I might hear a sound.

I had started from the Pole with a well-filled sledge, and the sixteen
dogs left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This was
on the evening of the 13th April. I had saved from the wreck of our
things most of the whey-powder, pemmican, &c., as well as the
theodolite, compass, chronometer, train-oil lamp for cooking, and other
implements: I was therefore in no doubt as to my course, and I had
provisions for ninety days. But ten days from the start my supply of
dog-food failed, and I had to begin to slaughter my only companions, one
by one.

Well, in the third week the ice became horribly rough, and with moil
and toil enough to wear a bear to death, I did only five miles a day.
After the day's work I would crawl with a dying sigh into the
sleeping-bag, clad still in the load of skins which stuck to me a mere
filth of grease, to sleep the sleep of a swine, indifferent if I never
woke.

Always--day after day--on the south-eastern horizon, brooded sullenly
that curious stretched-out region of purple vapour, like the smoke of
the conflagration of the world. And I noticed that its length constantly
reached out and out, and silently grew.

* * * * *

Once I had a very pleasant dream. I dreamed that I was in a garden--an
Arabian paradise--so sweet was the perfume. All the time, however, I had
a sub-consciousness of the gale which was actually blowing from the S.E.
over the ice, and, at the moment when I awoke, was half-wittedly droning
to myself; 'It is a Garden of Peaches; but I am not really in the
garden: I am really on the ice; only, the S.E. storm is wafting to me
the aroma of this Garden of Peaches.'

I opened my eyes--I started--I sprang to my feet! For, of all the
miracles!--I could not doubt--an actual aroma like peach-blossom was in
the algid air about me!

Before I could collect my astonished senses, I began to vomit pretty
violently, and at the same time saw some of the dogs, mere skeletons as
they were, vomiting, too. For a long time I lay very sick in a kind of
daze, and, on rising, found two of the dogs dead, and all very queer.
The wind had now changed to the north.

Well, on I staggered, fighting every inch of my deplorably weary way.
This odour of peach-blossom, my sickness, and the death of the two dogs,
remained a wonder to me.

Two days later, to my extreme mystification (and joy), I came across a
bear and its cub lying dead