NOTES FROM DIARY KEPT AT QtttCKIOCK. 133 



ing seemed so hopeless that I almost longed 

 for the moment to come when I should fall 

 exhausted in the snow, and bury the agony I 

 was then suffering in sleep, although it might 

 be the sleep of death. The sensations of that 

 night I shall never forget. In the early even- 

 ing I had felt frightened, but this feeling soon 

 passed away. Hope then vanished, and a kind 

 of desperate and savage courage to fight against 

 fate as long as I could stand up had usurped 

 its place, and I dashed on through the blinding 

 snow with feelings of reckless exultation. Every 

 time that a wild gust of wind swept by me, I 

 fancied I heard the laugh of the " Spirit of the 

 Storm," as if mocking me, and on every such 

 occasion I felt fresh nerve and courage. Such 

 curious thoughts came into my head; trifling 

 incidents of the past, long since forgotten, crowded 

 on my mind, and the whole history of a life seemed 

 to be condensed in the few hours of that dreadful 

 night. We read of the horrid sensations of sailors 

 cast away at sea upon a raft, when all hope has 

 left them, and, maddened by hunger and despair, 

 murder and cannibalism glare in the eyes of men 

 who till then had been as sworn comrades 

 and brothers. I can well now believe all I have 

 read on this horrid theme. I had no incitement 

 to cannibalism, for I was alone, and, moreover, 



