It was hard to hear. The old man's words jumped away with the wind. And still the boys saw no lad.
"What say?" said Billy. "I don't see Toby. Where is he?"
"In my lee," Jonathan replied. "He's restin'."
There stood old Jonathan Farr, in the writhing gloom of that night, stiff and still and patient as the dead, with his back to the gale, plastered with snow and frozen spindrift, his shoulders humped and his head drawn in like a turtle. It was bitter dark—yet not as black as the grave. It is never that on the floe. And the wind streamed past, keen as a blade with frost, thick with crisp snow, and clammy with the spray it caught up from the open lakes and flung off in sheets and mist.
Dead bodies lying roundabout then—the boys had stumbled over the dead as they walked. Young men, sprawled stiff, hard as ice to the bones, lying stark in the drifts—Big Sam Tiller, of Thank-the-Lord, he that whipped Paddy of Linger Tickle, in White Bay, when the fleet was trapped by the floe in the Year of the Small Haul, was dead by that time; and Archie had found little Dickie Ring, of Far-Away Cove, dead in his elder brother's dead arms—they were pried apart with a crowbar when the time came.
Yet there stood old Jonathan Farr, cased in snow and ice, with the life warm in him—making a lee for little Toby. And Toby was snuggled up to his grandfather, his face close—sheltered and rested from the gale, as much as might be.
Billy Topsail bent down.
"How does you?" says he.
Toby put his head out from its snug harbour, and spoke, in a passion, as though Billy had wronged him, and then ducked back from the smother of wind and snow.