Read "Raw Men" by Frank Richardson Pierce online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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.