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Dick Onslow Among the Redskins, a novel by William H. G. Kingston |
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Chapter 15 |
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_ CHAPTER FIFTEEN I FIND MYSELF UNDER THE SNOW--MY ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE APPEAR TO BE VAIN-- STRUGGLE ON--AM FREE, BUT FIND MYSELF ALONE AMONG THE MOUNTAINS--PUSH ON--ENCOUNTER A GRIZZLY BEAR--A FIGHT--WILL HE EAT ME, OR SHALL I EAT HIM?--THE PLEASANTEST ALTERNATIVE OCCURS, AND BRUIN SAVES MY LIFE--I HURRY ON IN THE HOPES OF OVERTAKING MY FRIENDS--TAKE UP MY LODGING FOR THE NIGHT IN A CAVERN. When I saw the avalanche come thundering down towards me, although I used my utmost exertions to escape, I in reality had completely given myself up for lost. My feelings were very bitter, but they were of short duration, when I was brought stunned to the ground. I came to myself at last, or I should not be writing this; but where I was, or what had occurred, it was some time before I could recollect. At last a dim consciousness came over me that something terrific had happened, and I opened my eyes and looked about; I was under the snow, or rather under a mass of ice in a space ten or twelve feet long, and about three high, being rather wider at the base. This was a very respectable sized tomb, and such I feared that it would prove to me, unless I could work my way out of it. Of course I knew that I might be released when the snow melted, but I should inevitably be starved long before that event could take place, not to speak of dying of chill, and damp, and rheumatism. My principle has always been never to say die; if it had been otherwise I should not be again in Old England. My rifle lay on the ground close to me where I had fallen; my hand still grasped the long pike I always carried, and the ever constant weapon of the backwoodsman, my hatchet, was in my belt. I crawled along to one end of the icy cavern, tapping the roof to ascertain if there was any crack through which I may work my way, but it was one solid sheet of ice; the end was blocked up also by a solid mass, through which, after making several attempts, I found it impossible to bore. Finding all my efforts useless at this end, I went to the other. Appearances were not promising; still I would not allow myself to believe that by some means or other I might not work my way out of my icy prison. Not a moment was to be lost; my friends might go away and suppose I had perished, or I might be starved or exhausted before I could reach the open air. It was a great thing having a little space to start from, though it was little enough. I set to work at once, therefore, with my axe, and began chopping away at the ice. My idea was to cut myself out a circular shaft, and thus, like a mole, work my way up. I chopped and chopped away, and when I had cut a couple of feet out of the mass, I carried the chips to the farther end of the cave; my object in doing this was to obtain sufficient air to breathe, for I found that I very soon consumed what there was in the cave, and that the heat of my body had already begun to melt the ice above me. I suffered, therefore, rather from heat than from cold; I went chopping on till I had space enough in which to stand upright. This was a very great advantage; I felt most encouraged, and could now work with far greater ease than at first, when I had to be on my back, and to chop away above me. I felt very thankful that I was not a miner, either in a coal, iron, or lead mine. Sometimes as I was working away I fancied that I head the voices of my friends calling to me, but when I stopped there was again a perfect silence. On I went again, but still it appeared as if I was as far as ever from getting out of my prison. I had now cut my shaft as high as I could reach, so I had to make steps in the walls on which I could stand while I worked upwards. This I did till I had got up a dozen feet or more. It showed me the great thickness of the block of ice which had fallen above me, and how mercifully I had been preserved, for had it come upon me, it would have crushed me as thin as a pancake. I was now exposed to a new danger: should I fall as I was tunnelling away, I should break my legs. I already had removed, as I said, a considerable portion of the ice I had cut out to the other end of the cavern. I now saw that it would be better not to remove any more; so, securing my rifle at my back, and taking my pike in my left hand, which indeed I found very useful in keeping me firm, I determined not again to descend, but to continue working upwards as long as I had strength left. To decrease the risk of falling down, I contracted the diameter of my shaft, and thus got on also faster. At length, as I gave a blow above my head, what was my satisfaction to feel that my axe had entered a mass of snow. Ask an engineer if he would rather bore under a river with a rocky, or a sandy and muddy bed, and he will tell you that the rock he can manage, but that the sand or mud is very likely to baffle him. So I found with regard to the snow; I got on rapidly through the ice, but as I worked up through the snow, I had reason to dread every instant that the superincumbent mass would fall in and smother me. I found that I made the most progress by scraping it down and beating it hard under my feet, forming a rude stair as I went on. I had got up ten feet or so through it, when either my foot had slipped, or a mass of snow had come down upon me, I could not then tell; but I know, to my horror, that I felt myself sent toppling down, heels over head, as I feared, to the bottom of the shaft. I began to give myself up for lost, and would have shrieked out; perhaps I did so, in very grief and disappointment more than through actual fear, when I found that I was brought up by my pike, which had become fixed across the shaft. I held on for some time till the snow had ceased sliding down below me, and I looked up, and there to my delight I saw, far above me, through a narrow aperture, the clear blue sky. I now could have shouted for joy; but my emancipation was not yet complete, the smooth side of the funnel was to be scaled. Having secured my pike, I set about it. I tried to run up and gain the height by a dash. That would not do, I quickly found, for the snow slid down with my feet as fast as I could lift them, and that made still more come sliding towards me. The only way to gain the top was by slow and patient progress, I discovered, after many experiments. I therefore carefully made step above step, beating each one down hard as I progressed, and with infinite satisfaction I found that I was again making an upward progress. At last my perseverance was rewarded with success, and I found myself standing on a vast mass of snow, which blocked up the whole of the valley for a considerable distance on the eastern side and for some way on the west, so far, indeed, that my first delight at my own deliverance was very much damped by the fears which seized me for the safety of my friends and companions. There I stood, in the most silent and complete solitude, amid a heaving ocean, as it were, of snow, with the dark granite peaks rising up here and there out of it, and increasing the appearance of bleakness and desolation which reigned around. I shouted again and again, in the hopes that possibly some of my companions might be within hearing; but my voice sounded faint, and indeed, almost inaudible, it seemed, while no echoes reached me from the surrounding rocks. I did not, however, waste much time in hallooing, for instant action was what was required. I felt very hungry, and that fact made me suppose that I must have been some time in my icy cavern before I returned to a state of consciousness. I took out my watch; it had stopped. It was early in the morning when the Indians had attacked us. The sun had not now risen any considerable height in the eastern sky. This made me feel sure that one whole day, if not more, had passed since the catastrophe, and that if I would preserve my life I must push on to overtake the travellers. I had left my snow-shoes in the camp, so that I had great difficulty often in making my way over the snow in some of the spots where it lay most loosely. More than once I sank up to my shoulders, and had it not been for my pike I should have had great difficulty in scrambling out again. I had got on some way, and was congratulating myself on having got over the worst of it, when I felt the snow giving way under my feet. I tried to spring forward, but that only made me sink down faster; down, down, I went in a huge drift. I had sunk to my middle; then the snowy mass rose to my shoulders, and, to my horror, I found it closing over my head. Though I knew if I went lower I might struggle on for some time, yet that death would be equally certain in the end. My feelings were painful in the extreme. I could not get my pole across above me, but I succeeded in shoving it down below my feet, and, to my infinite relief, after I had made several plunges, it struck the point of a rock, or a piece of ice. I kept it fixed there with all the strength I could command, and pressing myself upwards got sufficiently high to throw myself flat on the snow and to scramble forward. This I did for some distance, holding my staff with both hands before me. It was not a pleasant way of making progress, but it was the only safe one. At length I got into the main pass, where the snow lay at its usual depth, and where it was beaten down by the passage of men, and wagons, and horses. This gave me renewed spirits, though, on examining the traces, I discovered that they were at least a day old, perhaps older. My chief immediate wish was to have something to stop the cravings of hunger. I felt in my pockets. I had not a particle of food; nor had I a scrap of tobacco, which might have answered the purpose for a short time. I tried chewing a lump of snow--that was cold comfort; so all I could do was to put my best foot forward, and to try and overtake my friends as soon as possible. I might have walked on for three or four hours engaged in the somewhat difficult endeavour to forget how hungry I was, and to occupy my mind with pleasing fancies, (I suspect few people would have succeeded under the circumstances better than I did), when I heard a loud growl, and on looking round to my right, I saw, sitting at the mouth of a cavern formed in a rock in a side valley of the main pass along which I was travelling, a huge grizzly bear. There he sat, rubbing his nose with his paws, putting me very much in mind of pictures I have seen of hermits of old counting their beads; nor was he, I suspect, much less profitably employed. I stopped the moment I heard him growl, and looked firmly at the grizzly. I knew that it would not do to turn and run. Had I done so, he would have been after me in a moment, and made mincemeat of my carcass. I do not know what he thought of me: I do know that I thought him a very ugly customer. I bethought me of my rifle. The last shot I had fired had been at the Indians; I had not since loaded it. I dreaded lest, before I could do so, he might commence his attack, which I guessed he was meditating. He had probably only just roused up from his winter nap, and was rubbing his eyes and snout as a person does, on waking out of sleep, to recover his senses, and consider what he should do. To this circumstance I owed, I suspected, my present freedom from attack. I, meantime, loaded my rifle as fast as I could, and felt much lighter of heart when I once more lifted it ready for use to my shoulder, with a good ounce of lead in the barrel. "Now, master Grizzly," said I to myself, "come on, I am ready for you." Bruin, however, was either not quite awake, or wished to consider the best means of making a prize of me. The truth was that both of us were hungry. He wanted to eat me, and I wanted to eat him: that is to say, I determined to do so if I could, should he attack me. If he left me unmolested to pursue my journey--I felt that discretion would be in this instance the best part of valour--that it would be wisest to leave him alone in his glory; for a grizzly, as all hunters know, even with a rifle bullet in his ribs, is a very awkward antagonist. He was so long rubbing his nose, that I at last lost patience, and began to move on. I had not taken a dozen steps when his warning growl again reached my ears. I stopped, and he went on rubbing his nose as before. "This is all nonsense, old fellow," I exclaimed. "Growl as much as you like. I am not going to stop for you any longer." So, putting my best foot forward, as I had need of doing, I stepped quickly out. I very naturally could not help turning my head over my shoulder, to see what Bruin was about, and, as I did so, a growl louder than the previous one reached my ear, and I saw him moving on at a swinging trot after me. This I knew meant mischief. Flight was totally out of the question. I must fight the battle like a man. It must be literally victory or death. Strange as it may seem, my heart felt more buoyant when I had made up my mind for the struggle, independent of certain anticipations of the pleasure I should derive from the bear steaks I had in contemplation, should I be successful. I speak, perhaps, too lightly of the matter now, because I do not want to make more of my deeds than they deserve; but it was in reality very serious work, and I have cause to be deeply thankful that I did not become the victim of that savage beast. Let this be remembered, that I was then, and I am now even more so, most grateful; yet not grateful enough; that I also feel for the merciful way in which I was brought through all the perils to which I was exposed. This being clearly understood, I shall consider myself exonerated from the frequent introduction of expressions to show that I was not a heartless, careless mortal, without a sense of the superintending providence of a most merciful Creator. I do feel, and I have always felt, that there is no civilised being so odious among all the races of man as a person of that description. Well, on came the huge bear. I knelt down and took my pike, as a rest for my rifle. This was a great advantage. Growling and gnashing his teeth, the enemy advanced. I prayed that my arm might be nerved, that my hand might not tremble, and that my rifle might not miss fire. Thus I waited till the brute got within six yards of me. Had I let him get nearer, even in his death struggles, he might have grappled me. I aimed at his eye. I fired, and the moment I had done so, I sprang back, and did not stop till I had placed twenty paces between myself and the bear, scarcely looking to see the effect of my shot. When the smoke cleared off, I saw the monster struggling on, with the aim, it seemed, of catching me. I was thankful that I had been impelled to spring back as I had done, for I certainly had not previously intended doing so. I knew how hard the old grizzlies often die, and so I put some dozen or more yards between me and him. He fell, then got up once, and made towards me again, and then rolled over, and I had great hope life was extinct. I had meantime reloaded my rifle, and approached him with due caution, for bears are, I had heard, cunning fellows, and sometimes sham death to catch the unwary hunter. When I got near enough I poked at him with my pike, and tickled him in several places, and as he did not move, I got round to his head, and gave him a blow with my axe, which would have settled him had he been shamming ever so cleverly. Without loss of time I cut out his tongue and as many steaks as I could conveniently carry, and stringing them together with a piece of his hide threw them over my back, and hurried on till I could find a sufficient collection of wood or lichens, or other substance that would burn, to make a fire for cooking them. I need not dwell on what I did do, but the fact was I was ravenously hungry; and let any one, with the gnawings of the stomach I was enduring, find his nose within a few inches of some fresh wholesome bear's meat, and he will probably do what I did--eat a piece of it raw. I was very glad that I did, for I felt my strength much recruited by my savage meal, especially as I only ate a small piece, very leisurely chewing it as I hurried on my road. It was a satisfaction to believe that I was going much faster than the women and vehicles could progress, and so I hoped to overtake them in a day or two at furthest; still, as long as there was daylight, I did not like to stop, and so on I tramped, till just before it grew dark I reached a broader part of the pass, where, in a nook in the mountain side, I discovered the remains of the camp formed by my friends, and left, I had little doubt, that very morning. There was wood enough about, with a little more, which I set to work to collect, to keep a fire burning all night. While thus engaged I found in the side of the rock a cave of good depth. I explored it at once, while there was light, to ascertain that it was not the abode of another grizzly. Having assured myself that the lodgings were unoccupied, though no signboard announced that they were to be let, I piled my wood up in front, and collected all the branches of fir trees and moss which I could find, to form a bed for myself inside. These arrangements being made, I lighted my fire and sat down with considerable appetite to cook and eat my bear steaks. My adventures for the night were not over. _ |
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