The Argosy, Christmas 1912 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

14 would. Instead, it seemed to put new life in me. I suppose I was already so cold that the plunge into the water gave iny heart an impetus instead of chilling it to death as it might have done had I been warm. Slowly, stroke by stroke, shoving aside each cake that bobbed in my way, I drove myself along till I laid my hand on the gunwale of the Northbird and pulled myself aboard. Thoughts came quickly to me then. My only hope of saving Ordway was to hold my own brain well in hand. From the boat to the ice was but a step. I went to the grotto and-got a bottle of brandy that had not been opened. Fortunately it had not frozen. I poured myself a drink that in ordi- nary conditions would have given me delirium tremens. The warmth of it was felt immediately. I lighted the oil stove, and put what water remained over the fire. I would have a cup of hot coffee ready for Ord- way when I got him there. Then I took the bottle of brandy and a silver cup, part of the Northbird’s cabin luxuries, and loosening the boat from the moorings Ordway had made, fastened instead all the ropes I could find and tie together, keeping the coil in the boat. At that moment I regretted our neglect to bring a tender more than at any previous time. But the Northbird floated, anyway. With a pike I drove it slowly through the drifting ice cakes. They were close enough together to give me purchase, and gradually I groped my way toward the ‘fragment on which I had left my friend, paying out the long anchor ropes and painters as I went. I reached the other piece of ice. So far I had been successful. Would I find Ordway alive or dead? CHAPTER VII. BACK TO EDEN. It was with this question quivering like an arrow in my heart that I clam- THE ARGOSY. bered on to, the ice with the bottle of brandy. My furs lay where I had thrown them, and, as the water in my clothes was fast turning to ice, I hastily threw my coat round me. Then I hur- ried to Ordway. He was breathing, but was now un- able to speak. I poured a small quan- tity of brandy down his throat, then tried to lift him. I might just as well try to lift the iceberg itself. He lay a dead weight too great for me to raise from the rug on whicli he had fallen. The fowling gun which, as I had supposed had done this damage, still lay where it was when I left. I got my arms round Ordway under his armpits, and struggled slowly, pain- fully, but surely, back to the North- bird. The grade was down, and his feet slid along after me, so that the task was not so great as a struggle up-hill would have been. My greatest difficulty was getting him into the boat. But I did manage - it, and finally got him on a berth in the cabin. I then went back after the gun, the bottle of brandy, the glass, the rug, and the goose I had shot. Having cleared everything of ours from the fragment broken from the main berg, I said, as I supposed, good- by to that piece of ice forever. The work of getting the Northbird back to its original moorings was not so troublesome as it had been to cross the channel after Ordway. It had been for this I had paid out so much cable. All I had to do now was to stand in the bow and haul in on thé rope. Slowly the Northbird obeyed, and we swung out among the floating cakes, and, in a short time, I had pulled up alongside the floe where Ordway had driven in the bolts. I soon had the boat fast again, and could give all my attention to my friend. I made a steaming pot of strong coffee, and, as I raised him, he gulped it down. | “Ah!” he breathed, as I laid his head down again. CoOMmicbook CO