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.