'I can make out nothing,' I said.

"He c.o.c.ked an eye and leered up at me. 'Look steady and sober,' he said, 'and you'll make en owut like as in a gla.s.s darkly.'

"I gave a little gasp and my friend a cry before the words were issued from the man's mouth. Drawn by some current of air, the fog at the moment blew out of the cleft, like smoke from a chimney; and there, before our gaze, was a great curved tusk coming up through the ice and inside it.

"Now I clapped my hands in an agony, lest the fog should close in again, and the vision fade before my eyes; for, following the sweep of the tusk, I was aware of the phantom presentment of some monster creature lying imbedded within the ice, its mighty carcase prostrate as it had fallen; the conformation of its enormous forehead presented directly to our gaze. Its little toffee-ball eyes--little proportionately, that is to say--squinted at us, it seemed, through half-closed lids, and a huge, hairy trunk lay curled, like the proboscis of a dead moth, between its tree-like fore-legs. Away beyond, the great red-brown drum of its hide bellied upward on ribs as thick as a Dutch galliot's, and sprouting from its shoulders was the hump I have mentioned, but here, from its position, sprawled abroad and lying over in a shapeless ma.s.s.

"There was something else--horribly nauseating but for its strangeness.

The brute had been partly disembowelled, as there was ample evidence to show, for the ice had preserved all.

"Suddenly my companion gave a high nervous shriek.

"'Look!' he cried--'the hand! the hand sticking out of the side!'

"I saw in a moment; turned, and called excitedly to the captain. He--all the crew--came tumbling forward up the slippery deck. I seized him by the shoulder.

"'Do you see?' I screamed--'the human hand beckoning to us from that great body!'

"He gazed stupidly, swaying where he stood.

"'One o' them bloomin' pre-hadymite cows!' he muttered; 'caught in the cold nip, by thunder! and some unfortnit crept into her for warmth.'

"I believed the creature's rude intuition had flown true.

"'Cannot you get at it?' I gasped.

"He stared at me. All in an instant a little paltry demon of avarice blinked out of his eye-holes.

"'Why,' he said slowly, 'who knows but it mayn't be a gal a-jingling from top to toe with gold curtain rings!'

"He was a furious dare-devil immediately, and quick, and savage, and peremptory. His spirit entered into his men. They went over the side with pikes and axes, and, scrambling for any foothold, set to work on the ice like maniacs. In the l.u.s.t of cupidity they did not even think how they wrought against their own safety and that of the ship.

"The point of the uppermost tusk came to within a foot of the ice-surface. This they soon reached, and, prising frantically with crowbars, flaked off and rolled away half-ton blocks of the superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s. I need not detail the fierce process. In half an hour they had laid bare a great segment of that part of the trunk whence the hand protruded, and then they paused, and at a word flung down their tools.

"I was leaning over the bulwarks watching them. I could contain my excitement no longer.

"'Come,' I said to my friend, 'help me down, for I must go.'

"He climbed over, trembling, and a.s.sisted me to a standing on the ice. We scrambled along the track of _debris_ left by the crew. At the moment half a dozen of the latter were rolling back a broad flap of the hide, in which they had found a long L-shaped rent revealed. Then a hoa.r.s.e cry broke from them, and I stumbled forward and looked down, and saw.

"They lay beneath the mighty ribs as in a cage, of which the intercostal s.p.a.ces were a foot in width, and the bars of a strength to maintain the enormous pressure of that which had surrounded and entombed them; they lay in one close group, their naked limbs smeared with the stain of their prison--a man, a woman, and a tiny child. From their faces, and their unfallen flesh, they might have been sleeping; but they were not; they were come down to us, a transfixture of death--prehistoric people in a prehistoric brute, and their eyes--their eyes!"

Dinah's voice trailed off into silence. Some expression that I could not interpret was on her face. There was regret in it, but nothing of pathos or mysticism. Suddenly she breathed out a great sigh and resumed her narrative.

"You will want to know how they looked, these lifeless survivors of a remote race from a remote time? I will try to tell you. The men hacked away the ribs with their axes, and laid bare the group lying in the hollow scooped out of the fallen beast. They were little people, and the man, according to your modern canons of taste, was by far the most beautiful of the three. He sat erect, with one uplifted arm projected through the ribs; as if, surprised by the frost-stroke, he had started to escape, and had been petrified in the act. His face, wondering and delicate as a baby's, was hairless; and his head only a pretty infantile down covered--a curling floss as radiant as spun gla.s.s. His wide-open eyes glinted yet with a hyacinth blue, and it was difficult to realize that they were dead and vacant.

"The woman was of coa.r.s.er mould, ruddy, vigorous, brown-haired and eyed.

She looked the very hamadryad of some blossoming tree, a sweet capricious daughter of the blameless earth. Everything luxuriated in her--colour, hair, and l.u.s.ty flesh; and the child she held to her bosom with a manner that indescribably commingled contempt, and resentment, and a pa.s.sion of proprietorship.

"This baby--joining the prominent characteristics of the two--was the oddest little mortal I have ever seen. What did its expression convey to me? 'I am fairly caught, and must brazen out the situation!' There! that was what it was; I cannot put it more lucidly. Only the thing's wee face was animal conscious for the first time of itself, and inclined to rejoice in that primitive energy of knowledge.

"Now, my friend, I must tell you how the sight operated upon me and upon my companion. For myself, I can only say that, looking upon that fine, independent fore-mother of my race, I felt the sun in my veins and the winy fragrance of antique woods and pastures. I laughed; I clapped my hands; I danced on the ice-rubbish, so that they thought me mad. But, for the other--the man--he was in a different plight. He was transfigured; his nervousness was gone in a flash. He cast himself down upon his knees, and gazed and gazed, his hands clasped, upon that sleek, mild progenitor of his, that pure image of gentle self-containment, whose very meekness suggested an indomitable will.

"Suddenly he, my friend, cried out: 'This is one caught in the process of materialization! It is not flesh; my G.o.d, no!'

"It seemed, indeed, as if it were as he said. I stopped in my capering and looked down. The tarry hinds standing by grinned and jeered.

"On the instant there came a splintering snap, and the floe rocked and curtsied.

"'Back!' yelled the captain. 'She's breaking through by the head!'

"He shrieked of the ship. She was clearing herself, had already shaken her prow free of the ice.

"There was a wild scamper for safety. I was carried with the throng. It was not until I was hauled on board once more that I thought of my friend. He still knelt where we had fled from him, a wrapt, strange expression on his face.

"'Come back!' I screamed. 'You will be lost!'