"
"But you--"
"I chance to be the exception. Why I was spared, I do not know. It
just so happened. At first I was vilely treated, beaten by the women
and children, clothed in vermin-infested mangy furs, and fed on refuse.
They were utterly heartless. How I managed to survive is beyond me;
but I know that often and often, at first, I meditated suicide. The
only thing that saved me during that period from taking my own life was
the fact that I quickly became too stupefied and bestial, what of my
suffering and degradation. Half-frozen, half-starved, undergoing
untold misery and hardship, beaten many and many a time into
insensibility, I became the sheerest animal.
"On looking back much of it seems a dream. There are gaps which my
memory cannot fill. I have vague recollections of being lashed to a
sled and dragged from camp to camp and tribe to tribe. Carted about
for exhibition purposes, I suppose, much as we do lions and elephants
and wild men. How far I so journeyed up and down that bleak region I
cannot guess, though it must have been several thousand miles. I do
know that when consciousness returned to me and I really became myself
again, I was fully a thousand miles to the west of the point where I
was captured.
"It was springtime, and from out of a forgotten past it seemed I
suddenly opened my eyes. A reindeer thong was about my waist and made
fast to the tail-end of a sled.
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