Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts: A Book of Stories. Arthur Quiller-Couch

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СКАЧАТЬ resembled breathing—or so he thought for a moment. Then it seemed rather as if some creature were softly feeling about the door—fumbling its coating of ice and frozen snow.

      Cooney listened. They all listened. Usually, as soon as they stirred from the scorching circle of the fire, their breath came from them in clouds. It trickled from them now in thin wisps of vapour. They could almost hear the soft grey ash dropping on the hearth.

      A log spluttered. Then the invalid's voice clattered in—

      "It's the bears—the bears! They've come after Bill, and next it'll be my turn. I warned you—I told you he wasn't deep enough. O Lord, have mercy … mercy … !" He pattered off into a prayer, his voice and teeth chattering.

      "Hush!" commanded the Gaffer gently; and Lashman choked on a sob.

      "It ain't bears," Cooney reported, still with his ear to the door. "Leastways … we've had bears before. The foxes, maybe … let me listen."

      Long Ede murmured: "Take us the foxes, the little foxes … "

      "I believe you're right," the Gaffer announced cheerfully. "A bear would sniff louder—though there's no telling. The snow was falling an hour back, and I dessay 'tis pretty thick outside. If 'tis a bear, we don't want him fooling on the roof, and I misdoubt the drift by the north corner is pretty tall by this time. Is he there still?"

      "I felt something then … through the chink, here … like a warm breath. It's gone now. Come here, Snipe, and listen."

      "'Breath,' eh? Did it smell like bear?"

      "I don't know … I didn't smell nothing, to notice. Here, put your head down, close."

      The Snipe bent his head. And at that moment the door shook gently. All stared; and saw the latch move up, up … and falteringly descend on the staple. They heard the click of it.

      The door was secured within by two stout bars. Against these there had been no pressure. The men waited in a silence that ached. But the latch was not lifted again.

      The Snipe, kneeling, looked up at Cooney. Cooney shivered and looked at David Faed. Long Ede, with his back to the fire, softly shook his feet free of the rugs. His eyes searched for the Gaffer's face. But the old man had drawn back into the gloom of his bunk, and the lamplight shone only on a grey fringe of beard. He saw Long Ede's look, though, and answered it quietly as ever.

      "Take a brace of guns aloft, and fetch us a look round. Wait, if there's a chance of a shot. The trap works. I tried it this afternoon with the small chisel."

      Long Ede lit his pipe tied down the ear-pieces of his cap, lifted a light ladder off its staples, and set it against a roof-beam: then, with the guns under his arm, quietly mounted. His head and shoulders wavered and grew vague to sight in the smoke-wreaths. "Heard anything more?" he asked. "Nothing since," answered the Snipe. With his shoulder Long Ede pushed up the trap. They saw his head framed in a panel of moonlight, with one frosty star above it. He was wriggling through. "Pitch him up a sleeping-bag, somebody," the Gaffer ordered, and Cooney ran with one. "Thank 'ee, mate," said Long Ede, and closed the trap.

      They heard his feet stealthily crunching the frozen stuff across the roof. He was working towards the eaves over-lapping the door. Their breath tightened. They waited for the explosion of his gun. None came. The crunching began again: it was heard down by the very edge of the eaves. It mounted to the blunt ridge overhead; then it ceased.

      "He will not have seen aught," David Faed muttered.

      "Listen, you. Listen by the door again." They talked in whispers. Nothing; there was nothing to be heard. They crept back to the fire, and stood there warming themselves, keeping their eyes on the latch. It did not move. After a while Cooney slipped off to his hammock; Faed to his bunk, alongside Lashman's. The Gaffer had picked up his book again. The Snipe laid a couple of logs on the blaze, and remained beside it, cowering, with his arms stretched out as if to embrace it. His shapeless shadow wavered up and down on the bunks behind him; and, across the fire, he still stared at the latch.

      Suddenly the sick man's voice quavered out—

      "It's not him they want—it's Bill! They're after Bill, out there!

       That was Bill trying to get in. … Why didn't yer open? It was Bill,

       I tell yer!"

      At the first word the Snipe had wheeled right-about-face, and stood now, pointing, and shaking like a man with ague.

      "Matey … for the love of God … "

      "I won't hush. There's something wrong here to-night. I can't sleep.

       It's Bill, I tell yer. See his poor hammock up there shaking. … "

      Cooney tumbled out with an oath and a thud. "Hush it, you white-livered swine! Hush it, or by—" His hand went behind him to his knife-sheath.

      "Dan Cooney"—the Gaffer closed his book and leaned out—"go back to your bed."

      "I won't, Sir. Not unless—"

      "Go back."

      "Flesh and blood—"

      "Go back." And for the third time that night Cooney went back.

      The Gaffer leaned a little farther over the ledge, and addressed the sick man.

      "George, I went to Bill's grave not six hours agone. The snow on it wasn't even disturbed. Neither beast nor man, but only God, can break up the hard earth he lies under. I tell you that, and you may lay to it. Now go to sleep."

      Long Ede crouched on the frozen ridge of the hut, with his feet in the sleeping-bag, his knees drawn up, and the two guns laid across them. The creature, whatever its name, that had tried the door, was nowhere to be seen; but he decided to wait a few minutes on the chance of a shot; that is, until the cold should drive him below. For the moment the clear tingling air was doing him good. The truth was Long Ede had begun to be afraid of himself, and the way his mind had been running for the last forty-eight hours upon green fields and visions of spring. As he put it to himself, something inside his head was melting. Biblical texts chattered within him like running brooks, and as they fleeted he could almost smell the blown meadow-scent. "Take us the foxes, the little foxes … for our vines have tender grapes … A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon … Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south … blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out … " He was light-headed, and he knew it. He must hold out. They were all going mad; were, in fact, three parts crazed already, all except the Gaffer. And the Gaffer relied on him as his right-hand man. One glimpse of the returning sun—one glimpse only—might save them yet.

      He gazed out over the frozen hills, and northward across the ice-pack. A few streaks of pale violet—the ghost of the Aurora—fronted the moon. He could see for miles. Bear or fox, no living creature was in sight. But who could tell what might be hiding behind any one of a thousand hummocks? He listened. He heard the slow grinding of the ice-pack off the beach: only that. "Take us the foxes, the little foxes … "

      This would never do. He must climb down and walk briskly, or return to the hut. Maybe there was a bear, after all, behind one of the hummocks, and a shot, or the chance of one, would scatter his head clear of these tom-fooling notions. He would have a search round.

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