Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/221

Rh same experiences of feeling must be seizing Latham. The man's ten years' advantage of Geoff gave Price no advantage in ability to bear their present privations. Rather Latham's longer possession of every luxury and of power to provide for himself left him more unable to understand that now he was helpless, that unless some fortune that he could not control should favour the party, he would starve, actually die from lack of food.

The realisation of this, when it came to Latham, sometimes frightened him as it did Geoff, but at other moments it angered him and made him burst out with ugly exasperation and rage that he could be threatened so. Geoff overheard expressions of this sometimes in the words which came to him in the night from the other shelter through the snow tunnel that connected the two.

"What did you expect?" Linn's voice was saying sarcastically in return to something from Latham. "A hot and cold bath and coffee and cantaloupe in the morning, sir?" Linn now was mimicking the subservience of a club waiter.