Ah, how I have labored! I have felt my muscles crack,
I have dropped like a log from sheer weariness. Talk of tortures;
which of them have I not felt, with the pains and faintness of
exposure and hunger racking me from head to foot? Have I stopped for
snow and ice? Have I stopped for anguish? Never; I have worked,
worked, worked, with the tears of pain rolling down my cheeks, with my
body gnawed by hunger. That night, in some way, the boxes slipped and
fell overboard as I was shifting them; just slipped out of my grasp as
if on purpose, they knowing all the time that they were my last. Home
I came, empty-handed, and found you there! I would have taken your
supplies, over on the north beach, that night, yes, without pity, had
I not felt sure of those last boxes; but I never rob needlessly. You
look at me with scorn? You are thinking of those dead men! But what
are they to Silver,--the rough common fellows,--and the wolf standing
at the castle door! Believe me, though, I try everything before I
resort to this, and only twice out of the four times have I caught
anything with my tree-hung light; once it was a vessel loaded with
provisions, and once it was a schooner with grain from Chicago, which
washed overboard and was worthless.
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