ALL Chapters & Episodes of Of Frost and Fire by Kivok - Page 5

All Chapters of Of Frost and Fire: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

84 Chapters

PROLOGUEThe distance between their bodies was very close as he held her in his big arms in the small shoe closet, rocking her back and forth like a little child.She could feel the beads of sweat running down her face, smudging the makeup Laura had spent all afternoon perfecting for tonight's Gala. It seemed, at that moment, not only her makeup, and the Gala were ruined, but them, too. Everything was ruined.There was a knot in Amelia's stomach that she couldn't shake loose, and her heart was beating against her rib cage furiously. Something very bad was going to happen and she didn't think she'd be able to stomach, nor bear, the consequences.The time has finally come: they were doomed.She knew he wouldn't like it, but she was scared, very scared.Scared for him. Scared of what would become of him. She could feel his stare on the back of her bead, urging her to look around; to meet his gaze.But she couldn't. She couldn't risk looking at him-- into his striking eyes-- and not bur

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee—the madness—and run.“Enter, then, and look,” said Father Wolf stiffly, “but there is no food here.”“For a wolf, no,” said Tabaqui, “but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?” He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end mer

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

Towards the completion of the mobilization of the 29th Division in the Leamington area in early 1915, I heard secretly that the Division was bound for the Dardanelles at an early date, instead of for France as we had at first expected. By this I knew that in all probability the Division was destined to play a most romantic part in the Great War. I had visions of trekking up the Gallipoli Peninsula with the Navy bombarding a way for us up the Straits and along the coast-line of the Sea of Marmora,[6] until after a brief campaign we entered triumphantly Constantinople, there to meet the Russian Army, which would link up with ourselves to form part of a great chain encircling and throttling the Central Empires. I sailed from England on March 20, 1915, firmly convinced that my vision would actually come true and that some time in 1915 the paper-boys would be singing out in the streets of London: “Fall of Constantinople—British link hands with the Russians”; and I am sure that all who knew

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

The nature of the meteorological observations made by a traveller or by a resident in regions where there is no organised meteorological service will necessarily depend on the object which he has in view, the time he is able to devote to meteorological work, his knowledge of meteorology as a science, and his interest in it.Of the many ways in which a traveller may add to the knowledge of atmospheric conditions, five may be specially mentioned:—1. A record of the weather, observed day by day with regard both to non-instrumental observations and the readings of instruments. This may be taken as the minimum incumbent on all travellers.2. Observations for forecasting the weather and obtaining warning of storms. This is sometimes of vital importance; it is always valuable at the time, and occasionally the results are worth recording. It may, however be looked upon as a practical application of the systematic observations.[2]3. Observations with a view to determining the character of th

CHAPTER THIRTY Eight

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly and without comment a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified—have tortured—have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me they have presented little but horror, to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace—some intellect more{8} calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive in the circumstances I detail with awe nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.From my infancy I was noted for

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

Leaning from his saddle, Joe Marshall looked into the cup that hung on the turpentine-tree. One side of the great long-leaf pine had been stripped of its bark to a height of three feet, leaving a tall, livid scar, sticky with resinous exudation. A thick layer of hardened gum crusted over its lower edge, and two tin gutters near the top carried the gummy oozings into the two-quart tin cup suspended from a hook driven into the tree. It was only March, but the weather had been unusually warm, and the gum was running in thin viscous threads imperceptibly slow, but the cup was half full of the sticky whitish mass.“I declare, we can begin dipping soon!” Joe said to himself, glancing around at the other pines, which were all similarly blazed and tapped.This was the best corner of the Burnam turpentine “orchard.” The trees that grew here were splendid long-leaf pines, shooting up straight as arrows almost a hundred feet before they broke into palm-like branches; and many of them were so larg

CHAPTER FORTY

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

The white bulk of the steamboat came majestically around the bend, puffing pine smoke from her tall double chimneys, and hauled in to the landing. Joe was well known on the boat; Burnam was a heavy shipper of freight, and none of the turpentine men ever paid anything for passage. As he was not going far, there was no difficulty about Snowball’s transportation either, and the horse was led aboard and tied among the piles of wood for the furnaces on the lower deck.There was an hour’s wait at the landing, and it was another hour down the winding river to Magnolia, which was the landing for Joe’s destination. He went ashore, mounted Snowball again, and rode up the road through swamps and pine woods, till the forests gave place to more and more continuous cultivated fields, and at last he sighted his uncle’s plantation.The great, white, rambling ante-bellum house stood far back from the road, in a grove of oaks and chinaberry-trees. Beyond it were the scattered barns and stables, and fart

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

The next morning, after his cousins had departed in Burnam’s automobile, Joe rode down to look over the river orchard, feeling considerably more optimistic about the future. Burnam had appeared good-natured and confident; all might yet be well with the camp. The notion of the honey business, too, had taken strong hold on Joe’s imagination. He had as yet only the vaguest conception of how it was practised, but as he rode down toward the river he turned over in his mind the astonishing things he had heard from his cousins. Alice had appeared the chief expert. The others always deferred to her opinion when it came to bees; and Joe thought he had never seen a girl so clever, so practical, and so alive with enthusiasm and spirits.He took the seldom-used road that they had traveled the day before, up past the old Marshall house, and then by a trail down into the woods of the river orchard. That great tract of pine had a very special interest to Joe, for, as he had explained to the Harmans,

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

Joe caught an excited negro by the collar as he rushed past.“Go tell Burnam to send some men down to the road right away to look after that spirits!” he cried, and darted himself in the direction of the threatened barrels.The platform was eighty yards from the edge of the camp, and pines screened it from the glare of the fire. Three of the heavy posts that supported it stood in the stream, which formed a sort of pool among them. To Joe’s relief, everything seemed blindly dark. The flood of fire had not yet come down, but he had scarcely reached the spot when a lump of blazing, unmelted rosin came drifting down, and lodged right against one of the pine posts. He thrust it under water and extinguished it; but within a minute several more lumps came flaming down, followed by a stream of burning fluid that hissed and smoked on the surface of the running water.Joe had picked up a shovel as he ran down, and now he cautiously flung sand on the water. Fire spattered fiercely in all directio

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Of Frost and Fire/Kivok

The next minute Burnam had wheeled and was rushing toward his men, arms raised, shouting vehemently. Joe stood for a moment as if paralyzed; he made a step to follow Burnam; a flood of wild words rushed into his mouth; but then he stopped. This was no time for an altercation. But he would not lift another finger, he said to himself, to keep the whole camp from burning up; and, boiling with rage, he went straight to Wilson’s house, where he boarded. He almost regretted his efforts to save the turpentine.Nobody was in the house. Every one was out at the fire, which was mainly at the other side of the camp and at a safe distance. But the red light shone through all the windows, making a lamp unnecessary, and by the glare Joe went to his room and began to get out his possessions and pack them in his trunk. His first idea was that he would leave the camp that very hour.But this would be hardly practicable. He would leave the first thing in the morning. The more he thought of Burnam’s incr

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