Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories

who has not been afloat there in a small boat alone.

So it was now with Elmo. There was no gleam or spark of light anywhere, but there was a faint swell on the surface of the water, and every now and then the clink of ice against the boat, though one might not have supposed the season for ice quite arrived. Never before in his life had he experienced such total darkness. Never in his childhood had he been locked in a dark cellar or cupboard, and never in manhood had he known serious action in the field. Somewhere between the rickety but, as he embarked, reasonably visible castle jetty, with its prohibitory notices, and the part of the lake where he now was, he had realized that the fabric of the boat had suffered from neglect; but he could not see the water that had seeped in, or for that matter yet hear it swill. It was merely that he could feel dampness, and a little more than dampness, when, having paused in his progress, he had placed his hand on the floor planks; which he had been led to do by the almost uncanny coldness of his ten toes.

Still it was no matter to go back for. Life's challenge (or menace) can, after all, never be evaded; and Elmo realized that, within his world of pain, he was fortunate that to him the contest presented itself in a shape so clear-cut, so four-square, defined with such comparative precision by a schoolmaster. Whatever else might happen (if anything did), the little boat would not sink yet awhile.

Indeed, it was perhaps not such a little boat at that: Elmo was finding it heavier and heavier to pull with every minute that passed, or was it with every hour? The darkness was so thick that it impeded his movements like frozen black treacle. The darkness also smelt. Whoever can tell what lies beneath deep waters after all the centuries and millennia; especially under such unmastered and comparatively remote waters as Elmo now traversed?

Soon it seemed as if not merely the darkness but the lake itself were holding him back. It was almost as if he were sweating to pull or push the vessel through frozen mud; through a waste such as only the earliest seekers for the North West Passage had had to include among their trials. For all his exertion, Elmo could feel the ice quickly forming not merely on his face, but all over his body. Soon he might be encased, and doubtless the ill-maintained boat also.

The boat was lower in the water. Elmo realized this as he tried to pull. And it was no matter of a possible leak in the hull. There was no more water in the bottom of the boat than formerly. It was still possible for Elmo to check that; which he did with his cold right hand. For the purpose he had to leave hold of the oar or scull; but the boat was so far down that somehow the oar left its rowlock, thereby left the boat also, and vanished into the darkness with an odd crash. Elmo in horror clutched at the other oar with both hands at once; but this action merely swung the boat's course many points to port, and the other oar vanished likewise as she twisted through the mysteriously resistant water. Elmo's hands were too frozen to hold on to the unwieldy object under such conditions.

Elmo realized that something had hold of the bottom of the boat. He could feel the straining of her timbers, robust enough looking on shore, but out here truly matchwood or less. Indeed, the drag and stress on the boat's planks was by now the only thing he could feel, and he felt it through all his muscles. Nor was there a thing to be seen; though the confused odours were being subtly alembicated into one single sweet perfume. The crackling of the ice against the boat seemed to Elmo to be rising to a roar, although, surely, it was yet but autumn.

It was not, he thought, the same lady that he had seen, however momentarily, however dreamily, above the lake in the Tiergarten. But she was visible all the same; and Elmo at once apprehended how and why. It must indeed be that many hours had passed, though previously he had not really thought so; because here, once more, was the first, faint, frightening light of dawn. This lady, too, had large eyes and a large mouth; but now the mouth was open, showing white and pointed teeth, as many teeth as a strange fish. Although her mouth was so very open, this lady smiled not. And, of course, as in the earlier instance, she was gone almost as soon as come; but, also as in the earlier instance, she brought back to the eyes of the heart the vision of Elvira, dread and lethal and indestructible.

Elmo laid himself down in the boat. He was an ice-man. 'Receive one who is dead already,' he half whispered to the spirits of the lake and mountains.

The light was more yellow than grey; the surface ice by no means so dense, or even so serrated as Elmo supposed. It is to be repeated it was no later than autumn.

The few remains were far beyond identification. The body had been gnashed and gnawed and ripped, so that even the bones were mostly sliced away and splintered. And, of course, there was no proper head. All had in truth to be guesswork. 'There's nothing in that coffin,' men mouthed to each other when, in a few days' time, the hour came for the noble ceremony. Moreover, from first finding to last disposing, throughout it was freezing winter, authentically and accurately.

And what happened to Viktor, some have wondered? From the time of Elmo's presumed death, he seemed steadily to recapture his wits, until when the world war struck, a generation and a half later, he was deemed fit once more for service of a land, and, though stationed far behind the lines, had the misfortune to be annihilated, with all who were with him, in consequence of a freakish hit by the British artillery; a lucky shot, the British might have called it. Thus Viktor's death too was not without distinction.

Pages from a Young Girl's Journal

3 OCTOBER. PADUA-FERRARA-RAVENNA. We've reached Ravenna only four days after leaving that horrid Venice. And all in a hired carriage! I feel sore and badly bitten too. It was the same yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. I wish I had someone to talk to. This evening, Mamma did not appear for dinner at all. Papa just sat there saying nothing and looking at least 200 years old instead of only 100, as he usually does. I wonder how old he really is? But it's no good wondering. We shall never know, or at least I shan't. I often think Mamma does know, or very nearly. I wish Mamma were someone I could talk to, like Caroline's Mamma. I often used to think that Caroline and her Mamma were more like sisters together, though of course I could never say such a thing. But then Caroline is pretty and gay, whereas I am pale and quiet. When I came up here to my room after dinner, I just sat in front of the long glass and stared and stared. I must have done it for half an hour or perhaps an hour. I only rose to my feet when it had become quite dark outside.

I don't like my room. It's much too big and there are only two wooden chairs, painted in greeny-blue with gold lines, or once painted like that. I hate having to lie on my bed when I should prefer to sit and everyone knows how bad it is for the back. Besides, this bed, though it's enormous, seems to be as hard as when the earth's dried up in summer. Not that the earth's like that here. Far from it. The rain has never stopped since we left Venice. Never once. Quite unlike what Miss Gisborne said before we set out from my dear, dear Derbyshire. This bed really is huge. It would take at least eight people my size. I don't like to think about it. I've just remembered: it's the third of the month so that we've been gone exactly half a year. What a lot of places I have been to in that time — or been through! Already I've quite forgotten some of them. I never properly saw them in any case. Papa has his own ideas and one thing I'm sure of is that they are quite unlike other people's ideas. To me the whole of Padua is just a man on a horse — stone or bronze, I suppose, but I don't even know which. The whole of Ferrara is a huge palace — castle — fortress that simply frightened me, so that I didn't want to look. It was as big as this bed — in its own way, of course. And those were two large, famous towns I have visited this very week. Let alone where I was perhaps two months ago! What a farce! as Caroline's Mamma always says. I wish she were here now and Caroline too. No one ever hugged and kissed me and made things happy as they do.

The contessa has at least provided me with no fewer than twelve candles. I found them in one of the drawers. I suppose there's nothing else to do but read — except perhaps to say one's prayers. Unfortunately, I finished all the books I brought with me long ago, and it's so difficult to buy any new ones, especially in English. However, I managed to purchase two very long ones by Mrs Radcliffe before we left Venice. Unfortunately, though there are twelve candles, there are only two candlesticks, both broken, like everything else. Two candles should be enough, but all they seem to do is make the room look even larger and darker. Perhaps they are not-very-good foreign candles. I noticed that they seemed very dirty and discoloured in the drawer. In fact, one of them looked quite black. That one must have lain in the drawer a very long time. By the way, there is a framework hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. I cannot truthfully describe it as a