Dick Onslow Among the Redskins

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Sometimes as I was working away I fancied that I head the voices of my friends calling to me, but when I stopped there was again a perfect silence. On I went again, but still it appeared as if I was as far as ever from getting out of my prison. I had now cut my shaft as high as I could reach, so I had to make steps in the walls on which I could stand while I worked upwards. This I did till I had got up a dozen feet or more. It showed me the great thickness of the block of ice which had fallen above me, and how mercifully I had been preserved, for had it come upon me, it would have crushed me as thin as a pancake. I was now exposed to a new danger: should I fall as I was tunnelling away, I should break my legs. I already had removed, as I said, a considerable portion of the ice I had cut out to the other end of the cavern. I now saw that it would be better not to remove any more; so, securing my rifle at my back, and taking my pike in my left hand, which indeed I found very useful in keeping me firm, I determined not again to descend, but to continue working upwards as long as I had strength left.

To decrease the risk of falling down, I contracted the diameter of my shaft, and thus got on also faster. At length, as I gave a blow above my head, what was my satisfaction to feel that my axe had entered a mass of snow. Ask an engineer if he would rather bore under a river with a rocky, or a sandy and muddy bed, and he will tell you that the rock he can manage, but that the sand or mud is very likely to baffle him. So I found with regard to the snow; I got on rapidly through the ice, but as I worked up through the snow, I had reason to dread every instant that the superincumbent mass would fall in and smother me. I found that I made the most progress by scraping it down and beating it hard under my feet, forming a rude stair as I went on. I had got up ten feet or so through it, when either my foot had slipped, or a mass of snow had come down upon me, I could not then tell; but I know, to my horror, that I felt myself sent toppling down, heels over head, as I feared, to the bottom of the shaft. I began to give myself up for lost, and would have shrieked out; perhaps I did so, in very grief and disappointment more than through actual fear, when I found that I was brought up by my pike, which had become fixed across the shaft. I held on for some time till the snow had ceased sliding down below me, and I looked up, and there to my delight I saw, far above me, through a narrow aperture, the clear blue sky. I now could have shouted for joy; but my emancipation was not yet complete, the smooth side of the funnel was to be scaled.

Having secured my pike, I set about it. I tried to run up and gain the height by a dash. That would not do, I quickly found, for the snow slid down with my feet as fast as I could lift them, and that made still more come sliding towards me. The only way to gain the top was by slow and patient progress, I discovered, after many experiments. I therefore carefully made step above step, beating each one down hard as I progressed, and with infinite satisfaction I found that I was again making an upward progress. At last my perseverance was rewarded with success, and I found myself standing on a vast mass of snow, which blocked up the whole of the valley for a considerable distance on the eastern side and for some way on the west, so far, indeed, that my first delight at my own deliverance was very much damped by the fears which seized me for the safety of my friends and companions. There I stood, in the most silent and complete solitude, amid a heaving ocean, as it were, of snow, with the dark granite peaks rising up here and there out of it, and increasing the appearance of bleakness and desolation which reigned around. I shouted again and again, in the hopes that possibly some of my companions might be within hearing; but my voice sounded faint, and indeed, almost inaudible, it seemed, while no echoes reached me from the surrounding rocks.

I did not, however, waste much time in hallooing, for instant action was what was required. I felt very hungry, and that fact made me suppose that I must have been some time in my icy cavern before I returned to a state of consciousness. I took out my watch; it had stopped. It was early in the morning when the Indians had attacked us. The sun had not now risen any considerable height in the eastern sky. This made me feel sure that one whole day, if not more, had passed since the catastrophe, and that if I would preserve my life I must push on to overtake the travellers. I had left my snow-shoes in the camp, so that I had great difficulty often in making my way over the snow in some of the spots where it lay most loosely. More than once I sank up to my shoulders, and had it not been for my pike I should have had great difficulty in scrambling out again. I had got on some way, and was congratulating myself on having got over the worst of it, when I felt the snow giving way under my feet. I tried to spring forward, but that only made me sink down faster; down, down, I went in a huge drift. I had sunk to my middle; then the snowy mass rose to my shoulders, and, to my horror, I found it closing over my head. Though I knew if I went lower I might struggle on for some time, yet that death would be equally certain in the end. My feelings were painful in the extreme. I could not get my pole across above me, but I succeeded in shoving it down below my feet, and, to my infinite relief, after I had made several plunges, it struck the point of a rock, or a piece of ice. I kept it fixed there with all the strength I could command, and pressing myself upwards got sufficiently high to throw myself flat on the snow and to scramble forward. This I did for some distance, holding my staff with both hands before me. It was not a pleasant way of making progress, but it was the only safe one.

At length I got into the main pass, where the snow lay at its usual depth, and where it was beaten down by the passage of men, and wagons, and horses. This gave me renewed spirits, though, on examining the traces, I discovered that they were at least a day old, perhaps older. My chief immediate wish was to have something to stop the cravings of hunger. I felt in my pockets. I had not a particle of food; nor had I a scrap of tobacco, which might have answered the purpose for a short time. I tried chewing a lump of snow—that was cold comfort; so all I could do was to put my best foot forward, and to try and overtake my friends as soon as possible. I might have walked on for three or four hours engaged in the somewhat difficult endeavour to forget how hungry I was, and to occupy my mind with pleasing fancies, (I suspect few people would have succeeded under the circumstances better than I did), when I heard a loud growl, and on looking round to my right, I saw, sitting at the mouth of a cavern formed in a rock in a side valley of the main pass along which I was travelling, a huge grizzly bear. There he sat, rubbing his nose with his paws, putting me very much in mind of pictures I have seen of hermits of old counting their beads; nor was he, I suspect, much less profitably employed.

I stopped the moment I heard him growl, and looked firmly at the grizzly. I knew that it would not do to turn and run. Had I done so, he would have been after me in a moment, and made mincemeat of my carcass. I do not know what he thought of me: I do know that I thought him a very ugly customer. I bethought me of my rifle. The last shot I had fired had been at the Indians; I had not since loaded it. I dreaded lest, before I could do so, he might commence his attack, which I guessed he was meditating. He had probably only just roused up from his winter nap, and was rubbing his eyes and snout as a person does, on waking out of sleep, to recover his senses, and consider what he should do. To this circumstance I owed, I suspected, my present freedom from attack. I, meantime, loaded my rifle as fast as I could, and felt much lighter of heart when I once more lifted it ready for use to my shoulder, with a good ounce of lead in the barrel.

“Now, master Grizzly,” said I to myself, “come on, I am ready for you.”

Bruin, however, was either not quite awake, or wished to consider the best means of making a prize of me. The truth was that both of us were hungry. He wanted to eat me, and I wanted to eat him: that is to say, I determined to do so if I could, should he attack me. If he left me unmolested to pursue my journey—I felt that discretion would be in this instance the best part of valour—that it would be wisest to leave him alone in his glory; for a grizzly, as all hunters know, even with a rifle bullet in his ribs, is a very awkward antagonist. He was so long rubbing his nose, that I at last lost patience, and began to move on. I had not taken a dozen steps when his warning growl again reached my ears. I stopped, and he went on rubbing his nose as before.

“This is all nonsense, old fellow,” I exclaimed. “Growl as much as you like. I am not going to stop for you any longer.”

So, putting my best foot forward, as I had need of doing, I stepped quickly out. I very naturally could not help turning my head over my shoulder, to see what Bruin was about, and, as I did so, a growl louder than the previous one reached my ear, and I saw him moving on at a swinging trot after me. This I knew meant mischief. Flight was totally out of the question. I must fight the battle like a man. It must be literally victory or death.