Генри Хаггард - Allan and the Ice Gods

"Father, this ice moves. When we stopped, those rocks on the headland were over against us, and now look, they are behind."

"It seems that it is so, but I am not sure," said Wi.

While they discussed the matter, Pag wandered back upon their track. Presently he returned and said:

"Certainly it moves. The ice sheet has broken behind us and there is water filled with hummocks that grind against each other between us and the shore, to which now we cannot return."

Then they knew that a current was bearing them southward, and some of them were frightened. But Wi said:

"Let us rather be thankful, for so shall we travel faster."

Still they continued to push and drag the boat over the rough ice, though this they did chiefly that they might keep themselves warm, who feared that they would freeze if they remained still for too long. So they toiled all day till, toward nightfall, they came to ice upon which snow had fallen and lay deep. Moreover, it began to fall again, so that they must stop and make themselves a kind of hut of snow blocks, as they knew well how to do, in which hut they crouched all night to protect themselves from cold.

Next morning they found that the snow had ceased; also that now they were out of sight of the mountains that stood at the back of the beach which was their home, though they could still see snow–covered peaks on the headland to the east of them, very far away. Leaving the hut, they dragged the boat forward over the surface of the snow which had frozen, so that now it was easy to travel, and thus made good progress. All that day, resting from time to time, they went on thus, till, late in the afternoon, the snow began to grow soft and it was difficult to draw the boat through it. Therefore they stopped, being tired, and built themselves another snow hut outside which they lit a fire. On that fire they cooked some of the seal flesh and ate it thankfully, and then went into the hut and slept, for they were very weary.

Next morning they found that the snow was still soft and that, if they tried to walk on it, they sank in to their ankles, so that it was no longer possible to drag the boat forward.

"We cannot go forward and we cannot go back," said Wi. "There is but one thing to do—to stay here, though where that may be I do not know, for the mountains on the headland have vanished."

Now Tana broke into weeping and Moananga looked sad, but Aaka said:

"Yes, we stay here till we die; indeed, what other end could be looked for on such a journey, unless we have a witch among us who can teach us to fly like the swans?" and she glanced at Laleela.

"That I cannot do," answered Laleela, "and the journey was one that must be tried, or so we all thought. Nor need we die for a long while, seeing that here we have shelter in the snow hut and enough seal's flesh to last for many days if we are sparing, and snow that we can melt to drink. Also I hope that always the ice is bearing us forward, and it seems to me that the air grows somewhat warmer."

"Those are wise words," said Pag. "Now let us make the hut bigger, and since we can do nothing more for ourselves, trust to the Ice–gods, or to those that Laleela and Wi worship, or to any others that there may be."

So they did these things; also, while their fuel lasted they cooked the most of the seal flesh after a fashion and set it aside to eat cold together with the fat, which they swallowed raw.

That day Pag and Moananga spoke much with Laleela, questioning her as to her journey northward and how long it had taken; about her own land also, and where it lay—to which she answered as best she could. But Wi and Laleela talked little together, for whenever they did so Aaka watched them coldly, which seemed to tie their tongues.

Four more days and nights passed thus, and during this weary night there was no change, save one, namely, that always the air grew warmer, by which they knew they were being borne southward, so that at last the snow began to melt and the walls of their hut to drip. On the fourth day also they saw behind them, but somewhat to the west, a mountain of ice that they had not noted before. This mountain seemed to grow bigger and nearer, as though it were heading toward them, or they toward it, which told them that all the ice still travelled though they could not see or feel it move. During that night they heard terrible rending sounds and felt the ice shake beneath them but, although it was melting, they did not dare go out of the snow hut to look whence the sounds came, for a strong wind had begun to blow from the north, bringing with it clouds that covered the moon.

Toward dawn the wind fell, and presently the sun rose, shining brightly in a clear sky. Thrusting aside the block of snow that sealed the entrance hole of the hut, Pag crept out. Presently he returned and, finding Wi's hand, without speaking, drew him from the hut, pushing back the snow block after him.

"Look," he said as they rose from their knees, and pointed to the north.

Wi looked and would have fallen, had not Pag caught him. For there, not more than a hundred paces away, wedged into the thick floes whereon they floated, was that great ice mountain which they had seen before they slept, a tall pinnacle ending in a slope of rough ice. And lo! there, halfway up the slope, held up between blocks of ice and stone, stood the great Sleeper!

Oh! there could be no doubt, for the light of the rising sun struck full upon it. There stood the Sleeper as Wi had seen it for all his life through the veil of ice, only now its left foreleg was broken off below the knee. Moreover, this was not all, for among the stones and ice lay strange, silent shapes shrouded in a powder of snow.

"Here be old friends," said Pag, "if it pleases you to go to look upon them, Wi, N'gae—no, not N'gae, for of him on whom the Sleeper fell little would be left; but Urk the Aged and Pitokiti and Hotoa and Whaka, though no longer will he croak of evil like a raven, and many others."

"It does not please me," said Wi. Then he heard a voice behind him, that of Aaka, who said:

"You thought you had left the old gods behind, but see, they have followed after you, Husband, which I think means no good to Pag and you, who were the first to look upon them whom both of you have rejected."

"I do not know what it means, Wife," said Wi, "nor do I ask. Still, the sight is strange."

Then the others came. Moananga was silent, Tana lifted her hands and screamed, but Laleela said:

"The evil gods may follow, but we go before them, and never shall they come up with us."

"That remains to be learned," said Pag.

As he spoke, the ice peak on which they were looking, whereof the base had been melted by the warmer waters into which it had floated, began to tremble and to bow toward them. Thrice it bowed thus, then, with a slow and noble motion, it turned over. Bearing the Sleeper and its company with it, it vanished into the sea, and where its head had been appeared its foot, spotted all about with great rocks that it had brought with it from the land.

"Farewell to the Ice–gods!" said Laleela with a smile, but Wi cried:

"Back! Back! The wave comes!" and seizing Aaka by the hand he dragged her away.

They fled, all of them, and not too soon for after them followed a mingled flood of ice and water, cast up by the overturning of the berg. Near to their snow hut it stopped and began to recede. Yet the platform upon which that hut stood rocked and trembled.

In his fear and haste to escape, the lad Foh ran past the hut out on to the snow plain, whence presently he returned, crying:

"The ice has broken, and far away I see land. Come, Father, and look upon the land."

They ran after him, wading through the snow for some two hundred paces, till before them they beheld a channel of water wide as the mouth of a great river, down which the current ran furiously, bearing with it great blocks of ice. This channel wended its way between two shores of ice, as a river winds between its banks, and seemed to end at last in a blue and open sea where there was no ice. Far away, at the edge of that sea, appeared the land of which Foh had spoken, green hills between which a large river ran into the sea, and valleys with woods on either side of them that grew upward from the plains lying at the foot of the hills, clothing their rounded sides. For a few minutes only they saw this green and pleasant land. Then a mist that seemed to arise from where the ice mountain had overturned drove down wind and hid it.