Part three.

The man had brought his gun half the distance to his shoulder before he realized what he was doing.

He lowered it and drew his hunting knife from its cover.

Before him was meat and life.

He ran his finger along the edge of the knife.

It was sharp.

The point was sharp.

You would throw himself on the bear and kill it, but his heart began its pounding.

Then came it's wild leap, and he began to feel faint.

His wild courage was replaced by a great fear in his weakness.

What if the animal attacked him?

He drew himself up tall, grasping the knife and staring hard at the bear.

The bear advanced a couple of steps and stood up.

If the man ran, the bear would run after him.

But the man did not run.

He was alive.

Now, with the courage of fear, the bear moved away to one side with a threatening noise.

He himself was fearful of this strange creature that appeared unafraid, but demand did not move.

He stood still until the danger was past.

Then he yielded to a fit of trembling and sank to his knees on the wet grass.

He regained control of himself and then started to move forward, Afraid now in a new manner.

It was not the fear that he would die from lack of food.

He was afraid that he would be destroyed by forces other than starving.

There were the wolves across the wasteland.

Their howls could be heard making the air itself a threat most real to him.

Now and again.

The wolves in groups of two and three crossed his path.

But they stayed away from him.

They were not in sufficient numbers to attack.

And besides, they were hunting.

Terrible caribou did not battle.

While this strange creature that walked on two legs my bite.

In the afternoon he came upon scattered bones where the wolves had made a kill.

What remained had been a young caribou.

An hour before he studied the bones, cleaned of any flesh.

They were still pink with the life in them which had not yet died.

Might he looked like that before the day was done?

Was this life a fleeting thing without meaning?

It was only life that pained.

There was no hurt and death to die was to sleep, it meant rest.

And why was he not content to die?

But he did not think about these things for very long.

He was soon seated in the grass, a bone in his mouth, biting at the bit of life that made it yet pink.

The sweet, meaty taste drove him mad.

He closed his teeth firmly on the bones.

Sometimes it was the bone that broke, sometimes his teeth.

Then he crushed the bones between the rocks.

He pounded them into tiny pieces.

And eighth, um he was in such a hurry that he pounded his fingers too.

He felt surprised at the fact that his fingers did not hurt much when they were caught under the rock.

Then came frightful days of snow and rain.

He did not know when he made camp, and when he broke camp, you traveled in the Nite as much as in the day, arrested whenever he fell, moving ahead whenever the dying life in him started up again.

He is a man no longer struggled.

It was the life in him unwilling to die that drove him on.

He did not suffer no feel pain.

But his mind was filled with hallucinations and wild dreams.

But he still ate the crushed bones of the young caribou, which he had gathered and carried with him.

He crossed no more hills but followed a large stream, which flowed through a wide valley.

He did not see this stream nor this valley.

He saw nothing except hallucinations.

One morning he awakened with his mind clear, lying on his back on a rocky surface.

The sun was shining bright and warm.

Far away.

He heard the noises made by the young caribou.

You remembered rain and wind and snow.

But whether he had been beaten by the storm for two days or two weeks, he did not know.

For some time he lay without movement.

Friendly son poured down upon him and filled his body with its warmth.

A fine day, he thought perhaps he could succeed in locating himself by a painful effort.

He rolled on his side below him, float a wide river.

Its unfamiliarity puzzled him slowly.

He followed it with his eyes, is curved among the bare hills.

They were more bear and lower than any hills he had yet seen.

Slowly, without excitement, he followed the course of the strange stream toward the skyline and saw that it emptied into a bright and shining sea.

He was still unexcited.

Most unusual.

He thought it was probably a trick of his mind.

He was certain of this when he also saw ship floating in the shining sea.

He closed his eyes for a while, then opened them.

It was strange how the site continued, yet it was not strange.

He knew there were no sees or ships in the middle of this land.

As he had known.

There was no cartridge in the empty gun.

He heard a noise behind him.

It seemed like the dry sound that comes from the throat when air is forced out in a car very slowly because of his weakness and stiffness, you rolled to his other side.

You could see nothing near, but you waited patiently again, came the cough, and there, between two rocks, he saw the gray head of a wolf.

The sharp ears did not stand up as straight as he had seen them.

On other wolves, the eyes were dough, and the head seemed a hang.

The animal open and shut its eyes frequently in the sunshine.

It seems sick.

As he looked, it coughed again.

This was really he thought.

He turned on the other side to see the reality of the world, which had been hidden from him before by his hallucination, with C still shown and the ship was still there, was it reality?

He closed his eyes for a long while in thought.

Then he remembered he had been traveling north by east, away from the dese divide and into the Copper Mine Valley.

This wide river was the copper mine.

That shining sea was the Arctic Ocean.

That ship was, Ah, fishing boat, which had wandered eased from the mouth of the Mackenzie River.

Now it was lying.

In coronation Gulf, he remembered the map that he had seen long ago.

It was all clear and reasonable to him.

He sat up and turned his attention to immediate affairs.

He had worn holes through the blanket wrappings and his feet were like shapeless pieces of meat.

His last blanket was gone.

His gun and knife were both lost.

He had also lost his hat somewhere with the matches in the band.

The match is against his chest was safe and dry inside the paper.

He looked at his watch.

It marked 11 oclock and was still going.

This proved that he had kept it wound.

It was calm, although very weak.

He had no feeling of pain.

It was not hungry.

The thought of food was not even pleasant to him.

Whatever he did was done entirely by reasoning.

He tore off the legs of his trousers to the knees and bound them about his feet.

Somehow he had succeeded in keeping the tin container.

He would have some hot water before he began.

What he knew was to be an awful journey to the ship.

His movements were slow.

He shook as if with the disease.

When he started to gather dried grasses, he found he could not rise to his feet.

You try it again and again.

Then he contented himself with moving about on his hands and knees.

Once he went near the sick wolf, the animal dragged itself out of the way, licking its face with the tongue, which seemed hardly toe have the strength to curl.

The man noticed that the tongue was not the customary healthy red, but was yellowish brown and covered with ah half dried coating.

After he drank some hot water, the man found he was able to stand.

You could even walk a swell as a dying man might be supposed to walk.

But every minute or two he was forced to rest.

His steps were unsteady, as where the steps of the wolf behind him.

That night, when the shining sea was hidden in the blackness, he knew he was nearer to it by no more than four miles through the night.

He heard the cough of the sick wolf.

Now then, the noises of the young caribou.

There was life all around him.

But it was strong life, very much alive and well.

He knew the sick wolf was following The sick man steps in the hope that the man would die first in the morning when he opened his eyes, he saw it looking at him with a hungry stare.

It stood with its tail between its legs like an unhappy dog.

The sun rose brightly in all morning.

The man headed toward the ship on the shining sea.

The weather was perfect.

It was the brief return of summer, which was usual in that country might continue for a week or tomorrow or the next day.