upon him and saturating his miserable body with its warmth. A fine
day, he thought. Perhaps he could manage to locate himself. By a
painful effort he rolled over on his side. Below him flowed a wide
and sluggish river. Its unfamiliarity puzzled him. Slowly he
followed it with his eyes, winding in wide sweeps among the bleak,
bare hills, bleaker and barer and lower-lying than any hills he had
yet encountered. Slowly, deliberately, without excitement or more
than the most casual interest, he followed the course of the
strange stream toward the sky-line and saw it emptying into a
bright and shining sea. He was still unexcited. Most unusual, he
thought, a vision or a mirage - more likely a vision, a trick of
his disordered mind. He was confirmed in this by sight of a ship
lying at anchor in the midst of the shining sea. He closed his
eyes for a while, then opened them. Strange how the vision
persisted! Yet not strange. He knew there were no seas or ships
in the heart of the barren lands, just as he had known there was no
cartridge in the empty rifle.

He heard a snuffle behind him - a half-choking gasp or cough. Very
slowly, because of his exceeding weakness and stiffness, he rolled
over on his other side. He could see nothing near at hand, but he
waited patiently. Again came the snuffle and cough, and outlined
between two jagged rocks not a score of feet away he made out the
gray head of a wolf. The sharp ears were not pricked so sharply as
he had seen them on other wolves; the eyes were bleared and
bloodshot, the head seemed to droop limply and forlornly. The
animal blinked continually in the sunshine. It seemed sick. As he
looked it snuffled and coughed again.

This, at least, was real, he thought, and turned on the other side