They _were_ the survival of the fittest--these men and dogs.

They had gone through the great test of life in the raw, as the pyramids and the sphinx had outlived the ordeals of the centuries; they were different; they were proven; they were of another kind of flesh and blood than he had known--and they fascinated him.

They stood for more than romance and adventure, for more than tragedy or possible joy; they were making no fight for riches--no fight for power, or fame, or great personal achievement.

Their struggle in this great, white world--terrible in its emptiness, its vastness, and its mercilessness for the weak--was simply a struggle that they might _live_.
The thought staggered him.

Could there be joy in that--in a mere existence without the thousand pleasures and luxuries and excitements that he had known?
He drank deeply of the keen air as he asked himself the question.