Love of life
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 him with a wistful and
hungry stare. It stood crouched, with tail
between its legs, like a miserable and woe-begone
dog. It shivered in the chill morning wind, and
grinned dispiritedly when the man spoke to it in
a voice that achieved no more than a hoarse
whisper.
…sensation and emotion had
left him. He was no longer susceptible to pain.
Stomach and nerves had gone to sleep. Yet the
life that was in him drove him on. He was very
weary, but it refused to die. It was because it
refused to die that he still ate muskeg berries
and minnows, drank his hot water, and kept a
wary eye on the sick wolf.
…
unable to make even a mile a day. Still the
Indian Summer held on, and he continued to crawl
and faint, turn and turn about; and ever the
sick wolf coughed and wheezed at his heels. His
knees had become raw meat like his feet, … it
was a red track he left behind him on the moss
and stones. … he saw the wolf licking hungrily
his bleeding trail, and he saw sharply what his
own end might be -- unless -- unless he could
get the wolf. Then began as grim a tragedy of
existence as was ever played -- a sick man that
crawled, a sick wolf that limped, two creatures
dragging their dying carcasses across the
desolation and hunting each other's lives.
…he
could never crawl those four miles. He knew
that, and was very calm in the knowledge. He
knew that he could not crawl half a mile. And
yet he wanted to live. It was unreasonable that
he should die after all he had undergone. Fate
asked too much of him. And, dying, he declined
to die. It was stark madness, perhaps, but in
the very grip of Death he defied Death and
refused to die.

…He
steeled himself to keep above the suffocating
languor that lapped like a rising tide through
all the wells of his being. It was very like a
sea, this deadly languor, that rose and rose and
drowned his consciousness bit by bit. Sometimes
he was all but submerged, swimming through
oblivion with a faltering stroke; and again, by
some strange alchemy of soul, he would find
another shred of will and strike out more
strongly.
…he slipped slowly from some
dream to the feel of the tongue along his hand.
He waited. The fangs pressed softly; the
pressure increased; the wolf was exerting its
last strength in an effort to sink teeth in the
food for which it had waited so long. But the
man had waited long, and the lacerated hand
closed on the jaw. … At the end of half an hour
the man was aware of a warm trickle in his
throat. It was not pleasant. It was like molten
lead being forced into his stomach, and it was
forced by his will alone. …
… From the deck they remarked
a strange object on the shore. It was moving
down the beach toward the water. They were
unable to classify it, and, being scientific
men, they climbed into the whale-boat alongside
and went ashore to see. And they saw something
that was alive but which could hardly be called
a man. It was blind, unconscious. It squirmed
along the ground like some monstrous worm. Most
of its efforts were ineffectual, but it was
persistent, and it writhed and twisted and went
ahead perhaps a score of feet an hour.
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