It was the outfit of a man who had gone unfearing to the rough edge of the world.

And now what was left of it was returning with him.

To Challoner there was something of human comradeship in these remnants of things that had gone through the greater part of a year's fight with him.

The canoe was warped and battered and patched; smoke and storm had blackened his tent until it was the colour of rusty char, and his grub sacks were next to empty.
Over a small fire title contents of a pan and a pot were brewing when he returned with Miki at his heels, and close to the heat was a battered and mended reflector in which a bannock of flour and water was beginning to brown.

In one of the pots was coffee, in the other a boiling fish.
Miki sat down on his angular haunches so that the odour of the fish filled his nostrils.