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