Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/220

206 hope during each march, while they dragged themselves south along the coast, had been to find the Eskimos supposed to be somewhere on those shores. But after each march the Eskimos and the land and strip of sea where food might be found still were somewhat ahead—always ahead, vaguely retreating before them as they exhausted themselves in their effort to advance, mocking them and drawing them on.

To Geoff, born and brought up under conditions in which he never could have considered actual want or lack of food as possible, it sometimes was incredible that he and his sister and the others would starve or freeze, actually die, from having no food and no fuel to keep them warm, after the last small supplies on their sledges were gone. The cutting down of their rations and their other discomforts still often seemed to Geoff as a voluntary matter, which they could end or alter at their will. Then at other moments the terrible reality of starvation stared like a spectre before him; he felt himself weak, cold, dying, and the realness of their necessity, their desperate extremity, overwhelmed him. He could understand how these