“Aye, boy, but one great comfort with it—’tis mostly a clear wind, a no’wester. Should any vessel be about now they’ll soon see us. But rest a while, boy. Go aft and lie in the stern—you’ll be trimmin’ ship better there—every little tells in a long haul; or stamp up and down and slap your arms, or take the bailer and shovel out the snow.”
Having cleared the dory of snow, the boy strove vainly to overcome his inclination to lie down. But he did lie down at last. His legs were so numb that he hadn’t the strength to go aft, he said, and so Martin took him in his arms and set him in the stern. “And don’t rest too long there, boy. There’s such a thing as freezing to death in a no’wester. A cold wind, lad, is a no’wester.”
The boy lay there till Martin bade him rise and stamp about. But he could not keep up the stamping for long. “I’m so tired, Martin, and hungry—oh, so hungry!” He sucked at a bit of snow-crust.
“Aye, boy. One older and tougher than you might say it. And don’t eat too much of that stuff, and try, boy, try a while again to keep movin’ your arms and legs.”
He tried, but could not. So Martin bade him lie down again. And the boy lay down and began to drowse, at which Martin shook his head. But what could he do? He had to keep rowing himself. Oh, yes—he took off his own cardigan jacket and forced the boy into it. The boy, only half awake, protested—a feeble protest—as Martin, with a soft “Hush, lad, hush—weren’t me and your father dory-mates for many the long year together?” buttoned it about him.
“My, Martin, but that’s warming!”
“Aye, boy, that it is. Many a cold winter’s day it’s helped to warm me.”
To remove his cardigan jacket, which was under his oil-coat, Martin had to expose himself to the biting no’wester, and so cold and searching was it that he took many minutes to button his oil-jacket again. To overcome the numbness—“Or soon I wouldn’t be able to hold an oar at all,” he muttered—he beat his hands against the gunnels, noticing the while that he not only knocked off the last little films of frozen snow-crust, but also, though this rather curiously than sympathetically, that the ends of his fingers bled under the impact of the blows. “Man, but ’tis cold, when it comes to that!” and bent over the boy to fix the jacket more securely around his neck. “Forty-eight hours now without food or drink—’tis hard on you, lad—hard on you.”
Back to his rowing, and no cessation till he heard the lad muttering in his sleep. “What’s it now?” said Martin, and bent toward him.
“— But to be floating around in the water or lying somewhere on bottom for the fish to eat up—” murmured the sleeping boy.