Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  In that channel they had their first serious trouble. It was choked with pack-ice, which the gales had driven out of the Dark Sea. Sometimes under a shift of wind or a tide-rip the pack would break up and there would be open water for a mile or two, and then the ice would close down again on the galleys like a vice. Happily these were stoutly built with double sheaths, or they would have been crushed like a nut; as it was they were badly strained. For two weeks they wrestled through the pack, scarcely sleeping, for it was often necessary to lift the galleys out of a jam by sheer strength of muscle. The food, too, would have run short had they not found a bear on a floe, which they slew with their spears — a monstrous white beast whose ghost, said the women, followed them barking like a dog.

  At last they came into open waters. On his former voyage Hallward had sailed a promontory on the western side whence he followed the coast southward; but now, since he must go south, he chose to hug the eastern shore. But first it was imperative to land and see to the galleys. They ran them on to a low marshy beach, backed by thin woods of pine. There was no oak to be had for their repairs, so they had to be content with soft fir. But the young men went far into the woods and brought back deer — some like the Norland reindeer, and some of a whitetailed kind, smaller, but of excellent sweet flesh. Also they met some of the people of the land, short, square folk with slanting eyes, and skins the colour of a hazel nut, and marvellous white teeth. These were a peaceable and friendly race, and in no way scared by the white men. Their weapons were of copper and bone, and they joyfully bartered furs and skins for a few knives of steel. Soon the women of the party had made new clothes for themselves and their children — tunics of white caribou skin as soft as velvet, and hoods edged with wolverine — against the coming winter.

  They made slow progress to the south end of the Dark Sea, for they had to tack against contrary winds. But they reached it at last in mid-August. The flies which had risen in the evenings like a grey mist at their first landing, had now utterly gone, but the sun was hot and the moist air languid. Cranesfoot had guided them well, for they had made landfall at the very point where on his former voyage Hallward had built a shelter for the galleys. This was a great barrow, which had been the work of six men for a fortnight. In the Norlands the inner chamber would have been of stone, but there was no stone in this land, so it was built of great rafters and baulks of white pine. Here the ocean-going galleys, well caulked and oiled, would be safe until the next voyage, for no wild beasts could break in, and no savage would guess what lay inside the dun, at the solid entrance of which Hallward wrote with fire certain sacred runes on a wooden shield. From the barrow they brought out the smaller boats, shallow things pointed at each end, in which they must continue their journey up the southern rivers. There were eight of these — two for the use of the cattle, attended by the neatherds, and two for baggage.

  Here sickness fell upon the party and one of the women died. A fever seemed to come out of the marshes, and the teeth became loose in the head and the flesh soft and rotten. Hallward was forced to wait in camp, and it was ten days before a better diet, the berries of the woods and the blood of fresh-killed game restored the party to health. Meantime he put heart into the newcomers by talking of the land in the south, now less than a month away, which was to be their home.

  He told of his first venture, when they had to spend a bitter winter on the shore of the Dark Sea, and when in spring a lean and feeble company followed the wild geese south. He told of the tracking to their source of north-flowing rivers through a mighty forest which he called Mirkwood; of lakes larger than any Norland firth; of one vast lake larger than the Norland Sea. He did not touch on the dangers and hardships of the road, for his business was encouragement. But he spoke eloquently of the country they had found beyond the inland sea. It was not like this, a mat of forests, nor was it like the Norland, a wilderness of barren hills. There were forests — mighty forests, not of pine only, but of oak and hard woods; there were lakes full of fish and wildfowl; above all there were great plains of fine grasses, where wandered in herds beyond number a huge shaggy beast bigger than any elk and sweeter to the tooth. The place was a garden, for in the rich soil oats and barley brought forth crops such as the Norlands had never seen. It was a peaceful land, for there were few men in it, only a handful of feeble savages who fled at the shaking of a spear.

  There he had made a home — Fairholm was its name — in the meadows between the lakes, with the forest at the door. His wife was there, and six of the Shield Ring with their wives and children. They had built a great hall of timber with barns and granges, carved out their fields, sown and reaped their first crops. Now, with the cattle they had brought, there would be milk as well as flesh and fowl and the fruits of the earth.... Hallward’s imagination kindled. This was no barren domain like Snowland, where life would always be hard; no pauper hamlet like the Greenland places, but a home in a rich land where the summers were bountiful and the winters gentle. Some day it would be more than a settlement; it would be a kingdom, a new kingdom of the Wick folk in the land of the sunset.... His hearers listened greedily, and their spirits rose.

  The journey was resumed. Now there were frosts at night, and a fire on the shore was welcome. Food was plentiful for man and beast. Five of the little black cattle had died, since fodder had often been scanty on the voyage, but the remainder grew fat on the glades of wild hay which lay scattered in the forest. There was game of every sort, deer and bear, and birds like the Norland ryper, and a multitude of wild berries to sweeten the blood. The birds fell to their arrows, and the bigger animals to their spears, when by cunning stalking they had been manoeuvred into a cul-de-sac and forced to stand.

  Once there was a great fight. There had been grizzlies on the shore of the Dark Sea — the Barrens grizzly, Donald had decided, for he was well up in Canadian big game — and on several occasions there had been hard struggles before the axe of one of the Bearsarks broke into the great neck, muscled as hard as steel. But at this stage of the journey there were only the small black and brown bears which a woman could have slain. Suddenly in a glade appeared a brute like a mountain, bigger than any grizzly, his fur chocolate shading to cinnamon, and his claws like sickles. It was Hallward himself who engaged the monster, and he had a tough fight of it, for before he gave it its death wound his shoulder had been laid open by a pat from its mighty paw.... Donald recognised it as the Kodiak bear of Alaska, two thousand miles out of its modern bailliewick....

  Another thing made him hold his breath. He saw, though the adventurers could not see it, a gathering of clans of little people around the travellers. They were a dwarfish race, Indians not Eskimos, but more mongoloid than the Indians of to-day. Their faces were not painted, and they had no feathers or wampum belts, but only coarse skin tunics and trousers. Their weapon was the bow, and their arrows were tipped with obsidian. It was plain they knew nothing of metals, not even of the Eskimo’s copper.

  So far they had not attacked, but they had shot arrows at long range into one of the cattle galleys and wounded a bull in the rump. The voyagers were conscious of their presence, for more than once they had caught a glimpse of dwarfish shadows among the trees. They called them the Skridfinns, and laughed at the thought of danger from such pygmies....

  So far the pictures had followed each other like a panorama, but now they altered. The party had come up the Albany and the Ogoki and had now to portage over some miles of forest and ridge to reach a south-flowing stream that led to Lake Nipigon. (Donald could follow their course as easily as if it had been traced on a map, and the ground seemed familiar to him, though he had never been within a thousand miles of it.) It was the route which Hallward had discovered in his first journey. The boy saw the company encamped in a clearing around three fires, the cattle tethered to scrub cedars. He saw, too, an ominous thing, for all the woods were thick with the little people. They had kept their distance when the galleys were on the streams, but now, on this neck of land, they seemed to
have acquired a greater boldness and to be mustering for an ambush.

  By the fire where Hallward sat there was much feasting, for that day deer had been killed. The ale brought from Norland had long ago been finished, so there was only water in the drinking horns.

  “We will brew more and better ale when we get to Fairholm,” the people said.

  The nights of still frost had gone. A keen wind from the north was tossing the gold and scarlet of the woods, and the moon shone fitfully in a sky filled with racing clouds.

  Arnwulf Shockhead, the Bearsark who was second in command, was in a merry mood. That day he had caught a huge Nipigon trout and boasted of it.

  “I thought that, like Thor, I had hooked the Midgard Serpent,” he chuckled.

  But there were two silent in the company. One was old Cranesfoot, who, when they left the water which was his proper home, had taken to sortilege making. He had cast the sacred twigs and had apparently got a doubtful answer, but the others refused to be depressed.

  “It was no proper sortilege,” said one. “There should have been first the sacrifice of a black heifer.”

  “The twigs are weak things,” said another. “For proper guidance one must hallow three ravens and take their word.”

  So the merry-making went on, but Hallward sat silent. He had been a silent man ever since the big bear had clawed his shoulder. Arnwulf sat beside him.

  “Cranesfoot is wise,” he said; “danger approaches us Wicking folk, danger and sorrow.” Arnwulf comforted him.

  “Thor is on our side,” he said. “The shears of the Norns are blunted for us. Have you not for the second time sailed beyond Gunbiorn’s Reef, which folks said was the end of the world?”

  “Skuld has us in his keeping,” said Hallward, “but not all of us.” He looked up at the sky. “See, the Shield Maidens ride to choose the dead. The High Gods will exact a price for our good fortune, and I think that price will be myself. Death is jogging my elbow, old friend. I do not know how it will come, but come it will. If I must go to the Howe of the Dead you have my orders. You will lead our people to Fairholm, for I have told you the road. There you will present to them my son Biorn, and let the oath of fealty be sworn to him, and the gold torque hammered on his arm. Man, I see the future as in a glass. The day of Ragnorok will dawn for me, but not for you. I have spoken.”

  Hallward lay down and slept peacefully until an hour before dawn. Then he rose, shook himself, flung the long hair from his brow, and peered into the half-lit forest. He had scarcely got himself into helm and byrnie when from the covert came a shower of arrows.

  “The Skridfinns are on us!”

  The cry awoke the camp and every man buckled on his harness. There was no need for the Shield Ring, for the dwarfish people did not dare to close with huge mailed men, armed with glittering steel; but they could shoot their arrows, which came like a mosquito cloud. The Bearsarks, keeping in line, pushed into the forest, and took toll of any laggard Skridfinn. Hallward went first, swinging his famous sword which men called Skullsplitter. It was like using a great axe to sharpen a stick. The attack flagged and died away, and from far off in the woods came the patter of fleeing moccasined feet, like the sound of wolves in the snow.

  But Hallward had met his fate. The arrows fell harmlessly from byrnie and helm, but one had flown straight for his right eye and pierced his brain. Like a great tree uprooted in the mountains he lay on the carpet of ferns and blueberries....

  The swift panorama began again. Donald saw a ravine between two rock bluffs just where the portage ended on the bank of a south-flowing river. A little chamber had been built of logs, and there the body of Hallward was laid, clad in helm and byrnie, with his sword Skullsplitter laid athwart his breast. A black heifer was sacrificed — Donald could sniff the slightly nauseous odour of burning hide and flesh — and as the smoke ascended to heaven Arnwulf repeated the burial rites of his people, and the company renewed the solemn oath of brotherhood, swearing by the Dew, the Eagle’s path, and the valour of Thor. Had their leader died at sea his pyre would have been a galley launched flaming into the sunset; but on land his sepulchre was a Howe of the Dead. When all was over, earth was heaped on the wooden chamber, until a great barrow had been erected which filled the ground between the rock walls and the pass.... Then the galleys were launched and, solemn and sad, the company went south to their promised land....

  Then came a very different scene. It was still the pass, but centuries must have flown, for the form of the landscape was changed. It was a wider place, for much of the rock walls had crumbled into screes. The Howe of the Dead had shrunk, for an Indian trail had crossed it, and the feet of thousands during the ages had beaten it nearly flat.

  There was a man working there with pick and shovel, a rough bearded fellow in larrikins and mackinaw. He had sunk a shaft on the side of the barrow and was now busy dragging something from the interior. First he brought out some fragments of rusty iron like a potsherd, then a bigger thing like the blade of a shovel. Finally he emerged with a long thin piece of metal, much corroded, with a cross-wise handle. He flung it on the ground and stared at it with puzzled eyes.

  “Gee!” he said. “I guess that’s some old guy’s sword.”

  Donald saw that it was what remained of Skullsplitter.

  * * * *

  The boy took his first bite at his sandwich and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. There was a splash ten yards off; the sea-trout had begun to rise again. The wind was blowing the smoke of Negog’s smudge the wrong way, and the black flies had got at Donald’s temples and neck. The brutes were quick off the mark, he thought, for he had been scarcely a minute on shore.

  Some weeks later Donald’s father talked to his mother after dinner.

  “That’s a remarkable child of ours,” he said. “He’s hopeless at school, but he seems to have acquired some out-of-the-way knowledge. Yesterday he fairly staggered me. You know that some years ago down in Minnesota they found what seemed to be an inscription in runes — ordinary runes which can be read. It was almost impossible to believe them genuine, for it would mean that the Norsemen not only discovered Labrador and Nova Scotia and Maine, but managed to get into the heart of the continent. Well, the other day there was an extraordinary find north of Lake Nipigon. A prospector dug a hole in one of the portages and uncovered what must be the skeleton of a Viking — fragments of helm and byrnie and cuirass, and a very well-preserved sword. So here we have the old fellows in the very heart of Canada! Moreover, the pattern of the sword suggests that it is older by a century than Leif the Lucky. They have got the stuff in the Toronto Museum and are going to publish a full account of it. I told Donald this, for he has always been rather keen about the Vikings. What do you think he said: ‘I know. They came by Hudson’s Bay and went up the Albany and the Ogoki. It was a chap called Hallward. They were going south of Superior — I guess to Minnesota.’

  “Now I am positive I never mentioned these names to him and never spoke about the Minnesota find, and you know how much of an historian he is. When I asked him who told him this he got very red and said nobody. He just knew it. Has that child got second sight?”

  “Another thing puzzles me,” he went on.

  “Donald knows that the old Iroquois name for the moose is tarande — he mentioned it quite casually the other day. Now that is right, but the only authority for it is Rabelais, who must have got it from Jacques Cartier. Where on earth did Donald get it? I haven’t a copy of Rabelais, and if I had he couldn’t read it.”

  THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH

  “This was the word of the wise women who spin among the hills — to follow the road the King of Erin rides, which is the road to the End of Days.”

  BORN of the grey sea-shroud,

  Born of the wind and spray

  Where the long hills sink to the morning cloud,

  And the mist lies low on the bay;

  Child of the stars and the skies,

  Child of the dawn and the rain,
<
br />   The April shining of ladies’ eyes,

  And the infinite face of pain.

  Seal on the hearts of the strong,

  Guerdon thou of the brave,

  To nerve the arm in the press of the throng,

  To cheer the dark of the grave. —

  Far from the heather hills,

  Far from the misty sea,

  Little it irks where a man may fall,

  If he fall with his heart on thee.

  To fail and not to faint,

  To strive and not to attain,

  To follow the path to the End of Days

  Is the burden of thy strain.

  Daughter of hope and tears,

  Mother thou of the free,

  As it was in the beginning of years,

  And evermore shall be.

  CHAPTER IV. Cadieux

  DONALD had a holiday task from school, and holiday tasks he regarded as an outrage upon the decencies of life. It was to master a collection of tales from Greek and Roman history. Now he had a peculiar distaste for those great classical peoples, especially the Romans, for it was in connection with the speech of that calamitous folk that he had suffered his worst academic disgraces. So he started out on the book without much hope of enjoyment. And suddenly he had found something which enthralled him, the story of Thermopylæ. This was talking. That three hundred Spartans should have held up a million or so Persians, and upset all the plans of the Persian king, was a glorious thing to think about. Donald knew just how it happened. There were places along the St. Lawrence, like Cap Tourmente, for example, where the hills dropped steeply into the sea, and a handful could defy a host.