The Isle of Retribution/Chapter 22
XXII
Except for the impediment of the trap on the creature's foot, there would have been but one blow to that battle in the snow. White fangs would have gone home where they were aimed, and all of Ned Cornet's problems would have been simply and promptly solved. There would have been a few grotesque sounds, carrying out among the impassive trees,—such sounds as a savage hound utters over his bone, and perhaps, a strange motif carrying through, a few weird whisperings, ever growing fainter, from a torn throat that could no longer convey the full tones of speech; and perhaps certain further motion, perhaps a wild moment of odd, frenzied leaping back and forth, fangs flashing here and there over a form that still shivered as if with bitter cold. But these things would not have endured long: the sounds, like wakeful children, speedily hiding and losing themselves in the great curtains of silence and the wilderness itself swiftly returning to its slumber. Drifting snow dust, under the wind, would have soon paled and finally obliterated the crimson stain among the little trees.
Ned would have been removed from Doomsdorf's power in one swiftly passing instant, the wilderness forgetting the sound of his snowshoes in its silent places. All things would be, so far as mortal eyes can discern, as if his soul had never found lodging in his body.
This was not some little fur-bearer, helpless in the trap. It was no less a creature than that great terror of the snow, a full-grown Arctic wolf, almost as white as the drifts he hunted through. Only the spruce trees knew how this fierce and cunning hunter came to snare his foot in the jaws of a marten trap. Nor could any sensible explanation be made why the great wolf did not break the chain with one lunge of his powerful body, instead of slinking into the coverts and waiting developments. The ways of the wild creatures quite often fail of any kind of an explanation; and it is a bold woodsman who will say what any particular creature will do under any particular condition. When he saw Ned's body within leaping range, he knew the desperate impulse to fight.
None of the lower creatures are introspective in regard to their impulses. They follow them with out regard to consequences. The wolf leaped with incredible speed and ferocity. The human body is not built to stand erect under such a blow: the mighty, full-antlered caribou would have gone down the same way.
The chain of the trap broke like a spring as he leaped. The steel leash that is often used to restrain a savage dog would have broken no less quickly. There was no visible recoil: what little resistance there was seemingly did not in the least retard the blow. It did, however, affect its accuracy. That fact alone saved Ned from instant death.
But as the wolf lunged toward him to complete his work—after the manner of some of the beasts of prey when they fail to kill at the first leap—an inner man of might seemed to waken in Ned's prone body. A great force came to life within him. He lunged upward and met the wolf in the teeth.
Months before, when a falling tree had lashed down at him, he had seen a hint of this same, innate power. It was nothing peculiar to him: most men, sooner or later, see it manifested in some hour of crisis. But since that long-ago day it had been immeasurably enhanced and increased. While his outer, physical body had been developing, it had been strengthening too. Otherwise it would have been of little avail against that slashing, leaping, frenzied demon of the snow.
This inner power hurled him into a position of defense; but it would have saved him only an instant if it had not been for its staunch allies of muscles of tempered steel. For months they had been in training for just such a test as this; but Ned himself had never realized anything of their true power. He hadn't known that his nerves were as finely keyed as a delicate electrical instrument, so that they might convey the commands of his brain with precision and dispatch. He suddenly wakened to find himself a marvelous fighting machine, with certain powers of resistance against even such a foe as this.
A great surge of strength, seemingly without physical limitation, poured through him. In one great bound he overcame the deadly handicap of his own prone position, springing up with terrible, reaching, snatching hands and clasping arms. Some way, he did not know how, he hurled that hundred pounds of living steel from his body before the white fangs could go home.
But there was not an instant's pause. Desperate with fury, the wolf sprang in again,—a long, white streak almost too fast for the eye to follow. But he did not find Ned at a disadvantage now. The man had wrenched to one side to hurl the creature away, but he had already caught his balance and had braced to meet the second onslaught. A white-hot fury had descended upon him, too—obliterating all sense of terror, yielding him wholly to such fighting instincts as might be innate within him. Nor did they betray him, these inner voices. They directed the frightful power of his muscles in the one way that served him best.
Ned did not wait to catch the full force of that blow. His powerful thighs, made iron hard in these last bitter weeks, drove him out and up in an offensive assault. His long body seemed to meet that of the wolf full in the air. Then they rolled together into the drifts.
Ned landed full on top of the body of the wolf; and with a mighty surge of his whole frame he tried to strengthen his own advantageous position. His mighty knee clasped at the animal's breast, pressing with all his strength with the deadly intention of crushing the ribs upon the wild heart. And he gave no heed to the clawing feet. His instincts told him surely that in the white fangs alone lay his danger. With one arm he encircled the shaggy neck; with the other he tried to turn the great muzzle from his flesh.
The wolf wriggled free, sending home one vicious bite into the flesh just under the arm; and for a breath both contestants seemed to be playing some weird, pinwheel game in the snow. The silence of the everlasting wild was torn to shreds by the noise of battle,—the frantic snarling of the wolf, the wild shouts of this madman who had just found his strength. No moment of Ned's life had ever been fraught with such passion; none had ever been of such lightning vividness. He fought as he had never dreamed he could fight; and the glory of battle was upon him.
It might be that Doomsdorf could have picked up the great white creature by the scruff of the neck and beat his brains out against a tree. Yet Ned knew, in some cool, back part of his mind, that this was a foe worthy of the best steel of any man, however powerful. Even men of unusually great strength would have been helpless in an instant before those slashing fangs. Yet never for an instant did he lose hope. Bracing himself, he clamped down again with mighty knees on the wolf's breast.
Again the slashing fangs caught him, but he was wholly unaware of the pain. The muscles of his arms snapped tight against the skin, the great tendons drew, and he jerked the mighty head around and back.
Then for a moment both contestants seemed to lie motionless in the snow. The wolf lay like a great hound before the fireside,—fore legs stretched in front, body at full length. Ned lay at one side, the animal's body between his knees, one arm around his neck, the other thrusting back the great head. The whole issue of life or death, victory or defeat, was suddenly immensely simplified. It depended solely on whether or not Ned had the physical might to push back the shaggy head and shatter the vertebræ.
There was no sense of motion. Rather they were like figures in metal, a great artist's theme of incredible stress. Ned's face was drawn and black from congested blood. His lips were drawn back, the tendons of his hand, free of the glove, seemed about to break through the skin. For that long moment Ned called on every ounce of strength of his body and soul. Only his body's purely physical might could force back the fierce head the ghastly inch that was needed; only the high-born spirit of strength, the mighty urge by which man holds dominion over earth and sea, could give him resolution to stand the incredible strain.
Time stood still. A thousand half-crazed fancies flew through his mind. His life blood seemed to be starting from his pores, and his heart was tearing itself to shreds in his breast. But the wolf was quivering now. Its eyes were full of strange, unworldly fire. And then Ned gave a last, terrific wrench.
A bone broke with a distinct crack in the utter silence. And as he fell forward, spent, the great white form slacked down and went limp in his arms.
Like a man who had been asleep Ned regained his feet. The familiar world of snow and forest rushed back to him, deep in the enchantment of the winter silence; and it was as if the battle had never occurred. Such warlike sounds as had been uttered were smothered in the stillness.
Yet the sleeve of his fur coat was torn, and dark red drops were dripping from his fingers. They made crimson spots in the immaculate snow. And just at his feet a white wolf lay impotent, never again to strike terror into his heart by its wild, unearthly chant on the ridge. The two had met, here in the wolf's own snows; and now one lay dead at his conqueror's feet.
Whose was the strength that had laid him low! Whose mighty muscles had broken that powerful neck! Vivid consciousness swept back to Ned; and with it a deep and growing exultation that thrilled the inmost chords of his being. It was an ancient madness, the heritage of savage days when man and beast fought for dominance in the open places; but it had not weakened and dimmed in the centuries. His eye kindled, and he stood shivering with excitement over his dead.
He had conquered. He had fought his way to victory. And was there any reason in heaven or earth why he should not fight on to freedom—out of Doomsdorf's power? The moving spirit of inspiration seemed to bear him aloft.
Drunk with his own triumph, Ned could not immediately focus his attention on any definite train of thought. At first he merely gave himself up to dreams, a luxury that since the first day on the island he had never permitted himself. For many moments after the exultation of his victory had begun to pass away, he was still so entranced by dreams of freedom that he could not consider ways and means.
The word freedom had come to have a tangible meaning for him in these last dreadful months; its very idea was dear beyond any power of his to tell. It was so beloved a thing that at first his cold logic could not take hold of it: its very thought brought a luster as of tears to his eyes and a warm glow, as in the first drifting of sleep, to his brain. He had found out what freedom meant and how unspeakably beautiful it was. In his native city, however, he had taken it as a matter of course. Because it was everywhere around him he was no more conscious of it than the air he breathed; and he felt secret scorn of much of the sentimental eloquence concerning it. It had failed to get home to him, and many of his generation had forgotten it, just as they had forgotten the Author of their lives. It was merely something that feeble old men, amusing in their earnestness and their badges of the Grand Army so proudly worn on their tattered clothes, spoke of with a curious, deep solemnity, which a scattered few of his friends, from certain hard-fighting divisions, had learned on battlefields in France; but which was of little importance in his own life. When he did think of it at all he was very likely to confuse it with license. Now and then, when heady liquor had hold of him, he had amused his friends with quite a lecture concerning freedom,—particularly in its relation to the Volstead act. But the old urge and devotion that was the life theme of hundreds of generations that had preceded him had seemed cold in his spirit.
He had learned the truth up here. He had found out it was the outer gate to all happiness; and everything else worth while was wholly dependent upon it. As he stood in this little snowy copse beside the dead wolf, even clearer vision came to him concerning it. Was it not the dream of the ages? Was not all struggle upward toward this one star,—not only economic and religious freedom, but freedom from the tyranny of the elements, from the scourge of disease, from the soiling hand of ignorance and want? And what quality made for dominance as much as love of freedom?
It was a familiar truth that no race was great without this love. Suddenly he saw that this was the first quality of greatness, whether in nations or individuals. The degree of this love was the degree of worth itself; and only the fawning weakling, the soul lost to honor and self-respect, was content to live beneath a master's lash when there was a fighting chance for liberty!
A fighting chance! The phrase meant nothing less than the chance of death. But all through the long roll of the centuries the bravest men had defied this chance; and they would not lift their helmets to those that eschewed it. But now he knew the truth of that stern old law of tribes and nations,—a law sometimes forgotten yet graven on the everlasting stone—that he who will not risk his life for liberty does not deserve to live it. The thing held good with him now. It held good with Bess and Lenore as well.
That was the test! It was the last, cruel trial in the Training Camp of Life.
Deeply moved and exalted, he lifted his face to the cold, blue skies as if for strength. For the instant he stood almost motionless, oblivious to his wounds and his torn clothes, a figure of unmistakable dignity in those desolate drifts. He knew what he must do. He too must stand trial, bravely and without flinching. For Ned Cornet had come into his manhood.