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
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12
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
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13
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
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14
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