“This
out of all will remain—
They have lived and have tossed:
So
much of the game will be gain,
Though the gold of the dice has
been lost.”
They
limped painfully down the bank, and once the foremost of the two men
staggered among the rough-strewn rocks. They were tired and
weak, and their faces had the drawn expression of patience which
comes of hardship long endured. They were heavily burdened with
blanket packs which were strapped to their shoulders. Head-straps,
passing across the forehead, helped support these packs. Each
man carried a rifle. They walked in a stooped posture, the
shoulders well forward, the head still farther forward, the eyes bent
upon the ground.
“I wish we had just about two of them cartridges that’s layin’ in that cache of ourn,” said the second man.
His voice was utterly and drearily
expressionless. He spoke without enthusiasm; and the first man,
limping into the milky stream that foamed over the rocks, vouchsafed
no reply.
The
other man followed at his heels. They did not remove their
foot-gear, though the water was icy cold—so cold that their ankles
ached and their feet went numb. In places the water dashed
against their knees, and both men staggered for footing.
The
man who followed slipped on a smooth boulder, nearly fell, but
recovered himself with a violent effort, at the same time uttering a
sharp exclamation of pain. He seemed faint and dizzy and put out
his free hand while he reeled, as though seeking support against the
air. When he had steadied himself he stepped forward, but reeled
again and nearly fell. Then he stood still and looked at the
other man, who had never turned his head.
The man stood still
for fully a minute, as though debating with himself. Then he
called out:
“I
say, Bill, I’ve sprained my ankle.”
Bill
staggered on through the milky water. He did not look
around. The man watched him go, and though his face was
expressionless as ever, his eyes were like the eyes of a wounded
deer.
The
other man limped up the farther bank and continued straight on
without looking back. The man in the stream watched him. His
lips trembled a little, so that the rough thatch of brown hair which
covered them was visibly agitated. His tongue even strayed out
to moisten them.
“Bill!”
he cried out.
It
was the pleading cry of a strong man in distress, but Bill’s head
did not turn. The man watched him go, limping grotesquely and
lurching forward with stammering gait up the slow slope toward the
soft sky-line of the low-lying hill. He watched him go till he
passed over the crest and disappeared. Then he turned his gaze
and slowly took in the circle of the world that remained to him now
that Bill was gone.
Near
the horizon the sun was smouldering dimly, almost obscured by
formless mists and vapors, which gave an impression of mass and
density without outline or tangibility. The man pulled out his
watch, the while resting his weight on one leg. It was four
o’clock, and as the season was near the last of July or first of
August,—he did not know the precise date within a week or two,—he
knew that the sun roughly marked the northwest. He looked to the
south and knew that somewhere beyond those bleak hills lay the Great
Bear Lake; also, he knew that in that direction the Arctic Circle cut
its forbidding way across the Canadian Barrens. This stream in
which he stood was a feeder to the Coppermine River, which in turn
flowed north and emptied into Coronation Gulf and the Arctic
Ocean. He had never been there, but he had seen it, once, on a
Hudson Bay Company chart.
Again his gaze completed the circle of
the world about him. It was not a heartening
spectacle. Everywhere was soft sky-line. The hills were all
low-lying. There were no trees, no shrubs, no grasses—naught
but a tremendous and terrible desolation that sent fear swiftly
dawning into his eyes.
“Bill!”
he whispered, once and twice; “Bill!”
He
cowered in the midst of the milky water, as though the vastness were
pressing in upon him with overwhelming force, brutally crushing him
with its complacent awfulness. He began to shake as with an
ague-fit, till the gun fell from his hand with a splash. This
served to rouse him. He fought with his fear and pulled himself
together, groping in the water and recovering the weapon. He
hitched his pack farther over on his left shoulder, so as to take a
portion of its weight from off the injured ankle. Then he
proceeded, slowly and carefully, wincing with pain, to the bank.
He
did not stop. With a desperation that was madness, unmindful of
the pain, he hurried up the slope to the crest of the hill over which
his comrade had disappeared—more grotesque and comical by far than
that limping, jerking comrade. But at the crest he saw a shallow
valley, empty of life. He fought with his fear again, overcame
it, hitched the pack still farther over on his left shoulder, and
lurched on down the slope.
The
bottom of the valley was soggy with water, which the thick moss held,
sponge-like, close to the surface. This water squirted out from
under his feet at every step, and each time he lifted a foot the
action culminated in a sucking sound as the wet moss reluctantly
released its grip. He picked his way from muskeg to muskeg, and
followed the other man’s footsteps along and across the rocky
ledges which thrust like islets through the sea of moss.
Though
alone, he was not lost. Farther on he knew he would come to
where dead spruce and fir, very small and weazened, bordered the
shore of a little lake, the titchin-nichilie, in the
tongue of the country, the “land of little sticks.” And into
that lake flowed a small stream, the water of which was not
milky. There was rush-grass on that stream—this he remembered
well—but no timber, and he would follow it till its first trickle
ceased at a divide. He would cross this divide to the first
trickle of another stream, flowing to the west, which he would follow
until it emptied into the river Dease, and here he would find a cache
under an upturned canoe and piled over with many rocks. And in
this cache would be ammunition for his empty gun, fish-hooks and
lines, a small net—all the utilities for the killing and snaring of
food. Also, he would find flour,—not much,—a piece of bacon,
and some beans.
Bill
would be waiting for him there, and they would paddle away south down
the Dease to the Great Bear Lake. And south across the lake they
would go, ever south, till they gained the Mackenzie. And south,
still south, they would go, while the winter raced vainly after them,
and the ice formed in the eddies, and the days grew chill and crisp,
south to some warm Hudson Bay Company post, where timber grew tall
and generous and there was grub without end.
These
were the thoughts of the man as he strove onward. But hard as he
strove with his body, he strove equally hard with his mind, trying to
think that Bill had not deserted him, that Bill would surely wait for
him at the cache. He was compelled to think this thought, or
else there would not be any use to strive, and he would have lain
down and died. And as the dim ball of the sun sank slowly into
the northwest he covered every inch—and many times—of his and
Bill’s flight south before the downcoming winter. And he
conned the grub of the cache and the grub of the Hudson Bay Company
post over and over again. He had not eaten for two days; for a
far longer time he had not had all he wanted to eat. Often he
stooped and picked pale muskeg berries, put them into his mouth, and
chewed and swallowed them. A muskeg berry is a bit of seed
enclosed in a bit of water. In the mouth the water melts away
and the seed chews sharp and bitter. The man knew there was no
nourishment in the berries, but he chewed them patiently with a hope
greater than knowledge and defying experience.
At
nine o’clock he stubbed his toe on a rocky ledge, and from sheer
weariness and weakness staggered and fell. He lay for some time,
without movement, on his side. Then he slipped out of the
pack-straps and clumsily dragged himself into a sitting posture. It
was not yet dark, and in the lingering twilight he groped about among
the rocks for shreds of dry moss. When he had gathered a heap he
built a fire,—a smouldering, smudgy fire,—and put a tin pot of
water on to boil.
He
unwrapped his pack and the first thing he did was to count his
matches. There were sixty-seven. He counted them three
times to make sure. He divided them into several portions,
wrapping them in oil paper, disposing of one bunch in his empty
tobacco pouch, of another bunch in the inside band of his battered
hat, of a third bunch under his shirt on the chest. This
accomplished, a panic came upon him, and he unwrapped them all and
counted them again. There were still sixty-seven.
He
dried his wet foot-gear by the fire. The moccasins were in soggy
shreds. The blanket socks were worn through in places, and his
feet were raw and bleeding. His ankle was throbbing, and he gave
it an examination. It had swollen to the size of his knee. He
tore a long strip from one of his two blankets and bound the ankle
tightly. He tore other strips and bound them about his feet to
serve for both moccasins and socks. Then he drank the pot of
water, steaming hot, wound his watch, and crawled between his
blankets.
He slept like a dead man. The brief darkness
around midnight came and went. The sun arose in the northeast—at
least the day dawned in that quarter, for the sun was hidden by gray
clouds.
At six o’clock he awoke, quietly lying on his back. He
gazed straight up into the gray sky and knew that he was hungry. As
he rolled over on his elbow he was startled by a loud snort, and saw
a bull caribou regarding him with alert curiosity. The animal
was not mere than fifty feet away, and instantly into the man’s
mind leaped the vision and the savor of a caribou steak sizzling and
frying over a fire. Mechanically he reached for the empty gun,
drew a bead, and pulled the trigger. The bull snorted and leaped
away, his hoofs rattling and clattering as he fled across the ledges.
The
man cursed and flung the empty gun from him. He groaned aloud as
he started to drag himself to his feet. It was a slow and
arduous task.
His
joints were like rusty hinges. They worked harshly in their
sockets, with much friction, and each bending or unbending was
accomplished only through a sheer exertion of will. When he
finally gained his feet, another minute or so was consumed in
straightening up, so that he could stand erect as a man should stand.
He
crawled up a small knoll and surveyed the prospect. There were
no trees, no bushes, nothing but a gray sea of moss scarcely
diversified by gray rocks, gray lakelets, and gray streamlets. The
sky was gray. There was no sun nor hint of sun. He had no
idea of north, and he had forgotten the way he had come to this spot
the night before. But he was not lost. He knew that. Soon
he would come to the land of the little sticks. He felt that it
lay off to the left somewhere, not far—possibly just over the next
low hill.
He
went back to put his pack into shape for travelling. He assured
himself of the existence of his three separate parcels of matches,
though he did not stop to count them. But he did linger,
debating, over a squat moose-hide sack. It was not large. He
could hide it under his two hands. He knew that it weighed
fifteen pounds,—as much as all the rest of the pack,—and it
worried him. He finally set it to one side and proceeded to roll
the pack. He paused to gaze at the squat moose-hide sack. He
picked it up hastily with a defiant glance about him, as though the
desolation were trying to rob him of it; and when he rose to his feet
to stagger on into the day, it was included in the pack on his back.
He
bore away to the left, stopping now and again to eat muskeg
berries. His ankle had stiffened, his limp was more pronounced,
but the pain of it was as nothing compared with the pain of his
stomach. The hunger pangs were sharp. They gnawed and
gnawed until he could not keep his mind steady on the course he must
pursue to gain the land of little sticks. The muskeg berries did
not allay this gnawing, while they made his tongue and the roof of
his mouth sore with their irritating bite.
He
came upon a valley where rock ptarmigan rose on whirring wings from
the ledges and muskegs. Ker—ker—ker was the cry they
made. He threw stones at them, but could not hit them. He
placed his pack on the ground and stalked them as a cat stalks a
sparrow. The sharp rocks cut through his pants’ legs till his
knees left a trail of blood; but the hurt was lost in the hurt of his
hunger. He squirmed over the wet moss, saturating his clothes
and chilling his body; but he was not aware of it, so great was his
fever for food. And always the ptarmigan rose, whirring, before
him, till their ker—ker—ker became a mock to him, and he cursed
them and cried aloud at them with their own cry.
Once
he crawled upon one that must have been asleep. He did not see
it till it shot up in his face from its rocky nook. He made a
clutch as startled as was the rise of the ptarmigan, and there
remained in his hand three tail-feathers. As he watched its
flight he hated it, as though it had done him some terrible
wrong. Then he returned and shouldered his pack.
As
the day wore along he came into valleys or swales where game was more
plentiful. A band of caribou passed by, twenty and odd animals,
tantalizingly within rifle range. He felt a wild desire to run
after them, a certitude that he could run them down. A black fox
came toward him, carrying a ptarmigan in his mouth. The man
shouted. It was a fearful cry, but the fox, leaping away in
fright, did not drop the ptarmigan.
Late
in the afternoon he followed a stream, milky with lime, which ran
through sparse patches of rush-grass. Grasping these rushes
firmly near the root, he pulled up what resembled a young
onion-sprout no larger than a shingle-nail. It was tender, and
his teeth sank into it with a crunch that promised deliciously of
food. But its fibers were tough. It was composed of stringy
filaments saturated with water, like the berries, and devoid of
nourishment. He threw off his pack and went into the rush-grass
on hands and knees, crunching and munching, like some bovine
creature.
He
was very weary and often wished to rest—to lie down and sleep; but
he was continually driven on—not so much by his desire to gain the
land of little sticks as by his hunger. He searched little ponds
for frogs and dug up the earth with his nails for worms, though he
knew in spite that neither frogs nor worms existed so far north.
He
looked into every pool of water vainly, until, as the long twilight
came on, he discovered a solitary fish, the size of a minnow, in such
a pool. He plunged his arm in up to the shoulder, but it eluded
him. He reached for it with both hands and stirred up the milky
mud at the bottom. In his excitement he fell in, wetting himself
to the waist. Then the water was too muddy to admit of his
seeing the fish, and he was compelled to wait until the sediment had
settled.
The
pursuit was renewed, till the water was again muddied. But he
could not wait. He unstrapped the tin bucket and began to bale
the pool. He baled wildly at first, splashing himself and
flinging the water so short a distance that it ran back into the
pool. He worked more carefully, striving to be cool, though his
heart was pounding against his chest and his hands were trembling. At
the end of half an hour the pool was nearly dry. Not a cupful of
water remained. And there was no fish. He found a hidden
crevice among the stones through which it had escaped to the
adjoining and larger pool—a pool which he could not empty in a
night and a day. Had he known of the crevice, he could have
closed it with a rock at the beginning and the fish would have been
his.
Thus
he thought, and crumpled up and sank down upon the wet earth. At
first he cried softly to himself, then he cried loudly to the
pitiless desolation that ringed him around; and for a long time after
he was shaken by great dry sobs.
He
built a fire and warmed himself by drinking quarts of hot water, and
made camp on a rocky ledge in the same fashion he had the night
before. The last thing he did was to see that his matches were
dry and to wind his watch. The blankets were wet and clammy. His
ankle pulsed with pain. But he knew only that he was hungry, and
through his restless sleep he dreamed of feasts and banquets and of
food served and spread in all imaginable ways.
He
awoke chilled and sick. There was no sun. The gray of earth
and sky had become deeper, more profound. A raw wind was
blowing, and the first flurries of snow were whitening the
hilltops. The air about him thickened and grew white while he
made a fire and boiled more water. It was wet snow, half rain,
and the flakes were large and soggy. At first they melted as
soon as they came in contact with the earth, but ever more fell,
covering the ground, putting out the fire, spoiling his supply of
moss-fuel.
This
was a signal for him to strap on his pack and stumble onward, he knew
not where. He was not concerned with the land of little sticks,
nor with Bill and the cache under the upturned canoe by the river
Dease. He was mastered by the verb “to eat.” He was
hunger-mad. He took no heed of the course he pursued, so long as
that course led him through the swale bottoms. He felt his way
through the wet snow to the watery muskeg berries, and went by feel
as he pulled up the rush-grass by the roots. But it was
tasteless stuff and did not satisfy. He found a weed that tasted
sour and he ate all he could find of it, which was not much, for it
was a creeping growth, easily hidden under the several inches of
snow.
He
had no fire that night, nor hot water, and crawled under his blanket
to sleep the broken hunger-sleep. The snow turned into a cold
rain. He awakened many times to feel it falling on his upturned
face. Day came—a gray day and no sun. It had ceased
raining. The keenness of his hunger had departed. Sensibility,
as far as concerned the yearning for food, had been exhausted. There
was a dull, heavy ache in his stomach, but it did not bother him so
much. He was more rational, and once more he was chiefly
interested in the land of little sticks and the cache by the river
Dease.
He
ripped the remnant of one of his blankets into strips and bound his
bleeding feet. Also, he re-cinched the injured ankle and
prepared himself for a day of travel. When he came to his pack,
he paused long over the squat moose-hide sack, but in the end it went
with him.
The
snow had melted under the rain, and only the hilltops showed
white. The sun came out, and he succeeded in locating the points
of the compass, though he knew now that he was lost. Perhaps, in
his previous days’ wanderings, he had edged away too far to the
left. He now bore off to the right to counteract the possible
deviation from his true course.
Though
the hunger pangs were no longer so exquisite, he realized that he was
weak. He was compelled to pause for frequent rests, when he
attacked the muskeg berries and rush-grass patches. His tongue
felt dry and large, as though covered with a fine hairy growth, and
it tasted bitter in his mouth. His heart gave him a great deal
of trouble. When he had travelled a few minutes it would begin a
remorseless thump, thump, thump, and then leap up and away in a
painful flutter of beats that choked him and made him go faint and
dizzy.
In
the middle of the day he found two minnows in a large pool. It
was impossible to bale it, but he was calmer now and managed to catch
them in his tin bucket. They were no longer than his little
finger, but he was not particularly hungry. The dull ache in his
stomach had been growing duller and fainter. It seemed almost
that his stomach was dozing. He ate the fish raw, masticating
with painstaking care, for the eating was an act of pure
reason. While he had no desire to eat, he knew that he must eat
to live.
In
the evening he caught three more minnows, eating two and saving the
third for breakfast. The sun had dried stray shreds of moss, and
he was able to warm himself with hot water. He had not covered
more than ten miles that day; and the next day, travelling whenever
his heart permitted him, he covered no more than five miles. But
his stomach did not give him the slightest uneasiness. It had
gone to sleep. He was in a strange country, too, and the caribou
were growing more plentiful, also the wolves. Often their yelps
drifted across the desolation, and once he saw three of them slinking
away before his path.
Another
night; and in the morning, being more rational, he untied the leather
string that fastened the squat moose-hide sack. From its open
mouth poured a yellow stream of coarse gold-dust and nuggets. He
roughly divided the gold in halves, caching one half on a prominent
ledge, wrapped in a piece of blanket, and returning the other half to
the sack. He also began to use strips of the one remaining
blanket for his feet. He still clung to his gun, for there were
cartridges in that cache by the river Dease.
This
was a day of fog, and this day hunger awoke in him again. He was
very weak and was afflicted with a giddiness which at times blinded
him. It was no uncommon thing now for him to stumble and fall;
and stumbling once, he fell squarely into a ptarmigan nest. There
were four newly hatched chicks, a day old—little specks of
pulsating life no more than a mouthful; and he ate them ravenously,
thrusting them alive into his mouth and crunching them like
egg-shells between his teeth. The mother ptarmigan beat about
him with great outcry. He used his gun as a club with which to
knock her over, but she dodged out of reach. He threw stones at
her and with one chance shot broke a wing. Then she fluttered
away, running, trailing the broken wing, with him in pursuit.
The
little chicks had no more than whetted his appetite. He hopped
and bobbed clumsily along on his injured ankle, throwing stones and
screaming hoarsely at times; at other times hopping and bobbing
silently along, picking himself up grimly and patiently when he fell,
or rubbing his eyes with his hand when the giddiness threatened to
overpower him.
The
chase led him across swampy ground in the bottom of the valley, and
he came upon footprints in the soggy moss. They were not his
own—he could see that. They must be Bill’s. But he
could not stop, for the mother ptarmigan was running on. He
would catch her first, then he would return and investigate.
He
exhausted the mother ptarmigan; but he exhausted himself. She
lay panting on her side. He lay panting on his side, a dozen
feet away, unable to crawl to her. And as he recovered she
recovered, fluttering out of reach as his hungry hand went out to
her. The chase was resumed. Night settled down and she
escaped. He stumbled from weakness and pitched head foremost on
his face, cutting his cheek, his pack upon his back. He did not
move for a long while; then he rolled over on his side, wound his
watch, and lay there until morning.
Another
day of fog. Half of his last blanket had gone into
foot-wrappings. He failed to pick up Bill’s trail. It did
not matter. His hunger was driving him too
compellingly—only—only he wondered if Bill, too, were lost. By
midday the irk of his pack became too oppressive. Again he
divided the gold, this time merely spilling half of it on the
ground. In the afternoon he threw the rest of it away, there
remaining to him only the half-blanket, the tin bucket, and the
rifle.
An
hallucination began to trouble him. He felt confident that one
cartridge remained to him. It was in the chamber of the rifle
and he had overlooked it. On the other hand, he knew all the
time that the chamber was empty. But the hallucination
persisted. He fought it off for hours, then threw his rifle open
and was confronted with emptiness. The disappointment was as
bitter as though he had really expected to find the cartridge.
He
plodded on for half an hour, when the hallucination arose
again. Again he fought it, and still it persisted, till for very
relief he opened his rifle to unconvince himself. At times his
mind wandered farther afield, and he plodded on, a mere automaton,
strange conceits and whimsicalities gnawing at his brain like
worms. But these excursions out of the real were of brief
duration, for ever the pangs of the hunger-bite called him back. He
was jerked back abruptly once from such an excursion by a sight that
caused him nearly to faint. He reeled and swayed, doddering like
a drunken man to keep from falling. Before him stood a horse. A
horse! He could not believe his eyes. A thick mist was in
them, intershot with sparkling points of light. He rubbed his
eyes savagely to clear his vision, and beheld, not a horse, but a
great brown bear. The animal was studying him with bellicose
curiosity.
The
man had brought his gun halfway to his shoulder before he
realized. He lowered it and drew his hunting-knife from its
beaded sheath at his hip. Before him was meat and life. He
ran his thumb along the edge of his knife. It was sharp. The
point was sharp. He would fling himself upon the bear and kill
it. But his heart began its warning thump, thump, thump. Then
followed the wild upward leap and tattoo of flutters, the pressing as
of an iron band about his forehead, the creeping of the dizziness
into his brain.
His
desperate courage was evicted by a great surge of fear. In his
weakness, what if the animal attacked him? He drew himself up to
his most imposing stature, gripping the knife and staring hard at the
bear. The bear advanced clumsily a couple of steps, reared up,
and gave vent to a tentative growl. If the man ran, he would run
after him; but the man did not run. He was animated now with the
courage of fear. He, too, growled, savagely, terribly, voicing
the fear that is to life germane and that lies twisted about life’s
deepest roots.
The
bear edged away to one side, growling menacingly, himself appalled by
this mysterious creature that appeared upright and unafraid. But
the man did not move. He stood like a statue till the danger was
past, when he yielded to a fit of trembling and sank down into the
wet moss.
He
pulled himself together and went on, afraid now in a new way. It
was not the fear that he should die passively from lack of food, but
that he should be destroyed violently before starvation had exhausted
the last particle of the endeavor in him that made toward
surviving. There were the wolves. Back and forth across the
desolation drifted their howls, weaving the very air into a fabric of
menace that was so tangible that he found himself, arms in the air,
pressing it back from him as it might be the walls of a wind-blown
tent.
Now
and again the wolves, in packs of two and three, crossed his
path. But they sheered clear of him. They were not in
sufficient numbers, and besides they were hunting the caribou, which
did not battle, while this strange creature that walked erect might
scratch and bite.
In
the late afternoon he came upon scattered bones where the wolves had
made a kill. The debris had been a caribou calf an hour before,
squawking and running and very much alive. He contemplated the
bones, clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in them
which had not yet died. Could it possibly be that he might be
that ere the day was done! Such was life, eh? A vain and
fleeting thing. It was only life that pained. There was no
hurt in death. To die was to sleep. It meant cessation,
rest. Then why was he not content to die?
But
he did not moralize long. He was squatting in the moss, a bone
in his mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it
faintly pink. The sweet meaty taste, thin and elusive almost as
a memory, maddened him. He closed his jaws on the bones and
crunched. Sometimes it was the bone that broke, sometimes his
teeth. Then he crushed the bones between rocks, pounded them to
a pulp, and swallowed them. He pounded his fingers, too, in his
haste, and yet found a moment in which to feel surprise at the fact
that his fingers did not hurt much when caught under the descending
rock.
Came
frightful days of snow and rain. He did not know when he made
camp, when he broke camp. He travelled in the night as much as
in the day. He rested wherever he fell, crawled on whenever the
dying life in him flickered up and burned less dimly. He, as a
man, no longer strove. It was the life in him, unwilling to die,
that drove him on. He did not suffer. His nerves had become
blunted, numb, while his mind was filled with weird visions and
delicious dreams.
But
ever he sucked and chewed on the crushed bones of the caribou calf,
the least remnants of which he had gathered up and carried with
him. He crossed no more hills or divides, but automatically
followed a large stream which flowed through a wide and shallow
valley. He did not see this stream nor this valley. He saw
nothing save visions. Soul and body walked or crawled side by
side, yet apart, so slender was the thread that bound them.
He
awoke in his right mind, lying on his back on a rocky ledge. The
sun was shining bright and warm. Afar off he heard the squawking
of caribou calves. He was aware of vague memories of rain and
wind and snow, but whether he had been beaten by the storm for two
days or two weeks he did not know.
For
some time he lay without movement, the genial sunshine pouring upon
him and saturating his miserable body with its warmth. A fine
day, he thought. Perhaps he could manage to locate himself. By
a painful effort he rolled over on his side. Below him flowed a
wide and sluggish river. Its unfamiliarity puzzled him. Slowly
he followed it with his eyes, winding in wide sweeps among the bleak,
bare hills, bleaker and barer and lower-lying than any hills he had
yet encountered. Slowly, deliberately, without excitement or
more than the most casual interest, he followed the course of the
strange stream toward the sky-line and saw it emptying into a bright
and shining sea. He was still unexcited. Most unusual, he
thought, a vision or a mirage—more likely a vision, a trick of his
disordered mind. He was confirmed in this by sight of a ship
lying at anchor in the midst of the shining sea. He closed his
eyes for a while, then opened them. Strange how the vision
persisted! Yet not strange. He knew there were no seas or
ships in the heart of the barren lands, just as he had known there
was no cartridge in the empty rifle.
He heard a snuffle behind
him—a half-choking gasp or cough. Very slowly, because of his
exceeding weakness and stiffness, he rolled over on his other
side. He could see nothing near at hand, but he waited
patiently. Again came the snuffle and cough, and outlined
between two jagged rocks not a score of feet away he made out the
gray head of a wolf. The sharp ears were not pricked so sharply
as he had seen them on other wolves; the eyes were bleared and
bloodshot, the head seemed to droop limply and forlornly. The
animal blinked continually in the sunshine. It seemed sick. As
he looked it snuffled and coughed again.
This,
at least, was real, he thought, and turned on the other side so that
he might see the reality of the world which had been veiled from him
before by the vision. But the sea still shone in the distance
and the ship was plainly discernible. Was it reality, after
all? He closed his eyes for a long while and thought, and then
it came to him. He had been making north by east, away from the
Dease Divide and into the Coppermine Valley. This wide and
sluggish river was the Coppermine. That shining sea was the
Arctic Ocean. That ship was a whaler, strayed east, far east,
from the mouth of the Mackenzie, and it was lying at anchor in
Coronation Gulf. He remembered the Hudson Bay Company chart he
had seen long ago, and it was all clear and reasonable to him.
He
sat up and turned his attention to immediate affairs. He had
worn through the blanket-wrappings, and his feet were shapeless lumps
of raw meat. His last blanket was gone. Rifle and knife
were both missing. He had lost his hat somewhere, with the bunch
of matches in the band, but the matches against his chest were safe
and dry inside the tobacco pouch and oil paper. He looked at his
watch. It marked eleven o’clock and was still
running. Evidently he had kept it wound.
He
was calm and collected. Though extremely weak, he had no
sensation of pain. He was not hungry. The thought of food
was not even pleasant to him, and whatever he did was done by his
reason alone. He ripped off his pants’ legs to the knees and
bound them about his feet. Somehow he had succeeded in retaining
the tin bucket. He would have some hot water before he began
what he foresaw was to be a terrible journey to the ship.
His
movements were slow. He shook as with a palsy. When he
started to collect dry moss, he found he could not rise to his
feet. He tried again and again, then contented himself with
crawling about on hands and knees. Once he crawled near to the
sick wolf. The animal dragged itself reluctantly out of his way,
licking its chops with a tongue which seemed hardly to have the
strength to curl. The man noticed that the tongue was not the
customary healthy red. It was a yellowish brown and seemed
coated with a rough and half-dry mucus.
After
he had drunk a quart of hot water the man found he was able to stand,
and even to walk as well as a dying man might be supposed to
walk. Every minute or so he was compelled to rest. His
steps were feeble and uncertain, just as the wolf’s that trailed
him were feeble and uncertain; and that night, when the shining sea
was blotted out by blackness, he knew he was nearer to it by no more
than four miles.
Throughout
the night he heard the cough of the sick wolf, and now and then the
squawking of the caribou calves. There was life all around him,
but it was strong life, very much alive and well, and he knew the
sick wolf clung to the sick man’s trail in the hope that the man
would die first. In the morning, on opening his eyes, he beheld
it regarding him with a wistful and hungry stare. It stood
crouched, with tail between its legs, like a miserable and woe-begone
dog. It shivered in the chill morning wind, and grinned
dispiritedly when the man spoke to it in a voice that achieved no
more than a hoarse whisper.
The
sun rose brightly, and all morning the man tottered and fell toward
the ship on the shining sea. The weather was perfect. It
was the brief Indian Summer of the high latitudes. It might last
a week. To-morrow or next day it might he gone.
In
the afternoon the man came upon a trail. It was of another man,
who did not walk, but who dragged himself on all fours. The man
thought it might be Bill, but he thought in a dull, uninterested
way. He had no curiosity. In fact, sensation and emotion
had left him. He was no longer susceptible to pain. Stomach
and nerves had gone to sleep. Yet the life that was in him drove
him on. He was very weary, but it refused to die. It was
because it refused to die that he still ate muskeg berries and
minnows, drank his hot water, and kept a wary eye on the sick wolf.
He
followed the trail of the other man who dragged himself along, and
soon came to the end of it—a few fresh-picked bones where the soggy
moss was marked by the foot-pads of many wolves. He saw a squat
moose-hide sack, mate to his own, which had been torn by sharp
teeth. He picked it up, though its weight was almost too much
for his feeble fingers. Bill had carried it to the last. Ha!
ha! He would have the laugh on Bill. He would survive and
carry it to the ship in the shining sea. His mirth was hoarse
and ghastly, like a raven’s croak, and the sick wolf joined him,
howling lugubriously. The man ceased suddenly. How could he
have the laugh on Bill if that were Bill; if those bones, so
pinky-white and clean, were Bill?
He
turned away. Well, Bill had deserted him; but he would not take
the gold, nor would he suck Bill’s bones. Bill would have,
though, had it been the other way around, he mused as he staggered
on.
He
came to a pool of water. Stooping over in quest of minnows, he
jerked his head back as though he had been stung. He had caught
sight of his reflected face. So horrible was it that sensibility
awoke long enough to be shocked. There were three minnows in the
pool, which was too large to drain; and after several ineffectual
attempts to catch them in the tin bucket he forbore. He was
afraid, because of his great weakness, that he might fall in and
drown. It was for this reason that he did not trust himself to
the river astride one of the many drift-logs which lined its
sand-spits.
That
day he decreased the distance between him and the ship by three
miles; the next day by two—for he was crawling now as Bill had
crawled; and the end of the fifth day found the ship still seven
miles away and him unable to make even a mile a day. Still the
Indian Summer held on, and he continued to crawl and faint, turn and
turn about; and ever the sick wolf coughed and wheezed at his
heels. His knees had become raw meat like his feet, and though
he padded them with the shirt from his back it was a red track he
left behind him on the moss and stones. Once, glancing back, he
saw the wolf licking hungrily his bleeding trail, and he saw sharply
what his own end might be—unless—unless he could get the
wolf. Then began as grim a tragedy of existence as was ever
played—a sick man that crawled, a sick wolf that limped, two
creatures dragging their dying carcasses across the desolation and
hunting each other’s lives.
Had
it been a well wolf, it would not have mattered so much to the man;
but the thought of going to feed the maw of that loathsome and all
but dead thing was repugnant to him. He was finicky. His
mind had begun to wander again, and to be perplexed by
hallucinations, while his lucid intervals grew rarer and shorter.
He
was awakened once from a faint by a wheeze close in his ear. The
wolf leaped lamely back, losing its footing and falling in its
weakness. It was ludicrous, but he was not amused. Nor was
he even afraid. He was too far gone for that. But his mind
was for the moment clear, and he lay and considered. The ship
was no more than four miles away. He could see it quite
distinctly when he rubbed the mists out of his eyes, and he could see
the white sail of a small boat cutting the water of the shining
sea. But he could never crawl those four miles. He knew
that, and was very calm in the knowledge. He knew that he could
not crawl half a mile. And yet he wanted to live. It was
unreasonable that he should die after all he had undergone. Fate
asked too much of him. And, dying, he declined to die. It
was stark madness, perhaps, but in the very grip of Death he defied
Death and refused to die.
He
closed his eyes and composed himself with infinite precaution. He
steeled himself to keep above the suffocating languor that lapped
like a rising tide through all the wells of his being. It was
very like a sea, this deadly languor, that rose and rose and drowned
his consciousness bit by bit. Sometimes he was all but
submerged, swimming through oblivion with a faltering stroke; and
again, by some strange alchemy of soul, he would find another shred
of will and strike out more strongly.
Without
movement he lay on his back, and he could hear, slowly drawing near
and nearer, the wheezing intake and output of the sick wolf’s
breath. It drew closer, ever closer, through an infinitude of
time, and he did not move. It was at his ear. The harsh dry
tongue grated like sandpaper against his cheek. His hands shot
out—or at least he willed them to shoot out. The fingers were
curved like talons, but they closed on empty air. Swiftness and
certitude require strength, and the man had not this strength.
The
patience of the wolf was terrible. The man’s patience was no
less terrible. For half a day he lay motionless, fighting off
unconsciousness and waiting for the thing that was to feed upon him
and upon which he wished to feed. Sometimes the languid sea rose
over him and he dreamed long dreams; but ever through it all, waking
and dreaming, he waited for the wheezing breath and the harsh caress
of the tongue.
He
did not hear the breath, and he slipped slowly from some dream to the
feel of the tongue along his hand. He waited. The fangs
pressed softly; the pressure increased; the wolf was exerting its
last strength in an effort to sink teeth in the food for which it had
waited so long. But the man had waited long, and the lacerated
hand closed on the jaw. Slowly, while the wolf struggled feebly
and the hand clutched feebly, the other hand crept across to a
grip. Five minutes later the whole weight of the man’s body
was on top of the wolf. The hands had not sufficient strength to
choke the wolf, but the face of the man was pressed close to the
throat of the wolf and the mouth of the man was full of hair. At
the end of half an hour the man was aware of a warm trickle in his
throat. It was not pleasant. It was like molten lead being
forced into his stomach, and it was forced by his will alone. Later
the man rolled over on his back and slept.
* * * * *
There were some members of a scientific expedition on the whale-ship Bedford. From the deck they remarked a strange object on the shore. It was moving down the beach toward the water. They were unable to classify it, and, being scientific men, they climbed into the whale-boat alongside and went ashore to see. And they saw something that was alive but which could hardly be called a man. It was blind, unconscious. It squirmed along the ground like some monstrous worm. Most of its efforts were ineffectual, but it was persistent, and it writhed and twisted and went ahead perhaps a score of feet an hour.
* * * * *
Three weeks afterward the man lay in a bunk on the whale-ship Bedford, and with tears streaming down his wasted cheeks told who he was and what he had undergone. He also babbled incoherently of his mother, of sunny Southern California, and a home among the orange groves and flowers.
The
days were not many after that when he sat at table with the
scientific men and ship’s officers. He gloated over the
spectacle of so much food, watching it anxiously as it went into the
mouths of others. With the disappearance of each mouthful an
expression of deep regret came into his eyes. He was quite sane,
yet he hated those men at mealtime. He was haunted by a fear
that the food would not last. He inquired of the cook, the
cabin-boy, the captain, concerning the food stores. They
reassured him countless times; but he could not believe them, and
pried cunningly about the lazarette to see with his own eyes.
It
was noticed that the man was getting fat. He grew stouter with
each day. The scientific men shook their heads and
theorized. They limited the man at his meals, but still his
girth increased and he swelled prodigiously under his shirt.
The
sailors grinned. They knew. And when the scientific men set
a watch on the man, they knew too. They saw him slouch for’ard
after breakfast, and, like a mendicant, with outstretched palm,
accost a sailor. The sailor grinned and passed him a fragment of
sea biscuit. He clutched it avariciously, looked at it as a
miser looks at gold, and thrust it into his shirt bosom. Similar
were the donations from other grinning sailors.
The scientific
men were discreet. They let him alone. But they privily
examined his bunk. It was lined with hardtack; the mattress was
stuffed with hardtack; every nook and cranny was filled with
hardtack. Yet he was sane. He was taking precautions
against another possible famine—that was all. He would recover
from it, the scientific men said; and he did, ere
the Bedford’s anchor rumbled down in San Francisco
Bay.
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