There is always a morning.
Strange, unreal gray permeated the void. Rolling on billows of nausea, Nathan recovered groggy senses. He was freezing cold; he was being consumed by fire. Where was he? His mouth was dried leather. Where was he? He had no eyes; they had been burned out, or they were in the process of burning out right now. Where was he?
He moved and it agonized him. He uttered a piteous cry for no one to hear. He fell back. He moved again. He got up on an elbow,—the length of an arm. He fell back again. Where was he?
It came to him where he was. He was lost in Siberia. He must go on.
There are depths of endurance in the human spirit which no man can assay until he has a last great need for taking their fathoms.
Nathan got up—reeling. He did go on.
The quickened circulation of his blood caused by the exertion warmed his stiffened limbs somewhat. Joints bent more easily with use.
The events of the past night finally came to him in full terror. He remembered he might yet be only a mile or so from the tatterdemalion crew in that horror-village. He drove himself forward faster.
He drank mud water, foul with grit, to assuage a burning thirst.
The world was gray now. There was no longer need for groping. But it was a ghastly, grisly grayness. At any moment phantoms might loom in the mist. There was light enough to examine his arm. Mercifully he could not see how bad a wound the bullet had made, what had happened. It was too near his shoulder in the back.