Love of Life | Page 5

earth, but ever
more fell, covering the ground, putting out the fire, spoiling his supply
of moss-fuel.
This was a signal for him to strap on his pack and stumble onward, he
knew not where. He was not concerned with the land of little sticks, nor
with Bill and the cache under the upturned canoe by the river Dease.
He was mastered by the verb "to eat." He was hunger- mad. He took no
heed of the course he pursued, so long as that course led him through
the swale bottoms. He felt his way through the wet snow to the watery
muskeg berries, and went by feel as he pulled up the rush-grass by the
roots. But it was tasteless stuff and did not satisfy. He found a weed
that tasted sour and he ate all he could find of it, which was not much,
for it was a creeping growth, easily hidden under the several inches of
snow.
He had no fire that night, nor hot water, and crawled under his blanket
to sleep the broken hunger-sleep. The snow turned into a cold rain. He
awakened many times to feel it falling on his upturned face. Day came
- a gray day and no sun. It had ceased raining. The keenness of his
hunger had departed. Sensibility, as far as concerned the yearning for
food, had been exhausted. There was a dull, heavy ache in his stomach,
but it did not bother him so much. He was more rational, and once
more he was chiefly interested in the land of little sticks and the cache
by the river Dease.
He ripped the remnant of one of his blankets into strips and bound his
bleeding feet. Also, he recinched the injured ankle and prepared

himself for a day of travel. When he came to his pack, he paused long
over the squat moose-hide sack, but in the end it went with him.
The snow had melted under the rain, and only the hilltops showed
white. The sun came out, and he succeeded in locating the points of the
compass, though he knew now that he was lost. Perhaps, in his
previous days' wanderings, he had edged away too far to the left. He
now bore off to the right to counteract the possible deviation from his
true course.
Though the hunger pangs were no longer so exquisite, he realized that
he was weak. He was compelled to pause for frequent rests, when he
attacked the muskeg berries and rush-grass patches. His tongue felt dry
and large, as though covered with a fine hairy growth, and it tasted
bitter in his mouth. His heart gave him a great deal of trouble. When he
had travelled a few minutes it would begin a remorseless thump, thump,
thump, and then leap up and away in a painful flutter of beats that
choked him and made him go faint and dizzy.
In the middle of the day he found two minnows in a large pool. It was
impossible to bale it, but he was calmer now and managed to catch
them in his tin bucket. They were no longer than his little finger, but he
was not particularly hungry. The dull ache in his stomach had been
growing duller and fainter. It seemed almost that his stomach was
dozing. He ate the fish raw, masticating with painstaking care, for the
eating was an act of pure reason. While he had no desire to eat, he
knew that he must eat to live.
In the evening he caught three more minnows, eating two and saving
the third for breakfast. The sun had dried stray shreds of moss, and he
was able to warm himself with hot water. He had not covered more
than ten miles that day; and the next day, travelling whenever his heart
permitted him, he covered no more than five miles. But his stomach did
not give him the slightest uneasiness. It had gone to sleep. He was in a
strange country, too, and the caribou were growing more plentiful, also
the wolves. Often their yelps drifted across the desolation, and once he
saw three of them slinking away before his path.

Another night; and in the morning, being more rational, he untied the
leather string that fastened the squat moose-hide sack. From its open
mouth poured a yellow stream of coarse gold-dust and nuggets. He
roughly divided the gold in halves, caching one half on a prominent
ledge, wrapped in a piece of blanket, and returning the other half to the
sack. He also began to use strips of the one remaining blanket for his
feet. He still clung to his gun, for there were cartridges in that cache by
the river Dease.
This was a day of fog, and this day