He awoke from a minute of dizzy oblivion. The world was veiled in the thickest fog he had ever seen. Nothing was visible. He could hear the sea and smell its freshness, but all around him was like a pressure of cold, wet steam.
By some intuition of direction he knew that his camp was out to the right of the valley. The thought of the fire, of food, roused a desire in him that was like a madness. He crawled through the snowslide that had filled the valley, came to its edge, and out upon the wet, stony earth.
His knees sank under him. He could not walk, but was reduced to creeping. He would have been an extraordinary sight for his Boston patients; wet to the skin, dirty, with a week’s growth of beard, his clothes torn and mud colored, covered with ice chips, as he crawled on all fours like a wild beast, still clutching the hatchet unconsciously, and muttering to himself.
Several times he sank in a heap, unable even to crawl. The earth seemed to heave and move under him, and strange shapes went past in the fog. He smelled, he thought, the faint sulphurous smell of his coal smoke—or was it hallucination? He crawled in that direction. An illusory voice spoke to him. He came in sight of his camp; dimly he saw his bark shelter, and beside it he saw a seated figure, a woman’s figure, wrapped in a dark poncho, with a striped scarf. It was Eva Morrison’s figure, and he knew that this, too, was an illusion which would presently dissolve.
CHAPTER XIX
RESURRECTION
He felt the ground warm under him, the divine warmth of the fire, and he let himself fall at full length and shut his eyes. A phantom voice faintly penetrated his ears.
“Are you hurt? Oh, you poor, poor boy! Where have you been?”
To answer was beyond him. It was all a strange dream. He felt himself gently pulled forward. The warmth grew yet more heavenly. His face was wiped; it must be a nurse, he thought, with a dim idea of a hospital. He was covered up with something. It seemed to him that some one had kissed him. It was a celestial dream.
He must really have lapsed into profound unconsciousness. He seemed to be dragged out of depths like death by somebody lifting his head, and repeatedly telling him to take something until the words penetrated to his mind. He opened his lips without opening his eyes, felt something warm and wet, swallowed obediently. It was soup, hot and strong. A few mouthfuls went down, and ran through his whole system like a stimulant. He looked up.
He saw a face that he knew. It was upside down as he looked at it. His head was on a woman’s lap, and she was holding the tin of soup to his lips. It was no hallucination. A sense of warm, full contentment came over him, and quite automatically he put the soup aside, put up his arm weakly, and drew that face down to his own.