a very scanty meal they
hauled the sled through the slush they churned up for an hour or so.
Then they stopped, gasping, the Indian slipped out of the traces, and
Charly, who nodded, cast them loose from him.

"We've hauled that thing about far enough," he said.

Wyllard stood looking at them for a moment or two with a furrowed face
and a hand that the frost had split tightly clenched. It was evident
that they could haul the hampering load no further, and he was troubled
by an almost insupportable weariness. Then he made a little unwilling
sign of concurrence.

"In that case," he said, "you have to decide what you'll leave behind."

They discussed it for some minutes, partly because it furnished an
excuse for sitting upon the sled, though none of them had much doubt as
to the result of the council. It was unthinkable that they should
sacrifice a scrap of the provisions. Then, when each man had lashed a
light load upon his shoulders with a portion of the cut-up traces, they
set out again, and it rained upon them heavily all that day.

During the four following days they were buffeted by a furious wind,
but the temperature had risen, and the snow was melting fast, and
splashing knee-deep through slush and water they made progress. While
he stumbled along with the pack-straps galling his shoulders, Wyllard
was conscious of little beyond the unceasing pain in his joints and the
leaden heaviness of his limbs; but the recollection of that march
haunted him like a horrible nightmare long afterwards, when each
sensation and incident emerged from the haze of numbing misery. He
remembered that he stormed at and almost fought with Charly, who lagged
behind now and then in a fit of languid dejection, and that once he
fell heavily, and was sensible of a certain half-conscious regret that
he was still capable of going on when the Indian dragged him to his
feet again. They rarely spoke to one another, and noticed nothing
beyond the strip of white waste, through which uncovered brown patches
commenced to break, immediately in front of them, except when they
crossed some low elevation and looked down upon the stretch of dull
grey water not far away on one hand. The breeze, at least, had swept
the ice away, and that was reassuring, because it meant that Dampier
would be at the inlet when they reached it, though now and then a
horrible fear that their strength would fail them or their provisions
run out first crept in.

Th