“'You are too weak,' she said. And I knew that she was right.
“As the pillar of fire died down until it was a mere bright spiral of gilded smoke, and after the sides of the schooner had burned to the water-line, leaving great benches of blackened ice about, we drew nearer and nearer to the lessening warmth. Darkness and cold and the northern silence shut us in.
“We spoke in whispers, but hope died in me with the fading fire. What chance for escape was there with a half-starved woman across a great snow-plain; and then through forests deep with the first snows and roamed by wolves, whose savageries I had tasted?
“Luckily there was no wind. Smaller and smaller was the circle of light, weaker and weaker the heat. And tireder and more tired grew our heads that could see no light of safety ahead.
“I think, sitting close together there, we dozed. Certainly not for long, however, because the pillar of fire, though now a mere thread, was still pointing a finger into le bon Dieu's heaven, when I heard a crunch, crunch!
“'Wolves!' I said to myself, coming to my senses with a jerk. I felt for a revolver, but the only one had been left in the cabin.
“'Dear Lord,' I prayed, 'spare us this.'
“But the crunch came nearer, nearer, like the soft foot-falls of many beasts, yet not quite like them either. I grasped a black-charred spar; ran it into a heap of red ashes to make it as deadly a weapon as possible. A little flame sprang from the pile, and in its light I went to grapple with this new danger.
(page 165)