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.