hurrying mass would jam and pile up, forming a pathway above the
current, but not for so long a time as would allow me to climb across.

"I'd been going on half-rations for several days in order to make my
food eke out and, consequently, was miserably nourished. A death by
drowning is preferable any day to the slower tortures of starvation; I
made up my mind to cross the river at once, at whatever cost. I began
to forget my fear of the hidden enemy in my eagerness to satisfy my
hunger.

"Retracing my steps, I walked up-stream, searching for a tree-trunk
which would be of sufficient weight to carry me. I planned to launch
out a quarter of a mile above the point which I wished to make on the
other side, and to trust to the current, and what little steering I
could manage, to get me across. I lost much time in my search, for the
larger logs which had been driven ashore had got wedged, and required
more than one man's strength to refloat them.

"When I found a trunk of sufficient size, the wind had dropped and a
mist was settling down, which made it difficult for me to see anything
that was not immediately before my eyes. A haunting sensation of
insecurity began to pervade my mind. I hardly know how to describe it;
it was not dread of a physical death, but fear lest my soul might get
lost. Though I was now about to imperil my life, for the preservation
of which, during the last half year, I had made every effort of which
a human being is capable, that seemed to me as nothing when compared
with this new danger. If a man dies, he may live again; but if his
soul is snatched from him, what is there left that can survive? This
was the menace of which I was aware--a menace of spiritual death, to
the cause of which I was drawing nearer through the mist. My whole
desire now was to procure the provisions for which I had made the
journey, and to escape.

"I got astride the trunk, steadying myself with a long birch-pole
which I had cut, and pushed off. The water was icy cold, causing my
legs to ache painfully, as if they were being torn from my body by
heavy weights. Soon the log was caught in the central current and
began to race. Like maddened horses, foaming at my side, before, and
behind, the drift-ice rushed. In the misty greyness of the night,
these floating ruins of the winter's silence assumed curious and
terrifying shapes. Sometimes they appeared to be polar bears, having
human hands and faces; sometimes they seemed to b