Ungava

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

  BURIED ALIVE--BUT NOT KILLED--THE GIANT IN THE SNOW-STORM.

  The event which prevented the excursion referred to in the last chapterwas neither more nor less than a snowstorm. "Was that all?" say you,reader? Nay, that was not all. Independently of the fact that it was asnowstorm the like of which you have never seen, unless you havetravelled in northern climes, it was a snow-storm that produced results.Of these, more hereafter.

  The storm began with a sigh--a mysterious sigh, that swept over themountains of Ungava with a soft, mournful wail, and died slowly away inthe distant glen of the Caniapuscaw, as if the spirit of the north windgrieved to think of the withering desolation it was about to launch uponthe land.

  The gathering clouds that preceded and accompanied this sigh inducedFrank Morton to countermand his orders for the intended journey. Inorder to console Edith for the disappointment, he went with her into thehall, and, drawing a low stool towards the blazing stove, placed adraught-board upon it. Then he placed another and a lower stool besidethe first, on which he seated Edith. Spreading a deerskin robe upon theground, he stretched himself thereon at full length, and began toarrange the men.

  The hall, which was formerly such a comfortless apartment, was nowinvested with that degree of comfort which always gathers, more or less,round a place that is continually occupied. The ceiling was composed ofa carpet of deerskin stretched tightly upon the beams. The walls werehung all round with the thick heavy coats and robes of leather and furbelonging to the inmates, and without which they never ventured abroad.The iron stove in the centre of the apartment, with its pipe to conductaway the smoke, and its radiant fire of logs, emitted a cheerful glow inits immediate vicinity; which glow, however, was not intense enough tomelt the thick ice, or rather hoar-frost, an inch deep, with which thetwo windows were encrusted, to the almost total exclusion of the viewand the serious diminution of the light. The door was padded all roundits edges with fur, which tended to check the bitter wind that oftenblew against it, and tempered the slight draught that did force its waythrough. Altogether the hall at Fort Chimo was curious andcomfortable--rather shaggy in its general appearance, but sound andtrustworthy at bottom.

  A small rough table, the work of Frank Morton, stood close to the stove;and beside it was seated Mrs Stanley, with a soft yellow deerskinbefore her, which she was carefully transforming into a hunting coat forher husband. On another and a larger table was spread the tea equipage.Those who would understand this aright must for _tea_ read _supper_.Among fur-traders the two are combined. Candles--dips made at thefort--had been brought some time ago by La Roche, who entered the hallby a back door which communicated with a passage leading to the kitchenbehind.

  "What can have become of papa, I wonder?" Mrs Stanley designated herhusband by this epithet, in consequence of her desire to keep up thefiction of her being Edith's little sister or playfellow.

  Frank looked up from the board. "I know not," said he. "I left himgiving some orders to the men. We have been getting things made snugabout the fort, for we expect a pretty stiff breeze to-night.--Takecare, Eda; your crown's in danger."

  "Oh! so it is," cried Edith, snatching back her piece, and looking withintense earnestness at the board.

  Frank might have observed, had he not been too deeply engaged with hisgame, that the expected stiff breeze had already come, and was whistlinground the fort with considerable vigour.

  "You'll beat me, Eda, if you play so boldly," said Frank, with a smile."There, give me another crown."

  "And me too," said Edith, pushing up her piece. As she spoke, the doorburst open, and Stanley sprang into the room.

  "Whew! what a night!" he cried, shutting the door with a forcible bang,in order to keep out the snow-drift that sought to enter along with him.

  Two moves would have made Frank the conqueror, but the gust of windupset the board, and scattered the men upon the floor.

  Stanley looked like a man of white marble, but the removal of his cap,coat, and leggings produced a speedy and entire metamorphosis.

  "Ho! La Roche!"

  "Oui, monsieur."

  "Here, take my coat and shake the snow off it, and let's have supper asspeedily as may be. The draughts without, Frank, are a little toopowerful for the draughts within, I fear.--What, wife, making anothercoat? One would think you had vowed to show your affection for me bythe number of coats you made. How many have you perpetrated since wewere married?"

  "Never mind; go and put on one now, and come to supper while it is hot."

  "I'm glad it is hot," cried Stanley from his bedroom. "One needsunusual heat within to make up for the cold without. The thermometer isthirty below."

  While the party in the hall were enjoying their evening meal, the menwere similarly employed beside the stove in their own habitation. Therewas not much difference in the two apartments, save that the confusionin that of the men was much greater, in consequence of the miscellaneousmass of capotes, caps, belts, discarded moccasins, axes, guns, andseal-spears, with which they saw fit to garnish the walls. The fumes oftobacco were also more dense, and the conversation more uproarious.

  "'Tis a howlin' night," observed Massan, as a gust of more than usualviolence shook the door on its hinges.

  "Me t'ink de snow-drift am as t'ick in de sky as on de ground," saidOolibuck, drawing a live coal from the fire and lighting his pipetherewith.

  "Hould on, boys!" cried Bryan, seizing his chair with both hands, halfin jest and half in earnest, as another blast shook the building to itsfoundation.

  The two Indians sat like statues of bronze, smoking their calumets insilence, while Gaspard and Prince rose and went to the window. But thefrozen moisture on the panes effectually prevented their seeing out.

  It was indeed an awful night--such a night as had not, until now,visited the precincts of Fort Chimo. Viewed from the rocky platform onthe hill, the raging of the storm was absolutely sublime. The wind camesometimes in short, angry gusts, sometimes in prolonged roars, throughthe narrows, sweeping up clouds of snow so dense that it seemed asthough the entire mass had been uplifted from the earth, hurling itupwards and downwards and in circling eddies, past the ravines, andround the fort, and launching it with a fierce yell into the valley ofthe Caniapuscaw. The sky was not altogether covered with clouds, andthe broken masses, as they rolled along, permitted a stray moonbeam todart down upon the turmoil beneath, and render darkness visible.Sometimes the wind lulled for a second or two, as if to breathe; then itburst forth again, splitting through the mountain gorges with a shriekof intensity; the columns of snow sprang in thousands from every hollow,cliff and glen, mingled in wild confusion, swayed, now hither, nowthither, in mad uncertainty, and then, caught by the steady gale, peltedon, like the charging troops of ice-land, and swept across the frozenplain.

  Could human beings face so wild a storm as this? Ay, they could--atleast they could dare to try!

  There was one traveller out upon the hills on that tremendous night.The giant was in the midst of it; but weak as the bulrush were themighty limbs of Maximus before the rushing gale. Several days previousto this the Esquimau had been sent down to his brethren at False River,to procure some seal-meat for the dogs, and to ascertain the conditionof the natives and their success in fishing. On arriving, he found thatthey had been so far successful, that starvation (their too frequentguest) had not yet visited their dwellings of snow. But Maximus foundthe old woman who had formerly saved his life very ill, and apparentlyabout to die. Having learned from experience the efficacy of Stanley'smedicines, he resolved to procure some for the old woman, whom he hadtenderly watched over and hunted for ever since the eventful day of theattack. His dogs were exhausted, and could not return. But the boldEsquimau was in the prime of life, and animated by the fire of vigorousyouth. The storm was beginning to mutter in the distance. What then?--Had he not faced the blasts of the frozen regions many a time before?--Without saying a word, he threw a junk of seal-f
lesh into his wallet,and, striding back upon his track at the mountain's base, he disappearedin the driving snow.

  Before reaching the fort, however, the full fury of the storm had burstupon him. It cast him headlong into the snow; but he rose and staggeredon. Again it burst forth, and again he fell before it like a statelypine. Rising to his knees, Maximus draw the hood of his hairy garmentclose round his head and face, and tried to peer through the drivingsnow; but he could not see until a slight lull came; then he observed ahummock of ice at a short distance, and, rising, made towards it. Thelulls were short-lived, however. The storm threw him down again;instantly he was drifted over with snow; another blast came, lifted thedrift into the air, and left the Esquimau exposed to all its fury. ButMaximus was not conquered. He rose again, panting, it is true, butsturdy as ever, and ready to take advantage of the next lull. It camesoon; and he saw a rock, or, it might be, the base of a cliff close athand. With a quick run he reached it; and, going down on his knees,began with his gloved hands to scrape a hollow in the snow. Having madea hole big enough to contain his body, he lay down in it, and, pullingthe superincumbent snow down upon him, was almost buried in the ruin.Scarcely had he drawn the hood of his coat well over his face, whenanother burst of the storm dashed a column of curling drift upon therock, and the place where he lay was covered up; not a wrinkle in thedrift remained to mark the spot where he was buried!

  All that night the storm roared among mountains with bitter fury; butnext day the wind was subdued, and the sun shone brightly on the greyrocks and on the white wreaths of snow. It shone in all the lustre ofan unclouded winter sky. Not only did the sun smile upon the scene, buttwo mock suns or parhelia, almost as bright as himself, shone on eitherside of him. Yet no ray of light illuminated the dwellings of thefur-traders. All was darkness there, until Stanley rose from his couchand lighted a candle, for the purpose of examining his watch.

  "Hallo! Frank, Frank!" he cried, entering the hall, while he hastilythrew on his garments; "turn out, man; there's something wrong here.'Tis past noon, and dark as midnight. Bring your watch; perhaps I'mwrong."

  Frank yawned vociferously, and sprang from his bed. In two seconds morehe made his appearance in his trousers and shirt.

  "Past twelve, no doubt of--yea-o-ow! That accounts for my waking threetimes and going off again; but--"

  "Hey! what have we here?" cried Stanley, as he opened the front door,and disclosed to view a solid wall of snow.

  "Snowed up; dear me! eh! that's odd," said Frank, beginning tocomprehend the state of matters.

  Snowed up they were, undoubtedly; so thoroughly snowed up that there wasnot a ray of daylight within their dwelling. Had Frank been above thesnow, instead of below it, he would have seen that the whole fort was socompletely buried that nothing was visible above the surface except thechimneys and the flagstaff. After the first few moments of surprise hadpassed, it occurred to Stanley that they might ascend to the regionsabove by the chimney, which was wide enough, he thought, to admit a man;but on looking up, he found that it also was full of drifted snow.This, however, could have been easily removed; but there was a bar ofiron stretching across, and built into the clay walls, which renderedescape by that passage impossible.

  "There's nothing for it, Frank, but to dig ourselves out, so the soonerwe begin the better."

  By this time they were joined by Edith and her mother, who, althoughmuch surprised, were not at all alarmed; for rough travelling in a wildland had taught them to regard nothing as being dangerous until it wasproved to be so. Besides, Stanley had assured them that they hadnothing to fear, as the only evil he anticipated would be the troublethey were sure to have in getting rid of the superabundant snow. Whilethey were talking, the back door was opened violently, and La Roche, ina state of dishabille, burst into the room.

  "O messieurs, c'est fini! Oui, le world him shut up tout togedder. Oh,misere! Fat shall ye to do?"

  "Hold your tongue, La Roche," said Frank, "and bring the kitchenshovel."

  The cook instantly turned to obey, and as he rushed towards the kitchenhis voice was heard exclaiming in the passage--

  "Ah, c'est terrible! Mais I ver' moshe fear de shovel be out in deneige. Ah, non; here it is. C'est bien."

  Returning in haste to the hall, he handed a much dilapidated iron shovelto Frank, who threw off his coat and set to work with vigour. Thetables and chairs, and all the furniture, were removed into the innerapartments, in order to afford room for the snow which Frank dug fromthe open doorway and shovelled into the centre of the room. As only oneat a time could work in the narrow doorway, the three men wrought withthe shovel by turns; and while one was digging the tunnel, the other twopiled the debris in a compact mound beside the stove. As no fire hadyet been kindled, the snow, of course, did not melt, but remained crispand dry upon the floor. Meanwhile Edith looked on with deep interest,and occasionally assisted in piling the snow; while her mother, seeingthat her presence was unnecessary, retired to her own room.

  "There," cried Frank, pausing and surveying an immense cavern which hehad dug into the drift, "that's a good spell. Take a turn now, LaRoche, and dig upwards; we should see daylight soon."

  "Ah, vraiment, it be time, for it am von o'clock," replied La Roche, ashe plied the shovel.

  The tunnel was cut in such a way as that, while it ran outwards, it alsosloped upwards; and, from the angle at which it lay, Stanley calculatedthat thirty feet or thereabouts would bring them to the surface. Inthis he was correct, for when La Roche had worked for half an hour, thesnow above became slightly luminous. But the labour of conveying itfrom the end of the tunnel into the hall became, of course, greater asthe work advanced. At length the light penetrated so clearly that LaRoche was induced to thrust his shovel upwards, in the expectation ofpenetrating the mass. The effect of this action was striking andunexpected. Instantly the roof fell in, and a flood of sunshine pouredinto the tunnel, revealing the luckless Frenchman struggling amid theruins.

  "Oh, pull me hout!" he spluttered, as Frank and Stanley stood laughingheartily at his misfortune. One of his legs happened to protrude fromthe mass as he made this earnest request; so Frank seized it, anddragged the poor man by main force from his uncomfortable position.Immediately afterwards they all three scrambled through the aperture,and stood in open day.

  The sight that met their eyes was a curious though not a satisfactoryone. All that remained visible of Fort Chimo were, as we have said, thechimneys and the flagstaff. In regard to the general aspect of theneighbourhood, however, there was little alteration; for the change ofposition in the drifts among the mountain gorges, and the addition totheir bulk, made no striking alteration in the rugged landscape. Insome places the gale had cleared the sides of the mountains and lefttheir cliffs exposed to view; in other spots the gorges and ravines werechoked up, and the pine tops nearly covered; and the open water in thelake was more encumbered than usual with icebergs.

  "Now, La Roche," said Stanley, after they had surveyed the desolatescene for a few minutes in silence, "go fetch the shovel and we'll digout the men. I daresay, poor fellows, they're beginning to wonder atthe length of the night by this time."

  La Roche prepared to descend into the tunnel, when their attention wasarrested by a strange sound beneath the snow. In a few minutes thecrust began to crack at a spot not more than two yards from where theystood; then there was a sudden rupture, accompanied by a growl, andfollowed by the appearance of the dishevelled head and arms of a man.

  "Musha, boys, but I'm out!" Bryan coughed the snow from around hismouth, and winked it from his eyes, as he spoke. The first sight thatmet his bewildered gaze was three pair of expanded eyeballs and threedouble rows of grinning teeth, a few feet from his face. Uttering a cryof terror, he fell back into the hole, the snow closed over him, and hewas gone!

  It need scarcely be added that Frank and Stanley commenced to dig intothis hole with as much vigour as their frequent explosions of laughterwould allow. In a
few minutes it was re-opened, and the men issued oneby one from durance vile.

  "Och, sirs, ye gave me a mortial start!" exclaimed Bryan, as he rose toview the second time. "I thought for sartin ye were all polar bears.Faix we've had a job o't down there. I'll be bound to say there'stwinty ton o' snow--bad luck to it--in the middle o' the floor."

  "There's work for us here that'll last two weeks, I guess," said Massan,as he and several of the others stooped down and gazed into the tunnelleading to the hall, at the end of which Edith's laughing face met theirview.

  "When did you awake, and begin to suspect that something was wrong?"inquired Stanley of Dick Prince.

  "Awake!" cried Bryan, answering the question; "we awoke at laste a dozentimes. I suppose it must have bin the time for brikfust; for, ye see,although we could ha' slept on long enough; our intariors couldn't, beno manes, forgit their needcessities."

  "We shall have to work a bit yet ere these necessities are attended to,I fear," said Stanley. "Go, Francois, and one or two of you, and openup the dog-kennel. The rest of you get all the shovels you can layhands on, and clear out the houses as fast as you can."

  "Clear out de chimbleys fust, mes garcons," cried La Roche, looking upfrom the tunnel. "Den ve vill git dejeuner ready toute suite."

  "That will we, lad," said Bryan, shouldering a spade and proceedingtowards the chimney of the hall; while the rest of the party, breakingup into several groups, set to work, with spades, shovels, and suchimplements as were suitable, to cut passages through the square of thefort towards the doors of the several buildings. As Massan had said, itproved to be no light work. The north-west gale had launched the snowupon the exposed buildings of Fort Chimo until the drift was fifteen orsixteen feet deep, so that the mere cutting of passages was a matter ofconsiderable time and severe labour.

  Meanwhile, Maximus awoke, and sought to raise himself from his lair atthe foot of the rock. But his first effort failed. The drift above himwas too heavy. Abandoning, therefore, the idea of freeing himself bymain force, he turned round on his side and began to scrape away thesnow that was directly above his head. The masses that accumulated inthe course of this process he forced down past his chest; and, as hismotions tended to compress and crush the drift around him in alldirections, he soon made room enough to work with ease. In ten minuteshe approached so near to the surface as to be able, with a powerfuleffort, to burst it upwards, and step out of his strange dormitory intothe sunshine.

  This method of spending the night has been resorted to more than once byarctic travellers who had lost their way; and it is sad to think thatmany who have perished might have saved their lives had they known thatburrowing could be practised with safety. The Esquimaux frequentlyspend the night in this manner, but they prefer building a snow-house toburrowing, if circumstances will permit.

  Cutting a slice of seal-meat, and eating as he went, Maximus resumed hisjourney, and soon afterwards arrived at the fort, where he found the menbusied in excavating their buried dwellings.

  Here he stated the case of the old woman, and received such medicines asStanley, in his amateur medical wisdom, saw fit to bestow. With thesehe started immediately to retrace his steps, having been directed toproceed, after administering them, to the lake where Frank meant to trythe fishing under the ice. A family of Esquimaux had been establishedon another lake not so far distant from the fort; and having been taughtby the fur-traders how to set nets under the ice, they succeeded inprocuring more than enough for their subsistence. It was hoped,therefore, that the larger lake would afford a good supply; and, theweather having become decidedly fine, Frank prepared to set out on thefollowing day.