nes 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