Love of Life | Page 8

encountered. Slowly,
deliberately, without excitement or more than the most casual interest,
he followed the course of the strange stream toward the sky-line and
saw it emptying into a bright and shining sea. He was still unexcited.
Most unusual, he thought, a vision or a mirage - more likely a vision, a
trick of his disordered mind. He was confirmed in this by sight of a
ship lying at anchor in the midst of the shining sea. He closed his eyes
for a while, then opened them. Strange how the vision persisted! Yet
not strange. He knew there were no seas or ships in the heart of the
barren lands, just as he had known there was no cartridge in the empty
rifle.
He heard a snuffle behind him - a half-choking gasp or cough. Very
slowly, because of his exceeding weakness and stiffness, he rolled over
on his other side. He could see nothing near at hand, but he waited
patiently. Again came the snuffle and cough, and outlined between two
jagged rocks not a score of feet away he made out the gray head of a
wolf. The sharp ears were not pricked so sharply as he had seen them
on other wolves; the eyes were bleared and bloodshot, the head seemed
to droop limply and forlornly. The animal blinked continually in the
sunshine. It seemed sick. As he looked it snuffled and coughed again.
This, at least, was real, he thought, and turned on the other side so that
he might see the reality of the world which had been veiled from him
before by the vision. But the sea still shone in the distance and the ship
was plainly discernible. Was it reality, after all? He closed his eyes for
a long while and thought, and then it came to him. He had been making
north by east, away from the Dease Divide and into the Coppermine
Valley. This wide and sluggish river was the Coppermine. That shining
sea was the Arctic Ocean. That ship was a whaler, strayed east, far east,
from the mouth of the Mackenzie, and it was lying at anchor in

Coronation Gulf. He remembered the Hudson Bay Company chart he
had seen long ago, and it was all clear and reasonable to him.
He sat up and turned his attention to immediate affairs. He had worn
through the blanket-wrappings, and his feet were shapeless lumps of
raw meat. His last blanket was gone. Rifle and knife were both missing.
He had lost his hat somewhere, with the bunch of matches in the band,
but the matches against his chest were safe and dry inside the tobacco
pouch and oil paper. He looked at his watch. It marked eleven o'clock
and was still running. Evidently he had kept it wound.
He was calm and collected. Though extremely weak, he had no
sensation of pain. He was not hungry. The thought of food was not
even pleasant to him, and whatever he did was done by his reason alone.
He ripped off his pants' legs to the knees and bound them about his feet.
Somehow he had succeeded in retaining the tin bucket. He would have
some hot water before he began what he foresaw was to be a terrible
journey to the ship.
His movements were slow. He shook as with a palsy. When he started
to collect dry moss, he found he could not rise to his feet. He tried
again and again, then contented himself with crawling about on hands
and knees. Once he crawled near to the sick wolf. The animal dragged
itself reluctantly out of his way, licking its chops with a tongue which
seemed hardly to have the strength to curl. The man noticed that the
tongue was not the customary healthy red. It was a yellowish brown
and seemed coated with a rough and half-dry mucus.
After he had drunk a quart of hot water the man found he was able to
stand, and even to walk as well as a dying man might be supposed to
walk. Every minute or so he was compelled to rest. His steps were
feeble and uncertain, just as the wolf's that trailed him were feeble and
uncertain; and that night, when the shining sea was blotted out by
blackness, he knew he was nearer to it by no more than four miles.
Throughout the night he heard the cough of the sick wolf, and now and
then the squawking of the caribou calves. There was life all around him,
but it was strong life, very much alive and well, and he knew the sick

wolf clung to the sick man's trail in the hope that the man would die
first. In the morning, on opening his eyes, he beheld it regarding