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Page 16
The hole was still not quite a foot and a half deep, and would not
preserve the cradle, if placed therein, from the destroyer. He shuffled
back to the cottage with awkward, hasty steps. The baby had cried itself
to sleep, and lay in its cradle in the corner, unconscious of the ruin
of its home. The old man went to the hearth, on which the fire had been
blown out, and from under the ashes dragged out a battered fire-shovel,
its edge worn away, its handle loose. It was the nearest approach to a
spade that was left him. Just as he got back to the hole another blast
carried him off his feet, and he fell prostrate, this time clutching his
substitute spade beneath him. He rose again, stepped into the hole,
crouching down as low as possible, and rapidly raised out of it one
shovelful of earth after another; it was no sooner on the surface than
it was whisked away like dust. In the wood, a furlong to the right, some
dozen trees were prostrated between one thrust of the shovel and the
next; dark straight firs and silver birches, that slipped downwards to
the valley like stiff, gleaming snakes.
Meanwhile the shovel had struck on a layer of stones, the remains of
some past landslip, since buried under flowering earth. With its
turned-back edge, it was hard to insert it below them, and again and
again it came up having raised nothing but a little gravel; but the old
man worked on still with his docile, child-like look, intent upon his
task. Presently the infirm handle came off, and the shovel dropped into
the bottom of the hole. At the same moment, with a wilder shriek and a
fiercer on-rush, the fury came tearing again along the mountain side;
the whole of the trees that yet remained in the patch of forest nearest
to the cottage were swept away at once, and the slope was left bare. The
old man crouched down in his hole, with his anxious eye fixed on the
four walls within which the baby was sheltered; they still stood, the
only object which the demon had not yet swept from his path. And even as
the old man looked, he saw the upper part of the back wall begin to
loosen, to totter, and give way. The baby was in the front room, but was
under the windward wall. In the teeth of the gale the old man crawled
out of the hole, extended his length on the ground, and began to drag
his stiff and trembling frame, with hands, elbows and knees, across the
fifty feet or so of barren soil that lay between the hole and the
cottage. He heard the crash of bricks before he had accomplished half
the distance; without pausing to look he crawled rapidly on till he
crossed the threshold, and saw the babe still sleeping safely in its
wooden cradle. There were two large iron dogs in the grate; he drew them
out and placed them--panting painfully with the effort, for they were
almost beyond his strength to lift--in the cradle, under the little
mattress, one at each end. The baby, disturbed in its slumber, stretched
its little limbs, smiled at him, and went to sleep again. He doubled a
sack over the coverlet, tied a rope round the cradle, fastened it by a
slip-knot underneath, pulled out the end at the back, and tightened it
till it dragged against the hood. The cradle went on its wheels well
enough to the door. Then the old man summoned his remaining strength,
and having knotted the rope round his waist, threw himself on the ground
again, and emerged with his precious charge into the roaring hurricane.
Across the barren mountain slope, far above the ken of any fellow-being,
in the teeth of death, the old man crept with the sleeping babe. Another
threatening of the deluge of rain, which would surely accompany the
tornado, added to the misery of the painful journey; the sudden downpour
of heavy drops drenched the grandfather to the skin, but the grandchild
was protected under the sacking.
They reached the hole at length, and raising himself to his knees, the
wind being somewhat less boisterous while the rain was falling, the old
man clutched the heavily-weighted cradle in both arms, and attempted to
force it into the haven of safety he had spent his strength in forming.
Alas! there was not room. The cradle was wider across than he had
calculated. To take the child out and place it with the bedding in the
hole would be leaving it to drown. Should the expected deluge descend,
the trench he had dug would but form a reservoir for water. He seized
the shovel, working it as well as he could without a handle, and
attempted to break down and widen the edges. Pushing, stamping, driving
with his make-shift spade, now clutching at the edges with his fingers
and loosening the stones, now forcing them in with his heel, he
succeeded in working through the hard upper surface; then breathless,
dizzy, spent, with hands that could scarce grasp the shovel, and
stumbling feet that each moment threatened to fail him, he spaded out
the softer earth below and scraped and tore at the sides, till the hole
was wide enough to contain the cradle, and deep enough to ensure its
safety.
The last shovelful was raised, and the old man was stooping down to lift
the cradle in, when the wildest war-cry yet uttered by the raging
elements rang round the mountain side; all the former blasts seemed to
have been but forerunners or skirmishers heralding the approach of the
elemental forces; but now with awful ferocity and determination advanced
the very centre of the fiendish host; while the horns were blown from
mountain to mountain, announcing utter destruction to whatsoever should
venture to obstruct the path of the army of the winds. In the shrieking
solitude it seemed as if chaos and the end of the world were come. The
poor old man crouched down, keeping his body between the gale and the
baby's cradle, while the last remaining wall of the cottage fell flat
before his eyes. But he felt himself being urged slowly but surely away
from the refuge of the trench, downwards, downwards. The cradle, in
spite of its iron ballast, was just overturning, when, with the strength
of despair, he threw his body across it, digging his feet into the
ground, and once more knotted the loose end of rope around his waist.
The downward slip was stayed. Pushing the cradle with knees and arms,
clutching the soil with hands and feet, he crept with his precious
charge nearer and nearer the widened hole. Once over the edge the baby
would be safe. The windy fiend seemed to be pursuing him with vindictive
hate. It shrieked and tore around that bare strip of mountain side, as
though the whole purpose of its fury was to destroy the old man and the
babe. With a superhuman effort he grasped the cradle in both arms and
lifted it in, then fell senseless across the opening.
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