Left to Die

by Gary Collins

  While he stood there buffeted with wind and clutching his shirt collar around him, Stephen realized he wasn’t wearing his coat. He shivered and thought about his brother’s coat out there in that driving snow. While he stood there peering into the wind, the ship’s whistle blew twice and then stopped. Stephen had a strong feeling that his brother needed his coat. They had two nephews who had gone toward the Stephano with the others, and now their faces filled his head, too. It disturbed him. Unable to bear the storm any longer, he went below and sought his bunk, where he tried to sleep but could not.

  * * * * *

  It took Reuben Crewe two full hours to find his son. Albert was bounding ahead with the younger sealers he had made friends with while aboard the Newfoundland, seemingly oblivious to the danger they were all in. But as was the way of boys and men, when dark was upon them and no ship was near, they all gathered around. Their leaders talked gravely of their plight. Reuben found his son among the group. He would not let him out of his sight again. The men beat their hands and flised their arms and stamped their feet to keep warm. The snow kept coming and it started to drift with the drop in temperature. The wind stung their eyes and the snow spun around them when they hunkered down behind clumps or pinnacles. A keening sound came over the Great White Plain as the winter gale pressed down.

  “Was it like this when the Harlaw went down, Pop?”

  Albert’s question was sincere and innocent. Reuben could have told his son the truth but decided against it.

  “Naw, my son. The Harlaw was swallowed up be the ice, as ye know. Our ship is jest beyond the driftin’ snow and lookin’ fer us, fer sure. We’ll be found before long. An’ if we ’ave to make a night of it, we’ll be a’ right till the marnin’. A fine story we’ll ’ave to tell yer mother, eh, Albert John? The two of us dis time. She’ll never let us come swilin’ again, I ’lows.”

  “Too far fer us to walk ashore, is it, Pop?”

  “Walk ashore? Where to, my darlin’ b’y?”

  “I ’eard ’em say we was offa Bonavist’ Cape. Maybe we could walk right ’ome instead of walking around in circles.”

  Albert stopped walking. The snow swirled around father and son while dark shapes of silent men stood all around them.

  “Oh, Albert John, my b’y, we’re miles from the Cape. Could be forty or more miles. Keep walkin’, my son, ’twill warm yer blood.”

  “My feet are stingin’, Pop. I went in to me knees dis marnin’ an’ now me feet are freezin’ and stings wit’ every step I take.”

  “The stinging is yer warm blood pumpin’ against the cold, my b’y. ’Tis the numbness ye must fear. Marl on, my son.”

  Taking Albert’s hand in his for the first time since his son was a small child, Reuben Crewe led on in a vain attempt to keep warm.

  Albert didn’t tell his father that his feet weren’t all that were freezing. His upper body was getting colder as well. He walked beside his father for a few steps until they approached several other men who were huddled together. Feeling embarrassed with his hand in his father’s, he pulled away and walked in the lun of his father’s broad back. He was shivering and his hands were cold inside the mitts his mother had knitted. Then he thought about the scarf his mother had also knitted, which he had left behind in his bunk aboard the Newfoundland. Albert wished he had never left the warmth of his mother’s kitchen.

  He remembered the night before he and his father were to leave for St. John’s. Both their bags were packed and would be loaded on his father’s little sled in the morning. Albert John had been surprised to see his father coming from the shed with the little slide tucked under his arm. Reuben had kept it hidden, even though he had never planned to use it again. It looked like it needed a new rope—mice had chewed the old one—and now it leaned against the outside door jamb waiting for the morning journey. Albert couldn’t wait to begin. He would be pulling a real ice hunter’s sled!

  His mother stuffed spare socks and mitts and a shift of clothing for both men into their duffle bags. His father’s was a real genuine seaman’s bag. In Reuben’s bag she packed a small Bible and admonished him to read it when among “them heathen ice hunters.” Mary began folding something else into Albert’s bag when he stopped her. It was a thick red scarf that she had made especially for her son. Albert told her he wouldn’t carry it with him. Wearing it would make him look like a sissy, he said. After all, everyone knew ministers and schoolteachers were the only ones who wore scarves. His father had laughed. “If you had yer way, Mary maid, Albert John would have a string running around his neck and down his sleeves fastened to his cuffs like a chil’!” Clearly disappointed, his mother had taken the scarf away.

  Days later, on board the Newfoundland, Albert had found the scarf folded neat and tidy in the bottom of his bag. He smiled when he found it and was more pleased than ever that he had a gift to take back to his mother. He showed the scarf to no one and wore it in secret, on cold nights when the wind seemed to penetrate into the very seams of the Newfoundland’s thick planking.

  Albert found it cold even with all of his clothes on. He hated the ship’s blankets. They were tattered and lumpy and smelled of bilge and the general rank smell of the old ship. They looked as though they had never been washed. Under the pale light of the lamp, the snoring sealers’ breath appeared above them. In the shadows he sneaked his mother’s woollen scarf out of his bag and wrapped it around his neck. It still carried his mother’s smell and brought back many comforting memories: of bread baking and a stove pinging, of a curtain softly drawn against the winter night, of a soft voice humming, and knitting needles clicking, a feeling of home. Every night after that, Albert John had drawn the scarf out of his bag and draped it around his neck.

  He wished to God he was wearing it now. The top button of his coat collar was missing and snow flawed inside his neck. His right hand, which kept a tight hold on the collar, was numb and without feeling. He kept walking on behind his father.

  When that ashy night had passed and the dismal day came, still swooning with snow, its first light revealed the snow-covered mounds of crumpled men. All of them were crude, nondescript figures and didn’t look like men whose work was done and who should have lain straight and true in death. Among the men still walking between the mounds were Reuben Crewe and his son, Albert John. Now they were walking side by side, the one leaning on the other. In the snow that blew around them, it was difficult to tell who was leaning hardest, the father or the son.

  * * * * *

  Cecil Mouland was so tired he started looking for a place to lie down. He couldn’t remember the last time he had rested. His legs ached with weariness and he was getting cold and sleepy. Snow was piling up. Even with his head turned from the biting wind, his face burned with the cold. Walking was difficult, even with the line of men breaking trail ahead of him. Someone at the head of the line had been shouting encouragement all night. It was long after midnight, he figured; Cecil didn’t own a watch. They were passing a high ice formation over which the howling wind sent skeins of fine flakes. Cecil stepped out of line and lowered his body down at the base of the ice formation. He felt instant relief from most of the bitter wind. The other sealers walked past him, herded together like sheep returning to the fold. Bending into the misery of the storm, they soon disappeared in the scudding snow.

  Mouland curled into a ball beneath one of the larger knolls that stood several feet above him. He was amazed to feel the ice move under him like a cradle. It was like a living thing, and though it was cold and unfeeling, its motion brought him some comfort.

  The realization that thousands of feet of icy water lay beneath his moving bed startled him for a moment, but he dismissed his worries and closed his eyes. A pleasing shiver ran up his spine. It made him tremble all over, so he tucked his body tighter against the cold. He heard muffled voices from what seemed a great distance. Like a lullaby, the voices soon le
d him to sleep.

  He was awakened by a hard blow to his ribs accompanied by an angry voice.

  “What in the ’ell’re ye doin’ lyin’ down on the job? Get to yer feet, b’y!”

  Jesse Collins had kicked him without mercy. Mouland just stared up at him. Several more sealers stood around in a cluster, watching. He recognized Jacob Dalton with his stowaway friend, Offie Chalk, standing next to him. Peter Lamb was not with them.

  “I’m tired, sir, an’ sleepy, too,” Mouland whimpered.

  “Tired? Sleepy? A young man like you, after only a few miles of tramping?”

  Collins kicked him again, softer this time, but his foot connected with the same tender spot. Angry now, Cecil Mouland got to his feet.

  “Why are you kickin’ me? I can lie down if I wants to! You are not my master watch. I don’t ’ave to take orders from you!”

  Collins pushed his face up close to Cecil’s and leered at him.

  “Mouland, is it? From Doting Cove?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “You the one I ’eared about who is buyin’ a ring fer ’is girl?”

  “You’ve near broke me ribs!” Cecil said angrily. He was shivering badly.

  “Look at you! Shiverin’ like a dog shakin’ a rat’s neck, you are! Yer girl! What’s ’er name?” Collins persisted.

  “Jessie, sir. Jessie Collins!” The very sound of his sweetheart’s name quieted him some.

  “Jessie! Jessie, did ye say? Do you know my name, b’y?”

  “Yes I do, sir! Collins, you are, from Newport.”

  “Aye, Collins ’tis, my boy! Don’t know me first name, do ’e?”

  “No I don’t!”

  “’Tis Jesse, my son! Jesse Collins. The same as yer girl. Ha ha!”

  Collins laughed at the look on Cecil’s face. Then, in a serious tone, he pointed toward two rounded mounds fifty feet away from them. They looked like spent sled dogs that had let themselves drift in.

  “Look over dere, Mouland. Dem fellers laid down, too. Sleepy and tired like you, they was. I can’t rouse ’em. Too far gone, dey were, when we found ’em. They will never get up again, my b’y. They’re dead.” Collins’s voice sounded defeated.

  “I t’ought ’twas banks of snow, sir! Why are they dead? ’Ow can they be dead in such a short time?” Mouland was devastated to learn that these weather-hardened ice hunters could die so easily.

  Jesse Collins put his arm around Cecil’s neck and said in his strong, penetrating voice, “Deat’ comes easy when a man gives up the fight, Mouland. Out ’ere on a night like dis, ’tis every man fer ’imself. Master watches er no.”

  He looked around for emphasis. “A man down is a dead man! You eats an’ drinks on yer feet! You sleeps on yer feet, and if ye falls over I’ll wake ye up to start all over again.”

  Then in a softer voice, yet one filled with warning, he said for Cecil’s ears alone, “Dotin’ on a girl from Dotin’ Cove, eh? And she be the name o’ Jessie Collins. Ha ha! A promise I’ll make to ’e.” He leaned closer. “If you gives up and dies out ’ere, I’ll ’ave yer woman!”

  “You’ll what? No man will have my Jessie but me, sir! Pledged fer marriage, we are! I’ll die on me feet first!”

  An indignant Cecil pulled away from Collins, who only smiled and walked away again, shouting to the others to follow.

  “Two Jesses and two of ’em Collins on the one mattress, by God! One of ’em pretty as a picture an’ t’other an ugly bugger!”

  Collins laughed and sang a ditty.

  “I wish me jammies was close to yer nightie,

  Not in the bed but on the line,

  No one’s dere but yours an’ mine.”

  His voice faded away, laughing as he marched in the gusting snow. The others followed him, but none of them as briskly as the young suitor from Doting Cove. Cecil Mouland would not lie down again.

  20

  The person about whom such talk brought the young Cecil Mouland to his feet, and his senses, was unaware of these happenings. The young woman, Jessie Collins, was sleeping comfortably in her own clean and warm bed in Doting Cove.

  She awakened suddenly without any apparent reason and sat up in her bed. On the dresser beside her sat a lamp she had placed there herself. She had turned its wick down hours ago after reading her Bible. The oil lamp guttered with its need for fuel and gave off a dull, yellowish light in the small room. Her dashing new beau, Cecil Mouland, was on her mind, and images of him angrily chasing after hundreds of laughing men came to her. It was these images that had awakened her. The thought made her a bit uneasy. Unable to sleep, she threw back the heavy quilts, turned up the lamp until its light flooded the room, and stepped to the lone window overlooking a frightful storm.

  The wind whistled around the eaves of the house just a few feet above her window. Pulling back the lace curtain, she peered out but could see nothing save for veils of snow rushing past. The gale had worsened since she went to bed, and she wondered if her young ice hunter was safe. There was no heat anywhere in the house. She had let out the lone kitchen stove and dampened it with water before bedtime. Now she settled back under the blankets and picked up her Bible. She read from the book every night before she slept. She seldom selected any particular passage, and now her eyes fell to these words:

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me.

  Jessie Collins had read these same lines of scripture many times before, but never had it given her such peace of mind. It would forever be her favourite Bible verse. She turned the lamp down again, settled under the warm blankets, and went back to sleep. The lamp, starving for oil, gave a few fast sputtering sounds and died. By now the first pallid light of day had come. Magnified as it passed through the frosted windowpane, it fell gently upon the face of the peacefully sleeping young woman.

  * * * * *

  The new day brought another round of misery to the Great White Plain. The temperature had dropped severely and the wind blew harder than ever out of the northwest. It roared and moaned and burned exposed flesh. Its icy breath freeze-dried the snow and dashed around the frozen sealers. Blowing snow was everywhere, bearing steadily on them in a never-ending assault. It clung around their legs and bit into their faces and their eyes, robbing them of sight. It came at them from all directions as the ice underfoot rose and fell in great rolling waves.

  Beards and moustaches were now frozen, crystallized white; tiny ice candles hung from their eyelids. The sealers beat at the ice on their skin with fingers too numb to grip, and sometimes their mates broke away the ice for them. They were hungry and bone weary. These were the lucky ones, for scattered all around them were the bodies of the dead.

  Of the sealers who had left the Stephano less than sixteen hours before, twenty of them were already dead. Dozens more were down on the ice and, though still alive, were so filled with despair at the thought of being left to die they would not get up. Others were so far gone they could not get up even if they wanted. Hypothermia would soon kill them. As morning wore on toward brilliant day, the wind increased, the temperature dropped even further, patches of blue sky appeared above the blowing snow, and the deaths of good men continued. The reason they were on the ice in the first place was forgotten in the struggle for life.

  Someone spotted two adult seals and one whitecoat nearby. With a yell, a couple of men who still had their gaffs went after them. Their usual zeal for the hunt was replaced with the primordial need to hunt for survival. They were tired, but they killed all three seals in quick order and knifed open their warm flesh. One of the seals had died with its cleft tongue hanging out of its oval mouth. The man who had killed it said he loved seal tongue fried in pork fat.

  The sealers took turns dipping their frozen hands into the an
imals’ hot blood. They wrapped their hands around the steaming carcasses and held them there for a while, letting the blood sting their fingertips when the feeling returned. They opened up the bellies of the dead animals and pushed their hands inside to hold their entrails and viscera. When they hauled their mitts over their bloodstained hands, the liquid stuck to the wool like glue.

  They removed the hearts and livers from the seals along with strips of black meat and the tenderloins that ran along the animals’ spines. Laying them on the ice, they allowed the meat to drip and stiffen before cutting off pieces and eating them raw. One sealer was chewing into the half-frozen meat and had started to swallow it when his taste buds rebelled against the gluey, fishy taste, forcing him to vomit.

  Another of the sealers who was bending over one of the seals lowered his head to drink some of its warm blood. He staggered to his feet with blood dripping from his jaws like a dog that had just torn open a lamb. His stomach heaved and urged as if he would throw up, but he kept the blood down and walked away.

  The low drift coming over the plain soon robbed the dead seals of their warmth. The snow melted on contact with the blood, which quickly coagulated into gelatin, and the sealers struggled away. They now walked without direction or purpose, like drunken men returning from a late party. They walked to keep warm, to stay alive. The day passed, slow and hard. A ship’s whistle, no matter how far off, would have lifted their spirits. The crack of a gunshot or a single shout from their fellow swilers would buoy them and could mean the difference between life and death, but there was nothing, only the terrible moan of the wind.