To such adventures with all their natural exaggeration John Gray had
listened many a time as they were recited by old hunters regarding earlier
days in the wilderness; for at this period it was thought that the cougar
had retreated even from the few cane-brakes that remained unexplored near
the settlements. But the deer, timidest of animals, with fatal persistence
returns again and again to its old-time ranges and coverts long after the
bison, the bear, and the elk have wisely abandoned theirs; and the cougar
besets the deer.
It was these stories that he remembered now and that filled him with horror,
with the faintness of death. His turn had come at last, he said; and as to
the others, it had come without warning. He was too shackled with weakness
to cry out, to stand up. The windows on each side were fastened; there was
no escape. There was nothing in the room on which he could lay hold--no
weapon or piece of wood, or bar of iron. If a struggle took place, it would
be a clean contest between will and will, courage and courage, strength and
strength, the love of prey and the love of life.It was well for him that
this was not the first time he had ever faced death, as he had supposed; and
that the first thought that had rushed into his consciousness before
returned to him now. That thought was this: that death had come far too
soon, putting an end to his plans to live, to act, to succeed, to make a
great and a good place for himself in this world before he should leave it
for another. Out of this a second idea now liberated itself with incredible
quickness and spread through him like a living flame: it was his lifelong
attitude of victory, his lifelong determination that no matter what opposed
him he must conquer. Young as he was, this triumphant habit had already
yielded him its due result that growth of character which arises silently
within us, built up out of a myriad nameless elements--beginning at the very
bottom of the ocean of unconsciousness; growing as from cell to cell, atom
to atom--the mere dust of victorious experience--the hardening deposits of
the ever-living, ever-working, ever-rising will; until at last, based on
eternal quietude below and lifting its wreath of palms above the waves of
life, it stands finished, indestructible, our inward rock of defence against
every earthly storm.
Soon his face was worth going far to see. He had grown perfectly calm. His
weakness had been followed by a sense of strength wholly extraordinary. His
old training in the rough athletics of the wilderness had made him supple,
agile, wary, long-winded. His eyes hadnever known what it was to be subdued;
he had never taken them from the cougar.