With the night the threatening storm came howling down upon the little company, hissing, moaning, shrieking, as if legions of demons were riding the winds, destruction in their hearts. Around their frail structure the blizzard piled up a great bank of snow, effectually shutting out the piercing wind, so that with the heat from the glowing fire in front the sleepers took no hurt from the Arctic cold. The chief danger lay in the blizzard. Alone Paul might buck through, but with the sick woman and the little blind girl the attempt would be worse than madness. The blizzard might last for three days, even for five, and they were at the end of their food. Spent though he was with his two weeks’ fight against head winds and drifts through the long and terrible miles, his gnawing anxiety for the little company dependent upon him had worn his nerves so ragged and raw that Paul felt no need of sleep, as the slow hours of the night dragged out their weary length. Never had he been more wide awake, more keenly sensitive to the terrors and dangers of his environment. He found himself listening and trying to differentiate the voices of the storm outside. Through the birches and poplars, bare of leaf, the blasts rattled and hissed like nests of serpents; through the spruce and pine they moaned and sighed like souls in distress. As he sat listening to the mingling voices of the blizzard he began to hear in them the notes of hate and savage fury as of raging beasts. The woods seemed to be filled with them. He shivered, listening to shriekings and howlings, low snarls and growls, cries and weird callings of beasts he had never known, and all the northern beasts he knew well for he had hunted them to their dens and holes. He seemed to catch a note of triumph, of savage exultant triumph, through the tumult. They had him sure and fast. They knew it and he began to fear it. They seemed to be closing in upon him. He could hear beneath the howlings and shriekings the hiss of their whispering voices just at the back of the shelter. He sprang to his feet. He would meet them out there on their own ground. Out from the cover of the shelter he leaped into the blizzard. The cutting drive of the granulated snow bit into his bare face. A moment he stood staring into the blinding, cutting, needle-pointed drift, then suddenly he stumbled back and sank huddled behind the shelter, his soul and body shaken by the impact of a new fear. Was he going mad? It was no unknown thing in those terror ridden wilds for strong men to be driven mad. Huddled and shaking he sat straining his ears after the voices daring him forth. Then to him thus straining, with every nerve taut and every sense a-tingle, there came through the raging, shrieking, hissing welter a voice clear as the song of a bird in the stillness of the dawn, a voice clear and familiar:
“He maketh the clouds His chariot, He walketh upon the wings of the wind.”
A wonderful quiet fell upon him. In the clear warm glow of the firelight in the old Pine Croft bungalow he saw a boy sitting on a low stool, gazing up into a face alight with serene courage. Outside, the tempest howled down the valley, lashing the windows, pounding at the doors and twisting the huge pines about like wisps of hay.
“That is a good verse to learn tonight, my boy,” the woman was saying. And over and over again, till the words were bedded firmly in his soul, she chanted the great words of that noble Hebrew psalm.
As on that night long ago, so tonight again the storm suddenly lost its power to terrify him. He remembered the vision he had that night of the great God out there, the good and kindly God whom he had been taught to know as his friend, riding forth down the Windermere upon his rolling cloud chariot and borne upon the wings of the wind. Gone was his paralysing fear. He rose from his huddled position and stood at the mouth of the shelter, his own man again. Steadily he faced the howling blizzard. It had lost its terror. He raised his hand high above his head, as if in salute. He knew he was not alone. He would win through. Deep in his soul was the conviction whose roots ran far back into his childhood memories, that in the eternal covenant and plan his life had a place. That, among others, he owed to his mother. Yes, he would win through. No blizzards that blew could down him. His Calvinistic faith held him steady on his course.
He threw some wood on the fire and as the wood crackled up he touched Peter on the arm. Instantly the boy was wide awake.
“Quiet!” whispered Paul. The dark Indian face immediately hardened into bronze, the black eyes only gleaming with life.
“Come,” signalled Paul.
Carefully the boy stepped around the fire and sat down beside his brother. Upon a piece of birch bark, with a burnt stick, Paul drew an outline of the lake, showing the trail leading to the Hudson’s Bay Post at the south-east end, as he had got it from Onawata.
“Peter, I am going to the Post tonight. You stay here. Keep the fire going. Some one will come for you. Keep the fire going and make a big smoke all the time. Kill the dogs if you must.”