Oh, the way was cruel! He could not see to avoid the stinging lash of the spruce needles, the cruel blows of the branches. Already the attempt began to partake of a quality of nightmare,—a blind and stumbling advance over infinite difficulties through the infinity of time. It was like some torment of an evil Hereafter,—eternal, remorseless, wholly without hope. Many times he sprawled at full length, and always it was harder to force himself to his feet.
Five steps on, halting and groping, then five steps more: thus the lone figure journeyed through the winter forest. The seconds dragged into the minutes, the minutes into hours. The cold deepened; likely it was the bitter hour just after dawn. The hand with which he groped for the tracks had lost all power of feeling.
He could not judge distance or time. Already it seemed to him that he had been upon the journey endless hours. Because of the faint grayness before his eyes he judged it was broad daylight: perhaps already the day was giving over to darkness. He didn't know how far he had come. The only thought he had left was always to count his terrible five steps, and count five more.
Nothing else mattered. He had for the moment at least lost sight of all other things. His thought was not so clear now; it seemed to him that the forest was no longer silent. There were confused murmurings in his ear, a curious confusion and perplexity in his brain. It was hard to remember who he was and where he was going. Just to count his steps, stoop, grope and find the snowshoe trail, then journey on again.
He tried to increase the number of steps between his gropings—first six, then seven. Above seven, however, the trail was so hard to find that time was lost rather than gained. Yes, he thought it was still daylight. Sometimes he seemed to feel the sunlight on his face. He was not cold now, and even the pain was gone from his hips and thighs.
He was mistaken in this, however. The pain still sent its fearful messages to his brain, but in his growing stupor he was no longer aware of them. Even his hand didn't hurt him now. He wondered if it were frozen; yet it was still sensitive to the depressions in the drifts. It could still grope through the snow and find the tracks.
"I can't go on!" his voice suddenly spoke aloud. "I can't go—any more."
The words seemed to come from an inner man, without volition on his part. He was a little amazed to hear them. Yet the time had not yet come to stop and rest. The tracks still led him on.
Always, it seemed to him, he had to grope longer to find the indentations in the snow. The simple reason was that the motor centers of his brain had begun to be impaired by cold and exhaustion, and he could no longer walk in a straight line. He found out, however, that the trail usually lay to the right rather than to his left. He was taking a shorter step with his left than with his right—the same tendency that often makes a tried woodsman walk in a great circle—and he thus bore constantly to the left. Soon it became necessary to drop his formula down to six, then to the original five.
On and on, through the long hours. But the fight was almost done. Exhaustion and hunger, but cold most of all, were swiftly breaking him down. He advanced with staggering steps.