"The brandy," said Urquhart, "and as soon as you like."
He helped as much as he could, groaned once or twice, sweated with the effort; but the thing was done. He lay on the mackintosh, his head on a rücksack, the cape and sweater over him. Macartney went to the edge of the plateau to prospect. A billowy sea of white stretched out to a blue infinity. The clouds had lifted or been vaporised. He could see nothing of Odde; but he believed that he could make out a thread of silver, which must be the fiord. It would take him too long to get out there and back—and yet to stay here! That meant that the pair of them would die. It is but just to him to say that no alternative presented itself to him. The pair of them would die? Well, yes. What else was there? He returned. Urquhart was waiting for him, intensely awake to everything.
"Old chap," said James, "that's no go. I didn't try the snow; but I can judge distances. It's a deuce of a way down, even if there is a way, and—"
"It's all right," Urquhart said, "there isn't a way. I'm cornered this time. But there's just a chance for you—if you work at it. It'll begin to freeze—in fact, it has begun already. Now if you can find the shovel, you might employ yourself finely, digging a stairway. You'll be up by midnight."
"Never mind about me," James said. "I'm going to keep you warm first."
But Urquhart was fretting. He frowned and moved his head about. "No, no, don't begin that. It's not worth it—and I can't have you do it. You ought to know who I am before you begin the Good Samaritan stunt. I want to talk to you while I can. I've got a good deal to tell you. That will be better for me than anything." Jimmy was prepared for something of the kind.
"I believe it will," he said. "Go on, then, and get it over."
It had been his first impulse to assure the poor chap that he knew all about it; but a right instinct stopped him. He would have to hear it.
So Urquhart began his plain tale, and as he got into it the contrast between it and himself became revolting, even to him. A hale man might have brazened it out with a better air. A little of the romance with which it had begun, which indeed alone made it tolerable, would have been about it still. A sicker man than Urquhart, who made a hard death for himself, would have given up the battle, thrown himself at James's feet and asked no quarter. Urquhart was not so far gone as that; a little bluster remained. He did it badly. He didn't mean to be brutal; he meant to be honest; but it sounded brutal, and James could hardly endure it.
He saw, too, as the poor chap went on, that he was getting angry, and doing himself harm. That was so. Every step he took in his narrative sharpened the edge of the fate which cut him off. He would have made a success of it if he could—but he had been really broken before he broke his back, and the knowledge exasperated him.