“I don’t know how long we were in the wood,--no very great time, I suppose, as time is reckoned; and then all at once I seemed to see John Swire of High Lee among us, and Nunan again, and a dozen axes going at once. Dreaming? Oh no, I wasn’t; there really were the axes. The High Lee men had come to help us out, and their horses were waiting at the edge of the wood. We soon came through then, of course, and saw, a field’s-length away, dark shapes and lanterns in the snow.
“John Swire was right: she didn’t look much like a new boat by this time. Not that she was splintered much,--double cross mahogany from gunnel to gunnel doesn’t splinter much,--but half her life-lines were gone from the ring-bolts, and her new paint was fouled with bark and earth and tree-scrapings--a sight to see. Men swarmed up and overhauled her anxiously; but she was little the worse save in appearance, and they swarmed down again and began to take out our exhausted horses and to put in their own. They were at the knotted cordage thick as flies round a treacle-string in summer--lengthening, splicing, piecing, sheepshanking, stretching all out, it seemed interminably; for they had twice our number of horses--too many, I think. They fixed another spar for a double-tree, and set oars across at intervals to keep that monstrous cat’s-cradle in something like position: men were told off specially to watch it. A fellow came shouting up with some oxen; but we couldn’t begin to make yokes for his oxen--the fool hadn’t brought any; and they were sent back with the lads and worn-out horses to High Lee.
“I forget lots of things that happened just then; but I remember one thing distinctly--I laughed at the High Lee men when we set off again, for they cheered. I suppose it seemed silly to me. Cheer when you’ve done things, if you’ve nothing better to do; but where on earth is the sense in.... We knew what cheering was worth. Cheering didn’t help Nunan much, who was fretting again about his horses; nor Joe Barker, who was bewailing the time his blunder had lost us--for we remembered now and then that we were going to Portsannet. It didn’t help anybody except perhaps the High Lee men themselves, and they’d come to their senses before we were over the moonlit Heights.... We let them do the work for a bit: it was digging, digging again, and the rise and fall of their backs was wearisome to watch. There was little choice of roads now, Osa said (we woke him to ask him). As nearly as he could tell, he’d come fairly straight past the alum-works; and for the alum-works we made. Soon our feet felt the rise....”