Cheap Jack Zita

by S. Baring-Gould

It was now impossible for him to return. He could not, if he wished it, have retraced his steps. His only possible course was to scramble up the bank, and to do this he now devoted all his energies. But unhappily he had reached precisely that point where the bank had been cut through, and was therefore exposed to the full force of the outrush of the river. As, by a desperate effort, he recovered his feet, he could see the lip of water curling over, reddened by the reflection of the fire beyond. He was drenched in the ice-cold water, but that was nothing to the anguish in his feet; they were turning dead, numbed by the water in which they had been immersed so long without proper protection.

But this was not all. No sooner had Drownlands reached the slope of the embankment than he became aware that the little assistance rendered him by the frost was at an end. The rush of water had broken up the gault of which the bank was formed, was eating at every moment farther into it, and widening the mouth by which it poured from the bed of the river upon the low reclaimed land. The moistened marl was greasy under his feet. When he slipped and endeavoured to catch at the bank, his hands sank into the sodden clay, and the tenacious matter held his fingers like glue. His feet, moreover, went deep into the clay, and to extract them was difficult.

It became apparent to Drownlands that he must battle for his life against the current.

He endeavoured to assist himself in his ascent by the staff of the flail, but this proved of no help to him, as it sank with the pressure applied to it in the glutinous mass. He strove to heave himself up, and could not; his feet, dead with cold, and, through their loss of sensation, no longer able to feel the bottom, slipped from under him. He could not extract his staff from the marl. All he was able to do was to cling to it, and pant and recover breath, and then make another desperate effort forward.

The water, tearing through the fissure in the bank, broke off masses of the clay, half frozen, and whirled them down, and along with them blocks of river ice that had broken up. It was sometimes difficult to ascend the embankment, the slope of which was steep, in the face of a strong wind; it was a hundred times more difficult now, when it had to be done against a rushing torrent, and that of water which curdled the blood in the veins, knotted the muscles with cramp, and paralysed the sinews.

No thought of revenge on those who had cut the bank now occupied the mind of Drownlands—no thought of having the leak stopped. The one absorbing consideration was how to escape from the deadly-cold raging current.

Then a sharp cant of ice whirled down, cut his knuckles and jarred his fingers, so that he let go the flail with one hand, but seized it in time with the other to save himself from being swept away. He was carried off his feet, and in trying to right himself drove one foot so deeply into the marl, that, when he endeavoured to pluck it forth, the tenacious matter held his boot and tore it off his foot. The intensity of the cold was, however, so great, that he was not sensible of the loss. He looked up. The red auroral light was still illumining the sky behind the bank. He held to the flail that was planted in the clay. If that gave way, his hold on life would be gone.

Now he saw above him a dark figure on the bank, and he cried, 'Help! help!'

'Who calls there?'

'It is I—Ki Drownlands.'