La Salle thought a moment, then drew from a little cavity in the wall near the door a small junk of bird-fat, which he melted in the tin cup. "I will rub your throat with goose-grease. It is a great favorite of the old women, and will keep the air from your tender skin, if it doesn't relieve the soreness of the inflamed membranes." So saying, he rubbed in the warm, soft fat with his hands, covering the skin above the bronchial tubes and the soft parts of the throat with the penetrating unguent, then fastening a turn of his list gun-cover around his throat, he replaced the covering, and taking his cap, went out into the night air, and seeking the lookout, glanced eagerly out over the waste of ice.
The night was clear and cold, with only an occasional puff of wind from the westward; but the temperature was falling fast, and the snow-crust broke under the foot with a sound ominous of biting cold. All around was ice, and even if the light-houses along that coast were lighted in winter, it is doubtful if the party were near enough to land to see any except that of Point Escumenac, which at noon bore north-west and about fifteen miles away. Since that time, the drift of the pack, at nightfall evidently making eastward, or rather north-east, had probably increased the distance to nearly forty miles.
La Salle surveyed the wild scene around him—the pillars hewn from vast masses of eternal ice by the shock of fearful collision, the slow action of the sun, the corrosion of the waves, and the melting kisses of the rain, and thus fashioned into fantastic mockeries of fane, monument, tower, and spire, even by daylight were strangely wonderful, but under the mystic night and the weird light of the stars, seemed like icy statues, in whose chill bosoms were incarnated the genii of desolation and death.
"Ay! thus we move, helpless, lost, and beyond the aid of man, convoyed by a fleet of fantasies into a sailless sea, and to an unknown fate. Well I know that by to-morrow, myriads of eyes will watch for signs of our presence from Canseau to Gaspé, and on both shores of St. Jean; but they will look in vain. A week hence they will hear of our disappearance in Baltimore, and Paulie will know her own heart at last. I may not regret this if I escape with life, for well I know we are like to come back as men from the dead."
"Why do you speak of death, La Salle?" said a voice in good and even polished French; and La Salle, turning, found that Regnar stood beside him. An air of education which he had never noticed before seemed to pervade this youth, who spoke English almost execrably, and had shown little more than a passable knowledge of the coast of Labrador, and a keen insight into all the varied craft of hunter and fisherman.
"I was only thinking," said La Salle, evasively, speaking in the same language. "But how is it that you, who know French and German, speak English so badly?"
"You will know some time, but not to-night; although I may tell you this—that I shall receive from you the greatest good that man will ever confer, or at least the realization of some long-cherished desire. God grant that it may end my long search for him, although my life end with it."
"Of whom do you speak?" asked La Salle, impressed with his manner.
"Regnar don't care talk now. Nights getting cold; so come in and look at sick boy. Ha, ha, ha! You've been tinman, tailor, cook, navigator, and now you're doctor. Come on!" And La Salle almost doubted his own sanity as he followed the old Regnie of his Labrador voyage down the side of the mound, where a moment ago an unsuspected, hidden fire had revealed itself.
Just as they were about to enter the little outer enclosure, La Salle laid his hand on the arm of his companion. "Regnie, don't for your life let the others know that I have doubt of our safety; and keep up poor Waring's spirits if you can."