Dorymates: A Tale of the Fishing Banks

by Kirk Munroe

“Of course it’s me,” answered the voice, “and I’m down here in a hole with poor Hank. I wish you’d fetch the rope and throw one end of it down to me, for it’s mighty slow work cutting these steps, and I could get up by it a good deal quicker. We’ll want it for Hank, anyhow, because he’s hurt and can’t climb.”

The crest of the ridge on which Wolfe was seated--for he had not dared stand up as Breeze had done--was quite narrow, and sloped sharply down the opposite side from that up which he had come. This side was wet and very slippery, for the afternoon sun had been warm enough to melt the surface in places. A few feet below him the slope appeared to end with a short upward incline, beyond which the ice again fell away to the water.

In compliance with his friend’s request, Wolfe hurried back to the dory for the rope, with his heart as full of joyful emotions as a few minutes before it had been of sorrowful ones. He could not yet imagine what had happened to Breeze, nor in what sort of a place he was, and he hardly cared; the mere fact that he was alive was sufficient for the present.

He afterwards learned that the icy slope down the opposite side of the ridge ended abruptly about two feet above the short upward incline that, from his point of view, it had appeared to join; while between the two was a deep, narrow crevice, extending far down towards the heart of the berg. This crevice had originally been filled with snow, and in the angle between the two slopes there had collected, while the iceberg was still a part of some Greenland glacier, a bank of arctic sand. Attracting the heat of what little sunshine fell upon it, this material had gradually melted its way deep into the snow. Then water had flowed into the depression thus made, and moving the sand back and forth, had slowly enlarged the hole until it had finally become a deep crevice, with smooth walls of glare ice and a sandy bottom. No trap could have been better planned, and after waiting perhaps hundreds of years for its victims, it had caught two in one day. It would also have held on to them so long as the iceberg continued to float if Breeze had not happened to hold a hatchet in his hand when he nearly killed poor Hank Hoffer, and frightened as much as he hurt him by suddenly sliding down on top of him. He had done this without giving the slightest warning of his coming, about an hour after Hank had landed at the bottom of the crevice with a sprained ankle and no hope of ever getting out again.

After the first shock was over, and a few words of explanation had been exchanged between the two prisoners, Breeze had set to work to chop a series of footholds up the sides of the crevice, and to gradually make his way towards the top. Wolfe had heard the faint clicking sound of the hatchet, but imagined it to be the beating of small drift-ice against the base of the berg. When in his despair he called out the name of Breeze, the latter had nearly reached the top of the crevice, and was within twenty feet of where his dorymate sat, though still effectually concealed from his view.

When Wolfe again returned to the top of the ridge with the rope, Breeze had worked his way up so that his head could be seen above the edge of the crevice, and the friends gave each other a joyful greeting. After receiving the assurance that the other was not hurt, Wolfe said, “Did you say that Hank Hoffer was down there where you have just come from?”

“Yes, indeed he is, and pretty badly hurt. He is stiff with the cold too, and we must get him out as quick as we can.”

“I don’t see how we are going to do it if he can’t help himself,” said Wolfe. “Yes, I do too,” he added, after a moment’s thought. “But we must work fast, for it will soon be dark, and we don’t want to stay here all night. You just wait two minutes longer.”

With this he again made his way to the dory, took the anchor from the crack into which he had jammed it, thrust the blade of an oar down in its place, and made the dory fast to it. Then he carried the anchor to the top of the ridge, got the hatchet from Breeze by means of the rope which he let down to him, chopped a hole to receive a fluke of the anchor on his own side of the ridge, made the rope fast to it, and again tossed an end of the line to his companion.

First testing the strength of the rope and anchor thoroughly, he slid down to where Breeze was waiting, and the dorymates exchanged as warm a hand-clasp as though they had been separated for months instead of minutes.