drowned in some earlier desperate attempt to reach the shore; had he
been an ordinary bold man, he would have succeeded in transferring
himself to the branches of some obstructing tree; but he was neither,
and he clung to his broken raft-like berth with an endurance that
was half the paralysis of terror and half the patience of habitual
misfortune. Eventually he was caught in a side current, swept to the
bank, and cast ashore on an unexplored wilderness.

His first consciousness was one of hunger that usurped any sentiment
of gratitude for his escape from drowning. As soon as his cramped limbs
permitted, he crawled out of the bushes in search of food. He did
not know where he was; there was no sign of habitation--or even
occupation--anywhere. He had been too terrified to notice the direction
in which he had drifted--even if he had possessed the ordinary knowledge
of a backwoodsman, which he did not. He was helpless. In his bewildered
state, seeing a squirrel cracking a nut on the branch of a hollow tree
near him, he made a half-frenzied dart at the frightened animal, which
ran away. But the same association of ideas in his torpid and confused
brain impelled him to search for the squirrel's hoard in the hollow
of the tree. He ate the few hazel-nuts he found there, ravenously. The
purely animal instinct satisfied, he seemed to have borrowed from it a
certain strength and intuition. He limped through the thicket not
unlike some awkward, shy quadrumane, stopping here and there to peer
out through the openings over the marshes that lay beyond. His sight,
hearing, and even the sense of smell had become preternaturally acute.
It was the latter which suddenly arrested his steps with the odor
of dried fish. It had a significance beyond the mere instincts of
hunger--it indicated the contiguity of some Indian encampment. And as
such--it meant danger, torture, and death.