rribly moving than anything they had yet
seen--that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen
cheeks and told them that he was "a damned moss-eater"; the continued
vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteous
and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet
pained him--"burn like fire"--which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart
examined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the
eyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding.

The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he had
been, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to the
other, including an immense detour of the lake on foot since he had
no canoe--all this remains unknown. His memory had vanished completely.
And before the end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this strange
occurrence, Defago, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it.
He lingered only a few weeks.

And what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws no further
light upon it. He was cleaning fish by the lake shore about five o'clock
in the evening--an hour, that is, before the search party returned--when
he saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp. In
advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular
odour.

That same instant old Punk started for home. He covered the entire
journey of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it. The
terror of a whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant. Defago
had "seen the Wendigo."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood

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