The Land of the Musk-Ox 



trying to invent, to put into practical use an idea he 

 had once conceived. 



Hour after hour he lay under his blankets unable 

 to sleep, and listened to the north wind. Sometimes 

 Rea mumbled in his slumbers; once his giant form 

 started up, and he muttered a woman s name. 

 Shadows from the fire flickered on the walls, vision 

 ary, spectral shadows, cold and gray, fitting the 

 north. At such times he longed with all the power 

 of his soul to be among those scenes far southward, 

 which he called home. For days Rea never spoke a 

 word, only gazed into the fire, ate and slept. Jones, 

 drifting far from his real self, feared the strange 

 mood of the trapper and sought to break it, but 

 without avail. More and more he reproached him 

 self, and singularly on the one fact that, as he did 

 not smoke himself, he had brought only a small store 

 of tobacco. Rea, inordinate and inveterate smoker, 

 had puffed away all the weed in clouds of white, 

 then had relapsed into gloom. 



167 



