He was still several
miles from the tilt where he had a scant supply that had been reserved
for his journey home. To proceed to the tilt was obviously impossible,
and he could only perish by remaining where he was.
Utterly exhausted after a fruitless effort to flounder forward, he sat
down upon his flatsled, and looked out over the silent snow waste.
Weakened with hunger, it seemed to him that he had reached the end of
his endurance. So far as he knew there was not another human being
within a hundred miles of where he sat, and he had no expectation or
slightest hope of any one coming to his assistance. "I was scrammed,"
said he, which meant, in our vernacular, he was "all in."
Gilbert is a fine Christian man, and all the time, as he told me in
relating his experience, he had been praying God to show him a way to
safety. He never was a coward, and he was not afraid to die, for he
had faced death many times before and men of the wilderness become
accustomed to the thought that sometime, out there in the silence and
alone, the hand of the grim messenger may grasp them.
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