"Yet on and on we toiled, dragging him by turns, our weary limbs sinking deep at every step. When I look back to those sufferings, I frequently think that I must have been partially insane; but it would seem that, like one in a dream, I went through all the formula of life like a sane person.
"On reaching the thicket, it proved to be one of old and half-decayed firs; then we proceeded to suck portions of the bark greedily. After this we became aware, for the first time, of the absence of Urbain Gautier and little Willy.
"They had disappeared in the twilight!"
Here Captain Binnacle interrupted his narrative by expressing a fear that he wearied us; but we begged of him to proceed, as we were anxious to know how those adventures ended by the shore of the Unexplored Lake.
CHAPTER XXVII.
A still small voice spoke unto me,
"Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be!"
Then to the still small voice I said,
"Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made." TENNYSON.
"Nestling close to a rock, from the side of which the snow formed an arch, we found some moss, which we ate with avidity, and then some sprigs of savine, which generally grows in the clefts of the rocks all over the island and the Labrador coast, yielding the berry from which the spruce beer is made. With tears of thankfulness we devoured them, and were surmising what had become of Urbain, when about nine o'clock by the captain's watch he appeared, but without Scotch Willy, who had, he said, died about an hour ago, and been buried by him among the snow.
"'Where?' asked the captain, in a low voice, for Dacres, and two others of our famine-stricken band, were in a dying condition.
"'Did you observe an old peeled trunk of a tree about a mile distant?'
"'Yes.'