But where could I bury it? How could I dig a grave? Everything, I knew, was frozen hard as steel; should I clear away the frozen nigger grass and moss, and light a fire on the earth in some quiet nook, thaw it thus, and dig a grave, as miners sink their holes in winter?
I returned to my fire in the tunnel to think this out. How terrible it all appeared in there; how I longed to make the change! I sat pondering on this for some little time, and then I had an idea.
I grasped a pick and drove it into the wall of the drive behind the fire, and found that I could excavate the earth easily. I went to work, for I had determined what to do.
Soon I had cut a niche quite large enough to hold the body. I smoothed it nicely, procured some fresh pine twigs which I strewed in it; then going to the shanty, I forced myself to draw the dear fellow's remains, upon the same bear-skin he had passed away on, to the sepulchre that I had hewed.
The body was frozen, of course, and was as easily handled as if it had been a log of wood. I took everything from his pockets, then I rolled it into its resting-place—a temporary one I regarded it. I strewed spruce branches over it, and covered it reverently with the earth I had removed, and soon no one but I could have told that a brave young Englishman, a loved friend, a dear companion, was sleeping his last sleep in there. I smoothed the opening over, but I knew right well the spot where Percy Meade, my lost friend, was lying entombed.
It was done at last, the mournful task was ended; having the Prayer-book with me, I read with tear-dimmed eyes some passages aloud from it—good Patch sitting by as quiet and sedate as if he understood it all.
There was no hurry, no need for haste, and yet as soon as this sad business was finished I left the tunnel gladly, and entered the shanty with the lamp.
It was awfully cold in there—it was an ice-house; but I soon had a fire blazing in the corner. I piled on logs, and on them heaped the withered pine brush and rubbish with which the floor had been strewed. Then I cut fresh stuff, brought in the bear and deer-skins, the rugs and blankets I had been using in the tunnel, heaped them before the fire to dry, and in a few hours I was, so far as bodily requirements went, in comfort.
As I gazed around me then, I was very sad. On the rough shelves we had constructed were lying the few books and papers we possessed, and there were some odds and ends which poor Meade had greatly valued. There was his pipe and tobacco-box, his plate and knife and fork, which he had been so fastidious about—two or three photographs of home scenes and a portrait or two were pinned to the logs about the dismal shanty.
All these had been the texts of many a long yarn, many an interesting conversation—it was very sad. But I did not remove them; there seemed to me a sacredness about them, a melancholy sort of interest which was my only comfort in that dismal cave. They brought back to me many and many an incident, and were to some extent a kind of companionship to me in my loneliness. However, I was very weary with all this unaccustomed grievous labour. I made tea, cooked some food, then putting a huge log on the fire, which I knew would last for hours, I fell asleep and dreamt. I thought that I was far away from all these horrors, back in my dear old home, with loving faces round me, my troubles over, my long agony past, and all forgotten. Oh, blessed, thrice blessed sleep!—thank God for sleep!