The words stirred and wakened him more than all her first aid. She needed him; she was pleading to him to get up and go on. Could he refuse that appeal? Could any wish of hers, as long as he lived and was able to strive for her, go ungranted? The blood mounted through his veins, awakened. A mysterious strength flowed back into his thews.
There could be no further question of giving up. He struggled with himself, and his voice was almost his own when he spoke. "Give me more food—and more whisky," he commanded. "Take some yourself too—you'll have to help me a lot going home. And give me your hands."
He struggled to his feet. He reeled, nearly fell; but her arms held him up. She gave him more chocolate and a swallow of the burning liquid.
"It's a race against time," she told him. "If I can get you into the cabin before the reaction comes, I can save you. Try with every muscle you've got, Bill—for me!"
She need make no other appeal. She took his hand, and they started mushing over the drifts.
The moose that stands at bay against the wolf pack, the ferocious little ermine in the grasp of the climbing marten never made a harder, more valiant fight than these two waged on the way to the cabin. There was no mercy for them in the biting cold. Bill was frightfully worn and spent from his experience of the day and the previous night, and Virginia had lent her own young strength to him. Often he reeled and faltered, and at such times her arm in his kept him up. The miles seemed innumerable and long.
A might that has its seat higher and beyond the mere energy-giving chemistry of their bodies came to their aid. Virginia had never dreamed that she possessed such power of endurance and unfaltering muscles: a spirit born of an unconquerable will rose within her and bore her on. She was aware of no physical pain; the magnificent exertion of her muscles was almost unconscious. Just as women fight for the lives of their babes she fought for him, as if it were the deepest instinct of her being. The thought of giving up was intolerable, and such spirit is the soul of victory!
They won at last. Without the stimulant and the nutritious food defeat would have been certain. But all these factors would have been unavailing except for the fighting spirit that her appeal to him had awakened and which she had found, full-grown, in her own soul.
They mused up to the cabin, and Harold stared at them like a lifeless thing as Bill reeled through the doorway. Virginia led him to her own cot, then drew the blankets over him. And she was not so exhausted but that she could continue the fight for his recovery.