ACROSS the RIVER and INTO the TREES by ERNEST HEMINGWAY

ACROSS the RIVER and INTO the TREES by ERNEST HEMINGWAY

THIS IS A NOVEL OF GREATNESS …

… a tense, stark story of days—hours—minutes, and of the savage hope that still can goad a man who knows there is no hope … a man who has lived a lifetime and is not yet old, but whose heart is weary, wounded, and turned to­ward death. …

It is the story of post-war Venice and of Colonel Richard Cantwell, a lonely, battle-scarred man of fierce embittered pride … and of the beautiful young Italian count­ess who offers him love, tender and selfless. It is the poignant, powerful story of the few rich hours they share … hauntingly checkered hours—dark with the inexorable shadow of death—bright with a deep and moving love. It is a story of torment, passion and elemental cour­age, superbly told by one of the world’s greatest writers.

ACROSS the RIVER

and INTO the TREES

by

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Author of:

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

A FAREWELL TO ARMS, etc.

A DELL BOOK

Published by

DELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

261 Fifth Avenue

New York 16, New York

George T. Delacorte, Jr., President

Helen Meyer, Vice-President

Albert P. Delacorte, Vice-President

Copyright, MCML,

by Ernest Hemingway.

All rights reserved.

Reprinted by arrangement with

Charles Scribner’s Sons,

New York, N. Y.

Designed and produced by

Western Printing & Lithographing Company

Cover painting by Griffith Foxley

Printed In U.S.A.

In view of a recent tendency to identify characters in fiction with real people, it seems proper to state that there are no real people in this volume: both the char­acters and their names are fictitious. The names or designations of any military units are fictitious. There are no living people nor existing military units pre­sented in this book.

TO MARY

WITH LOVE

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER XLIV

CHAPTER XLV

CHAPTER I

THEY started two hours before daylight, and at first, it was not necessary to break the ice across the canal as other boats had gone on ahead. In each boat, in the dark­ness, so you could not see, but only hear him; the poler stood in the stern, with his long oar. The shooter sat on a shooting stool fastened to the top of a box that contained his lunch and shells, and the shooter’s two, or more, guns, were propped against the load of wooden decoys. Some­where, in each boat, there was a sack with one or two live mallard hens, or a hen and a drake, and in each boat there was a dog who shifted and shivered uneasily at the sound of the wings of the ducks that passed overhead in the darkness.

Four of the boats went on up the main canal toward the big lagoon to the north. A fifth boat had already turned off into a side canal. Now, the sixth boat turned south into a shallow lagoon, and there was no broken water.

It was all ice, new-frozen during the sudden, windless cold of the night. It was rubbery and bending against the thrust of the boatman’s oar. Then it would break as sharply as a pane of glass, but the boat made little for­ward progress.

“Give me an oar,” the shooter in the sixth boat said. He stood up and braced himself carefully. He could hear the ducks passing in the darkness, and feel the restless lurching of the dog. To the north he heard the sound of breaking ice from the other boats.

“Be careful,” the poler in the stern said. “Don’t tip the boat over.”

“I am a boatman, too,” the shooter said.

He took the long oar the boatman handed him and reversed it so he could hold it by the blade. Holding the blade he reached forward and punched the handle through the ice. He felt the firm bottom of the shallow lagoon, put his weight on the top of the wide oar-blade, and holding with both hands and, first pulling, then shoving, until the pole-hold was well to the stern, he drove the boat ahead to break the ice. The ice broke like sheets of plate glass as the boat drove into it, and onto it, and astern the boatman shoved them ahead into the broken passage.

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