circles like a leaf in a whirlwind, lying down, and rolling over and
over, sidewise and heels over head, and pouring forth a tumultuous flood
of hysterical cries and sobs and gasping mutterings. When I ran up to
him to shake him, fearing he might die of joy, he flashed off two or
three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion; then, turning
suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself at my face,
almost knocking me down, all the time screeching and screaming and
shouting as if saying, "Saved! saved! saved!" Then away again, dropping
suddenly at times with his feet in the air, trembling and fairly
sobbing. Such passionate emotion was enough to kill him. Moses' stately
song of triumph after escaping the Egyptians and the Red Sea was nothing
to it. Who could have guessed the capacity of the dull, enduring little
fellow for all that most stirs this mortal frame? Nobody could have
helped crying with him!

But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy.
So I ran ahead, calling him in as gruff a voice as I could command to
come on and stop his nonsense, for we had far to go and it would soon be
dark. Neither of us feared another trial like this. Heaven would surely
count one enough for a lifetime. The ice ahead was gashed by thousands
of crevasses, but they were common ones. The joy of deliverance burned
in us like fire, and we ran without fatigue, every muscle with immense
rebound glorying in its strength. Stickeen flew across everything in his
way, and not till dark did he settle into his normal fox-like trot. At
last the cloudy mountains came in sight, and we soon felt the solid rock
beneath our feet, and were safe. Then came weakness. Danger had
vanished, and so had our strength. We tottered down the lateral moraine
in the dark, over boulders and tree trunks, through the bushes and
devil-club thickets of the grove where we had sheltered ourselves in the
morning, and across the level mud-slope of the terminal moraine. We