He followed, sickened by the blow, but gaining strength as he pursued.
Ahead of him he could hear the sound of the toboggan and the cautious
lashing of a whip over the backs of the tired huskies. The sounds
filled him with fierce strength. He wiped away the warm trickle of
blood that ran over his cheek, and began to run, slowly at first,
swinging in the easy wolf-lope of the forest runner, with his elbows
close to his sides.

At that pace he could have followed for hours, losing when the pack
took a spurt, gaining when they lagged, an insistent Nemesis just
behind when the weighted dogs lay down in their traces. But there was
neither the coolness of Mukee nor the cleverness of Jean de Gravois in
the manner of Jan's running. When he heard the cracking of the whip
growing fainter, he dropped his arms straight to his sides and ran
more swiftly, his brain reeling with the madness of his desire to
reach the sledge--to drag from it the man who had struck him, to choke
life from the face that haunted that mental picture of his, grinning
at him and gloating always from the shadow world, just beyond the
pale, sweet loveliness of the woman who lived in it.

That picture came to him now as he ran, more and more vividly, and
from out of it the woman urged him on to the vengeance which she
demanded of him, her great eyes glowing like fire, her beautiful face
torn with the agony which he had last seen in it in life.

To Jan Thoreau there seemed almost to come from that face a living
voice, crying to him its prayer for retribution, pleading with him to
fasten his lithe, brown hands about the throat of the monster upon the
sledge ahead, and choke from it all life. It drove reason from him,
leaving him with the one thought that the monster was almost within