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
LOVE OF LIFE AND OTHER STORIES
15
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
LOVE OF LIFE AND OTHER STORIES
16
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.
A DAY’S LODGING
It was the gosh-dangdest stampede I ever seen. A thousand dog-
teams hittin’ the ice. You couldn’t see ‘m fer smoke. Two white
men an’ a Swede froze to death that night, an’ there was a dozen
busted their lungs. But didn’t I see with my own eyes the bottom
of the water-hole? It was yellow with gold like a mustard-plaster.
That’s why I staked the Yukon for a minin’ claim. That’s what made
the stampede. An’ then there was nothin’ to it. That’s what I
said – NOTHIN’ to it. An’ I ain’t got over guessin’ yet. –
NARRATIVE OF SHORTY.
JOHN MESSNER clung with mittened hand to the bucking gee-pole and
held the sled in the trail. With the other mittened hand he rubbed
his cheeks and nose. He rubbed his cheeks and nose every little
while. In point of fact, he rarely ceased from rubbing them, and
sometimes, as their numbness increased, he rubbed fiercely. His
forehead was covered by the visor of his fur cap, the flaps of
which went over his ears. The rest of his face was protected by a
thick beard, golden-brown under its coating of frost.
Behind him churned a heavily loaded Yukon sled, and before him
toiled a string of five dogs. The rope by which they dragged the
sled rubbed against the side of Messner’s leg. When the dogs swung
on a bend in the trail, he stepped over the rope. There were many
bends, and he was compelled to step over it often. Sometimes he
tripped on the rope, or stumbled, and at all times he was awkward,
betraying a weariness so great that the sled now and again ran upon
his heels.
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17
When he came to a straight piece of trail, where the sled could get
along for a moment without guidance, he let go the gee-pole and
batted his right hand sharply upon the hard wood. He found it
difficult to keep up the circulation in that hand. But while he
pounded the one hand, he never ceased from rubbing his nose and
cheeks with the other.
“It’s too cold to travel, anyway,” he said. He spoke aloud, after