“Lad, lad, but you’re right—’tis hard.”
“— If it was no more than a Christian burial—”
“Christian burial, lad? Make your mind easy, but if I live, and you die, ’tis Christian burial you’ll get, boy. But ’tis both of us together’ll go, I’m thinkin’ now.” He shook the lad. “Wake—wake now, Eddie-boy—wake, boy, wake, and try and row again a bit. ’Tis cruel I am—aye, the hard heart of me—aye, boy. But now you must row, and maybe you’ll warm up a while yet. Lay there, and in two hours more ’tis stiff as the oar itself you’ll be.”
And so the boy crept to his seat and resumed rowing, though his oars no more than slid over the surface of the sea. The lad thought he was helping—he saw the oars pass from forward to aft and back again—but it was only the dory slipping away under the ceaseless drive of Martin’s irresistible strength.
Throughout all that cold winter’s day they rowed. And night came, and once more the boy sought the stern and lay there; and as he lay, Martin took off his oil-jacket and buttoned it about the lad’s body. “There, now, a cardigan jacket and two oilskins. You ought to keep warm now. And now, Martin Carr”—he was back to his seat again—“’tis harder than ever you’ll have to row or yourself freeze to an icicle.”
All through that long night Martin called to the lad. Until well into the night, as he considered it, he could catch the responses. But gradually Eddie’s voice became duller, and toward morning Martin got no answer at all. “Asleep, the poor boy!” muttered Martin, himself by then not too wide awake.
The stars dulled away, the dawn broke gray, and then the first long rays of the winter sun glinted the white of the crested seas. The weary man in the waist of the dory roused himself. He found himself still rowing, but that his mind had slept he felt certain. He looked about him—astern, ahead, to either side. No sail—nor smoke. He took note of the dory. Iced to a depth of six inches it was, and with every fresh slap of the sea more ice was adding. “A mile away now and we’d look like a lump of ice to any passing vessel,” he thought aloud.
The no’wester whistled over the ridged seas. A no’west wind and white-tipped seas that broke over them—could man invent anything more freezing? And all night long it had been so.
“Eddie,” called Martin, “Eddie-boy!” Again, “Oh, Eddie-lad— Eddie-boy, shake yourself now, dear.” But no answer coming from the boy, Martin more closely regarded the figure in the stern. The rising rays of the sun were tinting the stiffened yellow oilskins, but the low-drawn sou’wester allowed Martin no glimpse of the features. The hands were encased in the heavy woollen mitts, which Martin now noted were coated with ice. Still, ice was no great matter. How he wished his own oilskins—what was left of them—were iced up, too. Ice kept out the biting wind.
Gradually it came into his brain, even though the yet insufficient light revealed nothing of the boy’s face, that all was not quite natural. Once more a call, but no answer, not even the old familiar shifting of the legs. “Is it asleep you are, boy, and have you been asleep all night? Lad, lad, but if you’ve been asleep—” and bent over and lifted the sou’wester.