At first the world in the vastness of its spaces seemed to become bigger and bigger.  Again abruptly it resumed its normal proportions, but they, the observers of it, had been struck small.  To their own minds they seemed like little black insects crawling painfully.  In the distance these insects crawled was a disproportion to the energy expended, a disproportion disheartening, filling the soul with the despair of an accomplishment that could mean anything in the following of that which made the Trail.

Always they ate pemmican.  Of this there remained a fairly plentiful supply, but the dog meat was running low.  It was essential that the team be well fed.  Dick or Sam often travelled the entire day a quarter of a mile one side or the other, hoping thus to encounter game, but without much success.  A fox or so, a few plarmigan, that was all.  These they saved for the dogs.  Three times a day they boiled tea and devoured the little square of pemmican.  It did not supply the bulk their digestive organs needed, and became in time almost nauseatingly unpalatable, but it nourished.  That, after all, was the main thing.  The privation carved the flesh from their muscles, carved the muscles themselves to leanness.

But in spite of the best they could do, the dog feed ran out.  There remained but one thing to do.  Already the sledge was growing lighter, and three dogs would be quite adequate for the work.  They killed Wolf, the surly and stupid “husky.”  Every scrap they saved, even to the entrails, which froze at once to solidity.  The remaining dogs were put on half rations, just sufficient to keep up their strength.  The starvation told on their tempers.  Especially did Claire, the sledge-dog, heavy with young, and ravenous to feed their growth, wander about like a spirit, whining mournfully and sniffing the barren breeze.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The journey extended over a month.  The last three weeks of it were starvation.  At first this meant merely discomfort and the bearing of a certain amount of pain.  Later it became acute suffering.  Later still it developed into a necessity for proving what virtue resided in the bottom of these men’s souls.

Perforce now they must make a choice of what ideas they would keep.  Some things must be given up, just as some things had to be discarded when they had lightened the sledge.  All the lesser lumber had long since gone.  Certain bigger things still remained.

They held grimly to the idea of catching the Indian.  Their natural love of life held tenaciously to a hope of return.  An equally natural hope clung to the ridiculous idea that the impossible might happen, that the needle should drop from the haystack, that the caribou might spring into their view from the emptiness of space.  Now it seemed that they must make a choice between the first two.

“Dick,” said Bolton, solemnly, “we’ve mighty little pemmican left.  If we turn around now, it’ll just about get us back to the woods.  If we go on farther, we’ll have to run into more food, or we’ll never get out.”