alf 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.

Perforce now they must make a choice of what ideas they would keep. Some
things must be given up, just as some things had to be discarded when
they had lightened the sledge. All the lesser lumber had long since
gone. Certain bigger things still remained.

They held grimly to the idea of catching the Indian. Their natural love
of life held tenaciously to a hope of return. An equally natural hope
clung to the ridiculous idea that the impossible might happen, that the
needle should drop from the haystack, that the caribou might spring into
their view from the emptiness of space. Now it seemed that they must
make a choice between the first two.

"Dick," said Bolton, solemnly, "we've mighty little pemmican left. If we
turn around now, it'll just about get us back to the woods. If we go on
farther, we'll have to run into more food, or we'll never get out."

"I knew it," replied Dick.

"Well?"

Dick looked at him astonished. "Well, what?" he inquired.

"Shall we give it up?"

"Give it _up_!" cried the young man. "Of course not; what you thinking
of?"

"There's the caribou," suggested Sam, doubtfully; "or maybe Jingoss has
more grub than he's going to need. It's a slim chance."

They still further reduced the ration of pemmican. The malnutrition
began to play them tricks. It dizzied their brains, swarmed the vastness
with hordes of little, dancing black specks like mosquitoes. In the
morning every muscle of their bodies was stiffened to the consistency of
rawhide, and the movements necessary to loosen the fibres became an
agony hardly to be endured. Nothing of voluntary consciousness
remained, could remain, but the effort of lifting the feet, driving the
dogs, following the Trail; but involuntary consciousness lent them
strange hallucinations. They saw figures moving across the snow, but
when they steadied their vision, not