hilcoot. He sat down to adjust his foot-gear for the long
climb, and woke up. He had dozed the instant he sat down, though he had
not slept thirty seconds. He was afraid his next doze might be longer,
so he finished fixing his foot-gear standing up. Even then he was
overpowered for a fleeting moment. He experienced the flash of
unconsciousness; becoming aware of it, in mid-air, as his relaxed body
was sinking to the ground and as he caught himself together, he stiffened
his muscles with a spasmodic wrench, and escaped the fall. The sudden
jerk back to consciousness left him sick and trembling. He beat his head
with the heel of his hand, knocking wakefulness into the numbed brain.

Jack Burns's pack-train was starting back light for Crater Lake, and
Churchill was invited to a mule. Burns wanted to put the gripsack on
another animal, but Churchill held on to it, carrying it on his saddle-
pommel. But he dozed, and the grip persisted in dropping off the pommel,
one side or the other, each time wakening him with a sickening start.
Then, in the early darkness, Churchill's mule brushed him against a
projecting branch that laid his cheek open. To cap it, the mule
blundered off the trail and fell, throwing rider and gripsack out upon
the rocks. After that, Churchill walked, or stumbled rather, over the
apology for a trail, leading the mule. Stray and awful odours, drifting
from each side of the trail, told of the horses that had died in the rush
for gold. But he did not mind. He was too sleepy. By the time Long
Lake was reached, however, he had recovered from his sleepiness; and at
Deep Lake he resigned the gripsack to Burns. But thereafter, by the
light of the dim stars, he kept his eyes on Burns. There were not going
to be any accidents with that bag.

At Crater Lake, the pack-train went into camp, and Churchill, slinging
the grip on his back, started the steep climb for the summit. For the
first time, on that precipitous wall, he realized how tired he was. He
crept and crawled like a crab, burdened by the weight of his limbs. A
distinct and painful effort of will was required each time he lifted a
foot. An hallucination came to him that he was shod with lead, like a
deep-sea diver, and it was all he could do to resist the desire to reach
down and feel the lead. As for Bondell's gripsack, it was inconceivable
that forty pounds could weigh so much. It pressed him down like a
mountain, and he looked back