Raw men
Date: 2024-07-28T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short stories; Shipwreck survival -- Fiction; Arctic regions -- Fiction

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Title: Raw men

Author: Frank Richardson Pierce

Release date: July 28, 2024 [eBook #74142]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Consolidated Magazines Corporation

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAW MEN ***

RAW MEN

By Frank Richardson Pierce

Self-preservation is not the first law of Nature, according to Mr. Pierce, who knows the Arctic at first hand and who offers this fine story in support of his contention.

The blue-eyed Swede spoke briefly in dialect to the greasy Eskimo. The latter peered ahead where the inexorable drift of the ice-pack was slowly wiping out the blue lead. The trading schooner was drab, ice-battered and unromantic, but her holds carried a fortune in furs. The shore was dangerously close, piled high with shattered bergs where the pack had grounded. Little short of a granite mountain could withstand the grinding pressure of the pack, and even granite had been scoured away so that in summer the cliffs were overhanging the sea in spots. The man-made thing of planks, cordage and paint was less than an eggshell when pitted against the floes; and so the Eskimo considered many things before he spoke—then he grunted in dialect. He showed no fear, nor did the Swede who peered from his frosted parka hood and gripped the spokes of the wheel with mitted hands.

All others were below except one. He seemed detached from the scheme of things. He neither gave orders nor obeyed them, but stood forward, with feet apart—a big, handsome man with more than a trace of character and refinement in his face. He cursed, not the floes nor the sluggish progress of the schooner, but his father. His eyes blazed with the fires of resentment in the same fury of three months ago. The last words of his father were still ringing in his ears: “You’re a selfish young pup. You’ve failed as a son; you’re failing as a man. That means I’ve failed as a father. I’d rather have succeeded as a father than as a business man. I can’t learn you nothing; maybe if you rub shoulders with life you’ll learn something. I wanted to make your row easier to hoe than mine was. I made it easy, and that’s my mistake. I tried to get under your skin, but never could make it, so we’ve hated each other at times. That’s bad business for both father and son—to hate. It’s the father’s fault. He’s failed some way. My lack of education—and what you once called ‘a lack of appreciation of the finer things in life’—rubbed you the wrong way. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.... I gave you the wrong course; the craft was wrecked. I’m trying to salvage enough from the wreckage to build a new vessel.... Bear a hand—wont you, son?”

Business men’s associations, chambers of commerce, people who had done things, were glad to “learn something” from old Walton, but his son was not. Because he did not know there had been a wreck, he had not offered to lend a hand in his salvaging. Rather he regarded himself as a fine, trim craft steaming through the murky waters of his father’s association. In a word he was something of a fool. There had been no scene, though the elder Walton could raise his voice loud enough when he was aroused. Dick Walton did not believe in lifting his voice in anger, and so his attitude had been dignified, well-bred silence.

The rest had been simple. He had been sent aboard Hanson’s schooner with certain papers; Hanson had glanced through them, made a face, cursed inwardly and shoved off on the Arctic trading expedition. Dick had the choice of going along or jumping overboard. Hanson told him he did not care which course he followed.

Walton ignored the danger on every side as he watched the schooner’s progress. It was Hanson’s business to get her through the floes and into open water. Walton reflected bitterly instead of lending a hand. “Crazy ideas, the old man has. What can a Swede with washed-out blue eyes, or a filthy, greasy Eskimo, teach a college-bred gentleman? They are of the old man’s school; mine is different. We show the stamp of our respective schools.” He was silent a moment, regarding the Swede and Eskimo. “Wonder how Mother ever came to marry the old man? She has refinement, background, everything, while Father—all right enough in a rough-and-tumble brawl, but—”

A sudden shock threw Walton to the deck. The schooner’s bow leaped upward with a terrible grinding of ice against the armor of iron. Shattered bergs spumed up from the boiling sea as the schooner hurdled the barrier into the lead beyond. The engines stopped racing; once more the craft forged ahead.

“Consider,” he said to himself, “the Eskimo. He is greasy, filthy, drinks ripe seal-oil—and I have seen him eat clams from the stomach of a walrus. His code crushes the weak; self-preservation is the first law of nature, but it is ten thousand years removed from mine. He should be civilized and no mistake, but the fact remains he is a savage. What can he teach me? Nothing, unless I wish to drink seal-oil.

“Consider that Hanson! Colorless, silent, a bohunk from which an educated man can learn nothing, unless he wishes to sail a schooner or scrub decks.”

One by one he considered the men with whom he had rubbed shoulders the past few months. Queer creatures, all—even the little old Dutchman who spent his life in the engine-room, where the air was always blue and foul from burning oil. The engines seemed eternally on the verge of falling apart, but by merely a laying-on of hands, old Schwartz always contrived to make them respond in the pinch. Of course if one wished to become an engineer—

Walton never entered the engine-room. It was too dirty, greasy and practical. The Eskimo spent hours there. Below were stowed baled furs now pleasing neither to nostrils or eyes, but which eventually were to know the rarest of perfumes and grace the shoulders of soft and lovely women. Walton groped about mentally seeking a lesson in transition, some comparison between raw furs and raw men. There was none. The furs could rise to great heights. They began on the backs of slinking wild creatures, and ended with God’s greatest creation—woman. But the men were plodders, born to their lot, wresting from life whatever they could with bare hands, never to rise above themselves. It was unfortunate, but it was life.

Left to his reflections, Walton might have plucked from the cold Arctic air a line of philosophy that would have gone down in history as a classic. He was groping for it, when the greatest crash of all again sent him to the deck. The schooner trembled and crumpled from the mortal blow.

Walton fought and clawed his way from the wreckage to the floe. There were men below in the fo’c’stle, but they died silently. The blue-eyed Swede burst from the wheelhouse and tore the covering from the narrow, squarish opening leading down to the engine-room. Old Schwartz was down there with his rheumatism, stiff-legged, unable to climb a ladder. A bit of blue haze came from below as the Swede disappeared; the screaming of the splintering schooner was like some living thing dying in agony. The greasy silken cap worn by the engineer protruded just above the hatch an instant as if he were being lifted from below, then disappeared. No cry came from the hatch as the craft went under—just a final puff of blue smoke. The old Dutchman and the colorless Swede died in silence—men of the sea.

Shattered bits of wood amid shattered ice was all that remained of the schooner. The food, shelter and warmth that had been Walton’s a few minutes before, had vanished: he stood on the ice unarmed, without food. Strange words came from behind him, startling him into the realization that he was not alone. The greasy Eskimo stood there, muttering in dialect. His words, “Men die and you live,” meant nothing to Walton, but the glitter in the native’s dark eyes placed him on the defensive. Then he laughed at his fears as the Eskimo’s thin frame was racked with a cough. No danger there; if they reverted to the primitive he could tear the miserable wretch apart. Again the Eskimo repeated: “Men die and you live.”

At the native’s feet lay a section of walrus-skin, sufficient to wrap one man warmly. In his arms he held a skin filled with seal-oil—rancid stuff that would sicken a white man, though an Eskimo could live on it for a time. An ivory-headed spear was slung across his shoulders, and somewhere beneath his parka he carried a knife. Against this was Walton’s pocketknife and his youth. Which would survive? Walton knew the answer: neither! But one would go like a savage, and the other would go like a civilized man. He resolved he would remain true to his teachings, his code, and not become a beastly savage.

The Eskimo wasted no time in sorrowful reflection, but started over the ice, hugging the sealskin bag to his breast, dragging the walrus-hide behind him. Dick followed. In the past few minutes he had experienced a change. He had seen raw men rise to great heights of courage, and die in silent bravery. The colorless Swede could have saved himself, throttled the Eskimo with his bare hands and taken the skin of oil, the walrus-hide and the spear, and with them food, warmth and protection. With the spear or without it, he could have beaten Walton to his knees, for he was a physical giant. Instead, he had given his life for another; and greater heights no man can attain. Before him Walton bowed in humble silence.

In the slow progress over the floe, Walton again reflected on the different codes of the two survivors. The code of Dick Walton protected and cared for the aged. The primal code of the Eskimo was self-preservation—the first law of Nature. Like the majority of civilized people, Walton did not know of the strange code more ancient than that of self-preservation.

Alone, Walton would have fought his way to the ice-armored shore. The Eskimo ignored it and crossed the floe. As aboard the schooner, he considered many things—then leaped to a small berg. Unconsciously Walton found himself considering the skin of seal-oil, and wondering if he could drink it. Of course the native possessed it, along with the ivory-headed spear and walrus-hide, but he was aged and weak, while Walton was young and strong. Age must sleep sometime. Walton leaped to the berg. Neither man spoke.

The berg floated alone in the blue lead, fringed by floes on three sides. Hour after hour, the strange pair huddled in the scant protection of a small ice-hummock while the berg drifted. The Eskimo drew the walrus-hide about him to break the wind seeking access to his age-weary limbs. The spear lay on the ice in front of him within reach. He continued to ignore the white man; yet it was apparent he tried to read his thoughts. Walton found some solace in his pipe. His tobacco-pouch was nearly full; the matchbox had been refilled that morning. Hours dragged slowly, but darkness came too soon.

Walton had read that men freeze to death without realizing what is taking place, but he found the cold aroused him even when he dozed. Then he would leap to his feet and stamp about until warmth was restored. He was desperately hungry, but not hungry enough to drink seal-oil. In any event, when starvation drove him to the point of drinking the nauseous stuff, the Eskimo would have finished the last of it.

Day came, sunless. The sky was over-cast with the dreary gray of a casket. The native stirred slightly and leaped to his feet. The calculation he had made the day before was correct; the berg had become a part of another floe, the vastness of which the eye could not measure.

The Eskimo squirmed cautiously to the highest point in the immediate vicinity, then as cautiously returned, his eyes gleaming, the spear gripped tightly. He grunted in dialect, and glanced about; then Walton understood. A polar bear had sensed their presence and was making his way to them, hunting instead of being hunted. The native gripped his spear tighter as the bear drew near. It was an ordeal a strong man would have shunned.

“Give me your knife; it’s our only chance,” cried Walton. “We’ve got to eat!”

Suspicion flashed into the dark eyes; he waved the white man aside. Walton picked up a block of ice. “I’ll do what I can!” Again the native waved him back, then crawled toward the beast in an effort to gain some advantage in position. In a twinkling Walton had been thrust back into the ages ten thousand years. He watched the impending struggle entranced. The Eskimo steeled himself, gathered together the last ounce of strength in his withered frame and put it all in one vicious lunge of the spear.

The ivory head drove deep to a vital spot; blood gushed down the heavy white coat; the bear roared in pain. The spear was jerked from the Eskimo’s hands as the brute turned, snarling, to attack. The native leaped backward and slipped swiftly down an icy slope to vanish on hands and knees. The bear pursued, leaving a red trail. Driven by hunger of the raw man to do what he could to bring down the raw food, Walton followed cautiously. Presently the native emerged, crawling, each movement a slow and painful effort. He had put his all into the single thrust; the effort had left him helpless, and he would have been an easy mark for the white man.

The spear was in the dying bear, Walton recalled. “Thank God, I wont be driven to forget I’m civilized and prey on a miserable Eskimo—we’ve got bear-meat now!” He cried out aloud in utter relief. He had slipped fast during the past day—he was ready to eat raw meat from the kill, and hunger-pangs drove him to risk attack from the wounded bear. He made his way along the bloodstained trail to the spot where the beast had disappeared. Water lapped at the ice below him, water stained crimson. The bear was gone! Fate had denied him even raw meat, but—there yet remained a skin filled with seal-oil.

A struggle of the codes went on within him, and the code of raw men had an ally in hunger. He was slipping back with each passing hour; he knew it and fought it. From time to time he glanced toward the withered native. The spear no longer lay on the ice in front of him, but he hugged the skin of oil even tighter to his breast. Walton caught himself plotting a route that would take him behind and above the Eskimo. Devils of his imagination whispered it would be easy; the native was unarmed save for a knife—a futile thing against a block of ice dropped from above. “He’s run his race; the end is near,” the voice of self-preservation whispered. “Your life is before you. You can do much for the world, for you are civilized and educated. Take his clothing for warmth, and his food for life. He is but a burden.” It was as if a voice had spoken aloud, and Walton’s protest came from set teeth. “Damn it—I’m civilized and I can’t.”

Several times during the day the Eskimo explored the ice in quest of a seal or bear. Each time he returned as silently as he had departed. He continued to ignore Walton. The white man had once referred to him as a “greasy, filthy Eskimo.”

Toward night the tip of the great floe broke from the main body of ice. The Eskimo watched this without emotion, though it reduced their chances of finding game. Walton lighted his pipe, lest he go mad. In it, particularly in the fire in the bowl, he found solace. The Eskimo took his first sip from the seal-oil.

Self-preservation came to him in his dreams the third night, awakened him and remained. He was bitterly cold, needed additional clothing, while his whole being cried out for food. As before, self-preservation pointed the way. Walton muttered aloud: “I can’t. I’m civilized. Mine’s a different code. We care for our aged to the last. We don’t strangle and rob them.” Self-preservation jeered:

“Of what avail is your civilization now? Will the few dollars in your pocket buy food? Can your education kill a bear or seal and provide you with meat? The books you studied might furnish you warmth now, if you could burn them. You are no longer civilized; you are a raw man seeking food. The miserable wretch who holds the food is done for anyway; he sleeps, so why not— Ah! I knew it! At last you heed me.”

As animals stalk their prey, so Walton crawled over the ice, nearer and nearer the figure huddled in the gloom. His code was behind him; he was about to kill, that he might survive a few days and perhaps be saved. Schooners were coming out of the ice. It was while hurdling the last barrier, that their own craft had been crushed.

Now that he meant to kill, he found himself debating on the method. Would it be knife or hands? His pocketknife might do the work; still— The native’s knife lay on the ice a few inches from the sleeping figure. Walton’s heart pounded as he possessed himself of the weapon. Its blade was long and keen, and that settled the debate. “The knife,” he whispered. “It’s quicker. It’ll be over with in an instant.”

He would have to ration the oil over a period of days, and not drink it all tomorrow, for there would be many of them. In the half-light the blade seemed ghostly white. It fascinated Walton, then filled him with sudden repulsion. He dropped it, his hand stayed by the thought of blood. Blood, red, living, leaping from an animal, was one thing; but a man— His hands reached for the native’s throat, hands strong, powerful, even after several days’ fast. He had removed his mittens and now felt the bite of the frost; then he touched the fur of the Eskimo’s parka hood. The throat was close now, and still the Eskimo slept. Walton’s fingers curved; then his hands dropped swiftly to the shoulders.

“Good God, man, wake up and save us both! I’m—trying to remain a man!”

The native’s eyes opened without fear; he spoke quietly in English, even kindly: “My son, I am awake!”

“You speak English!”

“When I wish. I cared for one of the first missionaries who came North many years ago, preaching of the white man and his God. He told us of his code, that cared for the old. We killed ours when they could no longer withstand the frost or follow the tribe. For a lifetime I have wondered about this code, and what would happen when a white man hungered. He taught me English, but he could not make a white man of me. My code is different. It is a better code, for the race.

“I have read that self-preservation is the first law of Nature. That is not the truth. There is a nobler code. Self-preservation is the second law of Nature. The first law of Nature is race-preservation. Through it humanity has survived, even my race. It governs the civilized races even today, for parents give their lives for their children. But my people are nearer to it than yours. When the food is low, it is the aged who starve, that the worthy young may live and reproduce. Thus it has always been with my people; thus it always will be.

“During the long months on the schooner I watched you. You called me filthy, greasy. I wondered! You were the best educated man I had ever known. You spoke like the books I read from; yet you were not a man. Hanson and Schwartz were men. Civilization baffled me.

“Age should give forth wisdom, and leave curiosity to youth, who must ever learn by experience. Strange that I should be curious at my age, but I wondered which code would prevail, your code or the code of self-preservation. I watched your struggle! The outcome made little difference to me. I’ve run my race; the end is near. Tonight I knew you would come. I was afraid of your little pocketknife—the blade would not go deep enough; so I left my own. A knife-thrust is nothing. Thus my father and mother died, when he could no longer hunt, and she could no longer chew walrus-hide and soften it for garments. You came nearer and nearer, and through half-closed eyes I saw the struggle in your face, and never did I see greater. You dropped the knife, then reached for my throat—a withered column of skin and muscles that you could snap with one of your strong hands. I thought you had gone back, and waited. So this was your code, after all.... Then—you called.”

Walton nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I won, or my code did—for a time.”

“For all time. May I smoke your pipe? The missionary taught me that tobacco soothes.” Walton filled and lighted his pipe, then handed it to the Eskimo. “Thanks, my son!”

Walton remained silent until the native returned the pipe. The bowl still glowed. Fire! That was what he craved next to food. Again he found solace in the glowing bowl. The Eskimo placed the skin of oil at Walton’s feet. “You thought you would never come to it, but you will. You will even gnaw the skin itself.” The walrus-hide came next; then the native slowly pulled off his parka.

Walton leaped to his feet. “Hold on!” he cried. “What are you thinking of?”

“We are different; each man’s code prevails, my son!” replied the native. “Your race must go on, even as mine. You are young and—worthy.”

“Hell!” Walton jerked the parka back on. “Let’s stick it out together. And anyway, I wont be missed, and don’t worry about my race not going on. There’s over a hundred million of them left, and they’ll get along somehow.” Gently he pushed the old man to the ice and wrapped the walrus-hide about him. “Stay right there, old-timer. I’ll take a sip of the oil, if you don’t mind, though.” He put the skin to his mouth and withdrew it abruptly. “Ugh! I can’t do it!”

Walton lighted his pipe and propped himself against a convenient block of ice. The wind could not reach him; he would be comfortable until the cold got to him once more; then he’d have to leap about a bit. He closed his eyes and found strange peace and contentment, for he had measured up to the standard of his breed. More, he had at last found himself. He was too late, of course, and he wouldn’t be missed much, except by the folks at home. “If there was only some way of getting word to the folks,” he mused. “As it is, they’ll always remember me as I was. They’ll never know what happened—and Father will go down to his grave, never knowing that what he did was right....” The pipe clattered to the ice, as Walton at last fell asleep.

The Eskimo reached forth and finished the pipe. Then he stood up and wrapped the walrus-skin about the sleeping white man. He shivered as he stripped off his parka and placed it with his mukluks on the ice. Presently his naked feet touched the ice; the frost-laden wind nipped at his wrinkled skin as he made his way to the floe’s edge. Water, black and dreary, surged about the floe, waiting. “That the race may go on!” he whispered. “My code holds throughout time. God help—the lad.”

Walton was warm when he awakened. At first he could not understand. He must have slept long, because the sun was shining somewhere behind the southerly arc of that leaden sky. There was protest on his lips as he crawled from beneath the walrus-hide. “Now, I say—” he began; then he understood. The skin of seal-oil, the pitiful furry pile of parka and other garments, the stiff mukluks, told it all. Except for the single sip, the skin of oil had been untouched. The native had starved with him, then left him his all. Walton made his way to the water’s edge, taking the trail trod by naked feet not many hours ago. He looked thoughtfully at the water as if seeking means to convey that which was in his heart.

“‘Greater love hath no man—’” he began, then dropped to his knees. The water lapped desolately at the floe as if to claim it and that which it held for all time; the breath of the Arctic nipped spitefully at the exposed parts of his face. “O God,” he cried, “make me worthy of the sacrifice of a—Man!”

Provisions aboard the trading schooner Sealth were low, but her skipper ignored that as he picked his way through narrow leads into the very jaws of the pack. It had been ten years since Madison had been rescued from an iceberg, and he had never forgotten it. Veterans of the Arctic shook their heads in doubt as they glanced from the icy fangs of the floes to the grim figure in the wheelhouse. He was reckless at times, daring, but never had he seemed to cast discretion to the Arctic winds. Always he was lashed with the thought that if he went a mile farther into the ice, his quest might be successful—that if he turned back, he might leave fellow-humans to perish.

The man in the bow fending off smaller bergs with a pike-pole cursed, for his parka hood was frozen where the moisture from his breath had congealed. One mass larger than the others loomed up. Beyond that, man could not go, unless he was fitted with wings. And then—the man in the bow dropped the pole to the deck; forgotten was his frozen beard as he cried out and pointed dead ahead.

Ice was knocked off from the blocks and falls, and a boat gotten over the side. Madison stood in the stern, steering. Two held it to the ice while the skipper and two others leaped to the floe. Out in the lead the mate was already maneuvering the schooner about for the southerly flight. “Old Walton’s kid,” muttered Madison. “Looks about like I did when they found me. He’ll live. Lucky thing the old man radioed me to take a look.” He picked up a bit of gnawed skin that had once been fashioned to hold seal-oil. Except for the extra pair of mukluks, all clothing was on the man. The mukluks had been gnawed at the tops. “The ancient code!” reflected Madison.

“That the race may go on,” whispered the rescued man painfully as in a dream.

Madison nodded.

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 1924 issue of Blue Book Magazine.

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