not shiver. Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would thaw out; and, anyway,
if he ran far enough, he would reach camp and the boys. Without doubt he
would lose some fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys would
take care of him, and save the rest of him when he got there. And at the
same time there was another thought in his mind that said he would never
get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away, that the
freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff
and dead. This thought he kept in the background and refused to
consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward and demanded to be heard,
but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things.

It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet so frozen that
he could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight of
his body. He seemed to himself to skim along above the surface and to
have no connection with the earth. Somewhere he had once seen a winged
Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming over
the earth.

His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one flaw in
it: he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled, and finally he
tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed. He
must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely walk and
keep on going. As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was
feeling quite warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it even
seemed that a warm glow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet, when
he touched his nose or cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not
thaw them out. Nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the
thought came to him that the frozen portions of his body must be
extending. He tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, to think of
something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused, and