Miss Hannah Fox tells the following thrilling story of an adventure that
befell her while engaged in felling trees in her mother's woods in Rhode
Island, in the early colonial days.
We were making fine progress with our clearing and getting ready to build a
house in the spring. My brother and I worked early and late, often going
without our dinner, when the bread and meat which we brought with us was
frozen so hard that our teeth could make no impression upon it, without
taking too much of our time. My brother plied his axe on the largest trees,
while I worked at the smaller ones or trimmed the boughs from the trunks of
such as had been felled.
The last day of our chopping was colder than ever. The ground was covered
by a deep snow which had crusted over hard enough to bear our weight, which
was a great convenience in moving from spot to spot in the forest, as well
as in walking to and from our cabin, which was a mile away. My brother had
gone to the nearest settlement that day, leaving me to do my work alone.
As a storm was threatening, I toiled as long as I could see, and after
twilight felled a sizeable tree which in its descent lodged against
another. Not liking to leave the job half finished, I mounted the almost
prostrate trunk to cut away a limb and let it down. The bole of the tree
was forked about twenty feet from the ground, and one of the divisions of
the fork would have to be cut asunder. A few blows of my axe and the tree
began to settle, but as I was about to descend, the fork split and the
first joints of my left-hand fingers slid into the crack so that for the
moment I could not extricate them. The pressure was not severe, and as I
believed I could soon relieve myself by cutting away the remaining portion,
I felt no alarm. But at the first blow of the axe which I held in my right
hand, the trunk changed its position, rolling over and closing the split,
with the whole force of its tough oaken fibers crushing my fingers like
pipe-stems; at the same time my body was dislodged from the trunk and I
slid slowly down till I hung suspended with the points of my feet just
brushing the snow. The air was freezing and every moment growing colder; no
prospect of any relief that night; the nearest house a mile away; no
friends to feel alarmed at my absence, for my mother would suppose that I
was safe with my brother, while the latter would suppose I was by this time
at home.
The first thought was of my mother. "It will kill her to know that I died
in this death-trap so near home, almost within hearing of her voice! There
must be some escape! but how?" My axe had fallen below me and my feet could
almost touch it. It was impossible to imagine how I could cut myself loose
unless I could reach it. My only hope of life rested on that keen blade
which lay glittering on the snow.
Within reach of my hand was a dead bush which towered some eight feet above
me, and by a great exertion of strength I managed to break it. Holding it
between my teeth I stripped it of its twigs, leaving two projecting a few
inches at the lower end to form a hook. With this I managed to draw towards
me the head of the axe until my fingers touched it, when it slipped from
the hook and fell again upon the snow, breaking through the crust and
burying itself so that only the upper end of the helve could be seen.
Up to that moment the recollection of my mother and the first excitement
engendered by hope had almost made me unconscious of the excruciating pain
in my crushed fingers, and the sharp thrills that shot through my nerves,
as my body swung and twisted in my efforts to reach the axe. But now, as
the axe fell beyond my reach, the reaction came, hope fled, and I shuddered
with the thought that I must die there alone like some wild thing caught in
a snare. I thought of my widowed mother, my brother, the home which we had
toiled to make comfortable and happy. I prayed earnestly to God for
forgiveness of my sins, and then calmly resigned myself to death, which I
now believed to be inevitable. For a time, which I afterwards found to be
only five minutes, but which then seemed to me like hours, I hung
motionless. The pain had ceased, for the intense cold blunted my sense of
feeling. A numbness, stole over me, and I seemed to be falling into a
trance, from which I was roused by a sound of bells borne to me as if from
a great distance. Hope again awoke, and I screamed loud and long; the woods
echoed my cries, but no voice replied. The bells grew fainter and fainter,
and at last died away. But the sound of my voice had broken the spell which
cold and despair were fast throwing over me. A hundred devices ran swiftly
through my mind, and each device was dismissed as impracticable. The helve
of the axe caught my eye, and in an instant by an association of ideas it
flashed across me that in the pocket of my dress there was a small
knife—another sharp instrument by which I could extricate myself. With
some difficulty I contrived to open the blade, and then withdrawing the
knife from my pocket and gripping it as one who clings to the last hope of
life, I strove to cut away the wood that held my fingers in its terrible
vise. In vain! the wood was like iron. The motion of my arm and body
brought back the pain which the cold had lulled, and I feared that I should
faint.
After a moment's pause I adopted a last expedient. Nerving myself to the
dreadful necessity, I disjointed my fingers and fell exhausted to the
ground. My life was saved, but my left hand was a bleeding stump. The
intensity of the cold stopped the flow of blood. I tore off a piece of my
dress, bound up my fingers, and started for home. My complete exhaustion
and the bitter cold made that the longest mile I had ever traveled. By nine
o'clock that evening I had managed to drag myself, more dead than alive, to
my mother's door, but it was more than a week before I could again leave
the house.
A Tryst In Time: A Complimentary Shadows In A Timeless Myth Short Story
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Smiles & Good Fortune,
Teresa
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It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915
