Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/90

  over it. We paddled all day long, without seeming to get any nearer; then Frederick grew sulky all at once and threw down his paddle with the remark that he was going to die.

You certainly will,' said I, 'unless you keep at work.' I had filled a water-jug that I found in the canoe before we started, but we had nothing to eat since afternoon of the day before, and what we got then was not of a tissue-building character.

I am going to die,' Frederick repeated—and then, confound him, he lay down in the bottom of the canoe and did die!"

I grunted—for that seemed to me to be an adequate epitaph for such a person as I fancied Frederick to have been.

"I did not discover it at once," Leyden went on, "but when I did I was rather relieved, as it is harder to share one's nerve with another man than one's food. I slid him over the side of the canoe and kept on with my paddling. Really, Doctor, that day [ 74 ]