How long ago that seemed! Was it minutes or hours? Downward and
towards the left lay the coulee. He could hardly fail to strike it.
Plunging headlong into the blizzard, he fought his way once more, step
by step.
"It was jolly well like a scrimmage," he said grimly to the storm
which began in his imagination to assume a kind of monstrous and savage
personality. It heartened him much to remember his sensations in many
a desperate struggle against the straining steaming mass of muscle and
bone in the old fierce football fights. He recalled, too, a word of his
old captain, "Never say die! The next minute may be better."
"Never say die!" he cried aloud in the face of his enemy. "But I wish to
heaven I could get up some of that heat just now. This cold is going to
be the death of me."
As he spoke he bumped into a small bushy spruce tree. "Hello! Here you
are, eh!" he cried, determined to be cheerful. "Glad to meet you. Hope
there are lots more of you." His hope was realised! A few more steps and
he found himself in the heart of a spruce thicket.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed. Then again--"Yes, thank God it is!" It
steadied his heart not a little to remember the picture in his mother's
Bible that had so often stirred his youthful imagination of One standing
in the fishing boat and bidding the storm be still.
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