Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/59

Rh over there—with the old crew."

"Where?" perplexedly.

"Overseas—in the trenches. They need men. They need us both. You wouldn't go for yourself. You will go for me. That's what I'm saving you for."

"Afraid to go yourself?" O'Neil sneered.

"Will you go?" grimly.

"Get me back alive, and I'll enlist," he agreed. "You're a nervy coward."

"You'll take my place?" The Sculpin spoke sadly, as he waved his hand to the east. "And you'll not be afraid?"

"I'll not be afraid," promised O'Neil, as the Sculpin helped Kim to his feet.

The Sculpin turned to the gang. "Bruce, Scotty, get out here and fight. Never mind why—just fight. Get mad. Hit hard—and don't be afraid."

Their only hope of fighting sleep was in fighting one another, so the gang wrestled and fought, sang and yelled, and tried to keep from thinking of their peril.

In the darkness, O'Neil wandered from the shelter of the wall. They found him in the open, fast asleep. The gang carried him to shelter and peeled off his frozen clothes, while the Sculpin gathered the drag-ropes of the gang into a pile and touched a match to the grease-soaked hemp.

In the flare of heat from the burning stack, the men rubbed O'Neil with snow, and roused him, while the Sculpin thawed and dried the clothes in the heat from the burning lines.

When the ropes were smouldering in a last red glow, the Sculpin broke up all save one of the pikes and clubs and, husbanding the precious fuel, managed to keep the fire burning through the lagging hours of the night.

As the embers faded, leaving only a charred spot on the ice to remind them of the fire, a little streak of dawn came sifting along with the snow, and with the light came the "whre-ee-e-ah I" of the ship's siren.

The wind had shifted and brought them the sound they had been tuning their ears all night to catch. It gave them the direction of the ship. With a shout, they broke from the lee of the wall and started into the teeth of the storm.

In the rush, O'Neil stepped into a snow-covered blow-hole and fell. He tried to scramble to his feet, but sank back with a broken ankle.

The Sculpin paused long enough to toss him on his shoulder and plunged on toward the sound of the whistle that came trembling through the air at ten second intervals. He caught the men at the crevass, where there was only the one pike with which to leap the open water.

He could not leap a five-year fissure with a cripple in his arms, so he ordered the men to the ship, and to send help.

He laid O'Neil in the lee of a pressure-ridge and sat down beside him to wait. "I'm tired," he admitted to himself, "but I ain't afraid."

The ice under them was groaning with the heave of the water. Across the floe raced a reverberatory crackle as the seams strained with the pulse of the sea. Down the wind came the boom of monster ice-cakes churned in the waves.

"She's breaking," whispered O'Neil,