However, that wasn’t getting on. There was Eddie yet to be taken care of. Christian burial he had asked for, and Christian burial he should have. He crawled out of the dory, and reached over the gunnel with one leg till the toe of his boot touched the ice on solid land. Finding it firm, he drew his other leg after the first.
He pushed away from the dory. One step, and down he went to hands and knees, and could not get up, try as he would. He almost cried--perhaps if he had been stronger he would have cried. He, Martin Carr, whose strength used to be the boast of every crew that ever he sailed with, here he was, weak as a young child.
But he must get on. If he couldn’t walk, he could creep. And so creep he did, on hands and knees, a hundred yards, perhaps, to the door of the nearest hut.
They opened to his knock, a bearded man and behind him a stout woman, with a brood of fat children peering out curiously. Seeing how it must be with him, they lifted him up, set him down on a chair, and told him that in a minute or two the hot tea would be ready for him; or if he would wait but ten minutes, they would run over to the store and get him a glass of brandy--good brandy from Saint Pierre.
“I want no tea and I want no brandy,” said Martin Carr, “and yet thanks to ye the same. I’ve a dory-mate below, and he’s waitin’ burial. Help me with him, help me get him ashore, for I’m weak to cryin’ ’most, and after that prayers and a burial and Martin Carr will never forget ye both.”
Back to the dory they went with him, the man that Martin Carr had knocked up and two of his neighbors. Under Martin’s directions they essayed to lift the body from the dory, one being within the dory and two ashore. They had the body among them, suspended between the dory and shore, but it was an awkward weight, and the feet of one slipping, through the ice and out of sight went the body.
“He’s gone!” they shouted, and stared at the hole in the ice.
“Christ in heaven!” Martin crawled to the hole, and with no further word dropped through and after the body. They saw him disappear and shivered.
Next they saw the body handed up by a pair of frozen hands. It was just deep enough there for Martin’s head, as he stood on bottom, to all but show clear. They took the body from him, seeing only the half-submerged head, the upstretched arms, and at the end of them the frozen, hooked fingers trying to balance the frozen body.