The Argosy — page 337: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

318. Across the Plains. ea ae i. level line where both met in the distant horizon: and there was none to help and deliver. Less than two score of miles away it might be that there was a house; but it would be almost certain death to attempt to search for it in that wilderness of snow. Once lost, we should inevitably perish, and our bones would lie wasting on the plains for the snows to wrap tenderly in winding-sheets—at least if no harsher fate befel. And then I thought of my mother and little Flossie—Flossie, with the bright warmth in her cheeks and the lights and shadows in her golden hair. And I remem- bered the little leathern bag, and the gold I had heaped together by that hard toil: the gold that I was taking to them, and that meant possibilities of comfort and happiness, of delight and blessing. Was — it possible that, after all, they would never see it? I took out the leathern bag and gazed at the yellow heap of glitter, for which I had given everything but life, and in my fierce despair a strong impulse seized me to scatter it all out to the snow and winds. Then little Flossie’s face, and the dear mother’s behind it, seemed to come as in a vision and look down reproachfully upon me: and I put the temptation away. My companions were all keenly alive to the extreme perils of our position. We had not so much as a crust of bread among us, and hunger began to prey upon our vitals. Of the hours that followed it sickens me even now to write—of our weary searches for the lost track, of the bitter cold, of the increasing hunger, of the anticipated dread and terror of the future. Do you think that I, brought up as I had been, could forget the God my mother had taught me to know ?—could forget Him at such a time when death stared us in the face? No,no. What the others did, I learnt not : but how I prayed to Him, how besought Him in the bitter stress of those slow, despairing hours, only He knows! ‘‘Tf we had but a spade ora shovel!” Was it the thousandth time those words had crossed my lips, or the lips of my companions? Ano- ther morning had dawned ; and we looked over the white glare of the trackless plain as we spoke it: but my lips found no answer erther in heaven above or earth beneath. But—as the last syllable died into the silence which wrapped us about, my eyes fell on the large, streng tin reflectors, which held the - great lamps in their iron sockets. On a sudden it flashed across me that these could be inverted and used instead of spades for clearing out the gully, so that the mules could be again put to service, in which case the chances of regaining the road would be all in our favour, while to attempt it on foot, in our present condition, was, as I said, almost certain death. At any rate, it looked like a possibility, and on the spur of the moment I suggested the idea to my fellow-travellers. Yes; it did seem Gomicbooks.com