The Ruling Passion [71]
It was a very long night. No matter how easily a handle turns,
after a certain number of revolutions there is a stiffness about it.
The stiffness is not in the handle, but in the hand that pushes it.
Round and round, evenly, steadily, minute after minute, hour after
hour, shoving out, drawing in, circle after circle, no swerving, no
stopping, no varying the motion, turn after turn--fifty-five, fifty-
six, fifty-seven--what's the use of counting? Watch the dial; go to
sleep--no! for God's sake, no sleep! But how hard it is to keep
awake! How heavy the arm grows, how stiffly the muscles move, how
the will creaks and groans. BATISCAN! It is not easy for a human
being to become part of a machine.
Fortin himself took the longest spell at the crank, of course. He
went at his work with a rigid courage. His red-hot anger had cooled
down into a shape that was like a bar of forged steel. He meant to
make that light revolve if it killed him to do it. He was the
captain of a company that had run into an ambuscade. He was going
to fight his way through if he had to fight alone.
The wife and the two older girls followed him blindly and bravely,
in the habit of sheer obedience. They did not quite understand the
meaning of the task, the honour of victory, the shame of defeat.
But Fortin said it must be done, and he knew best. So they took
their places in turn, as he grew weary, and kept the light flashing.
And Nataline--well, there is no way of describing what Nataline did,
except to say that she played the fife.
She felt the contest just as her father did, not as deeply, perhaps,
but in the same spirit. She went into the fight with darkness like
a little soldier. And she played the fife.
When she came up from the kitchen with the smoking pail of tea, she
rapped on the door and called out to know whether the Windigo was at
home to-night.
She ran in and out of the place like a squirrel. She looked up at
the light and laughed. Then she ran in and reported. "He winks,"
she said, "old one-eye winks beautifully. Keep him going. My turn
now!"
She refused to be put off with a shorter spell than the other girls.
"No," she cried, "I can do it as well as you. You think you are so
much older. Well, what of that? The light is part mine; father
said so. Let me turn. va-t-en."
When the first glimmer of the little day came shivering along the
eastern horizon, Nataline was at the crank. The mother and the two
older girls were half asleep. Baptiste stepped out to look at the
sky. "Come," he cried, returning. "We can stop now, it is growing
gray in the east, almost morning."
"But not yet," said Nataline; "we must wait for the first red. A
few more turns. Let's finish it up with a song."
She shook her head and piped up the refrain of the old Canadian
chanson:
"En roulant ma boule-le roulant
En roulant ma bou-le."
And to that cheerful music the first night's battle was carried
through to victory.
The next day Fortin spent two hours in trying to repair the
clockwork. It was of no use. The broken part was indispensable and
could not be replaced.
At noon he went over to the mainland to tell of the disaster, and
perhaps to find out if any hostile hand was responsible for it. He
found out nothing. Every one denied all knowledge of the accident.
Perhaps there was a flaw in the wheel; perhaps it had broken itself.
That was possible. Fortin could not deny it; but the thing that
hurt him most was that he got so little sympathy. Nobody seemed to
care whether the light was kept burning or not. When he told them
how the machine had been turned all night by hand, they were
astonished. "CRE-IE!" they cried, "you must have had a great misery
to do that." But that he proposed to go on doing it for a month
longer,