Little by little such dwindling of the materials for diverse observation, in alliance with the too-severe labour and the starving, brought about a strange concentration of ideas. The inner world seemed to undergo the same process of simplification as the outer. Extraneous considerations disappeared. The entire cosmos of experience came to be an expanse of white, themselves, and the Trail. These three reacted one on the other, and outside of them there was no reaction.
In the expanse of white was no food: their food was dwindling; the Trail led on into barren lands where no food was to be had. That was the circle that whirled insistent in their brains.
At night they sank down, felled by the sheer burden of weariness, and no matter how exhausted they might be the Trail continued, springing on with the same apparently tireless energy toward its unknown goal in the North. Gradually they lost sight of the ultimate object of their quest. It became obscured by the immediate object, and that was the following of the Trail. They forgot that a man had made it, or if for a moment it did occur to them that it was the product of some agency outside of and above itself, that agent loomed vaguely as a mysterious, extra-human power, like the winds or the cold or the great Wilderness itself. It did not seem possible that he could feel the need for food, for rest, that ever his vital forces could wane. In the north was starvation for them, a starvation to which they drew ever nearer day by day, but irresistibly the notion obsessed them that this forerunner, the forerunner of the Trail, proved no such material necessities, that he drew his sustenance from his environment in some mysterious manner not to be understood. Always on and on and on the Trail was destined to lead them until they died, and then the maker of it,—not Jingoss, not the Weasel, the defaulter, the man of flesh and blood and nerves and thoughts and the capacities for suffering,—but a being elusive as the aurora, an embodiment of that dread country, a servant of the unfriendly North, would return as he had done.
Over the land lay silence. The sea has its undertone on the stillest nights; the woods are quiet with an hundred lesser noises; but here was absolute, terrifying, smothering silence,—the suspension of all sound, even the least,—looming like a threatening cloud larger and more dreadful above the cowering imagination. The human soul demanded to shriek aloud in order to preserve its sanity, and yet a whisper uttered over against the heavy portent of this universal stillness seemed a profanation that left the spirit crouched beneath a fear of retribution. And then suddenly the aurora, the only privileged voice, would crackle like a silken banner.
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.