His fingers in the wet mitt felt bitterly cold. Taking it off he drew his hand through the loose sleeve of his coat and shirt and cuddled it against his warm body while he stood gazing at the height of those forbidding sides. All the time his glance rested on their inaccessibility his mind was busy reckoning how low they ran in the cave behind the wolf.
“I’ve got to do it! I’ve got to do it! I must get out of here before night,” wailed Kak. He turned and looked undaunted down the tunnel.
“I’ve just got to!”
Screwing his courage to the breaking point and grasping his knife more firmly the second prisoner crept forward to the angle in the wall. He shoved his head around cautiously. There stood the wolf exactly as Kak had left him. He seemed too frightened even to blink his eyes.
Quite aside from the fear of combat Kak was reluctant to attack this poor caged animal.
“If it only wasn’t so narrow there I could shove in and shove him out—given a chance he’d split past me like the wind.”
But it was narrow in the cave, much too narrow for any maneuver of that sort.
“I’ve got to kill him and haul him out! I haven’t any choice,” cried the boy.
KAK RUSHED FORWARD WITH HIS KNIFE READY.