full fury of the storm swooped upon him, enwrapping him, and
clutching at his breath, for an instant Pete Noel quailed. This was a
new adversary, with whom he had not braced his nerves to grapple. But
it was for an instant only. Then his weary spirit lifted itself, and
he looked grimly into the eye of the storm. The cold, the storm, the
hunger, he would face them all down, and win out yet. Lowering his
head, and pulling a flap of his blanket coat across his mouth to make
breathing easier, he plunged straight forward with what seemed like a
new lease of vigour.

Had the woods been near, or had he taken note of the weather in time,
Pete would have made for the shelter of the forest at once. But he
knew that, when last he looked, the track of the herd had been
straight down the middle of the ever-widening barren. By now he must
be a good two miles from the nearest cover; and he knew well enough
that, in the bewilderment of the storm, which blunted even such
woodcraft as his, and blurred not only his vision, but every other
sense as well, he could never find his way. His only hope was to keep
to the trail of the caribou. The beasts would either lie down or
circle to the woods. In such a storm as this, as he knew well enough,
no animal but man himself could hunt, or follow up the trail. There
was no one but man who could confront such a storm undaunted. The
caribou would forget both their cunning and the knowledge that they
were being hunted. He would come upon them, or they would lead him to
shelter. With an obstinate pride in his superiority to the other
creatures of the wilderness, he scowled defiantly at the storm, and
because he was overwrought with hunger and fatigue, he muttered to
himself as he went, cursing the elements that assailed him so
relentlessly.

For hours he floundered on doggedly, keeping the trail by feeling
rather than by sight, so thick were the cutting swirls of snow. As the
drift heaped denser and denser about his legs, the terrible effort, so
long sustained, began to tell on him, till his progress became only a
snail's pace. Little by little, in the obstinate effort to conserve
strength and vitality, his faculties all withdrew into themselves, and
concentrated themselves upon the one purpose--to keep going onward. He
began to feel the lure of just giving up. He began to think of the
warmth and rest he could get, the release from the mad chaos of the
wind, by the simple expedient of burrowing deep