Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/218

204 night seized Geoff at once; it mastered also McNeal and Koehler stretched out beside him. From the other shelter Geoff heard the sound of talk and sometimes the shrillness of argument during the hours which the watches said were night; and he knew the men there were sleepless too.

They tried to fight this sleeplessness; and in those periods of the darkness still called daytime they tied sledge ropes together and each in turn went out and, with one end of the rope fast in the tent, tramped away from the shelter and up and down, holding the other end of the rope, till the cold exhausted him. But still this brought no sleep.

Margaret, clothed in her Eskimo garments, took this exercise like the men; but she alone did not need it. Through the endless periods known as nights she lay just beyond Geoff, quietly and evenly breathing. He put out an arm sometimes and touched her gently; then he lay a long time wondering about her.

In a way she was the cause of all the hardship suffered, the dangers passed through, the death possibly but little ahead. She was to