Shad Trowbridge stood dazed, as one in a dream--a horrid1, awful dream. He looked through a haze2, and what he saw was distorted, unreal, terrible. The suffering creatures about him were spectral3 phantoms4 of the nether5 world, the shimmering6 rime7, a symbol of death, the endless snow the white robe of the grave quickly to cover them all.
A sudden stillness fell upon the camp, to be presently broken by the agonised scream of a woman, shrill8 and startling, followed by wailings and melancholy9 moans. The Spirit of Death had snatched away her favourite son.
A sickening nausea10 overtook Shad, and he sank upon his toboggan, faint and dizzy with an overpowering weakness. His imagination was getting the better of him.
It is always dangerous and sometimes fatal for one to permit the imagination to assert itself in seasons of peril11. Will power to put away thoughts of to-morrow, to think only of to-day, to do to-day the thing which necessity requires, coupled with a determination never to abandon hope, is a paramount12 essential for the successful explorer to possess.
In this moment of hopeless surrender Shad felt Manikawan's hand rest lightly upon his shoulder for an instant, and looking up he saw her standing13 before him, tall, straight, commanding, and as she looked that day on the river bank when she bade him and Bob wait for her return to free them from their island prison.
"The friend of White Brother of the Snow is not a coward. He is not afraid of the Spirit of Hunger. He is not afraid of the Spirit of Death. He is brave. He once outwitted the Matchi Manitu of the River. He will outwit the Spirit of Hunger. He will outwit the Spirit of Death. The friend of White Brother of the Snow is brave. He is not afraid to die."
The words were unintelligible15 to him, but their import was unmistakable. She, a young Indian maiden16, was offering him encouragement, and recalling him to his manhood.
He arose to his feet, ashamed that she had read his mind, ashamed that she had found it necessary to recall him from a lapse17 into his foolish weakness which must have seemed to her like cowardice18.
But he remembered now that he was a man--a white man--and because he was a white man, the physical equal and mental superior of any savage19 there. Looking into Manikawan's eyes, he made an unspoken vow21 that she should never again have cause to chide22 him.
Dawn was breaking, and in the growing light a half-dozen lodges24 were to be seen. At one side and alone stood a deerskin tent of peculiar25 form. It was a high tent of exceedingly small circumference26, and where the smoke opening was provided and the poles protruded27 at the top of the ordinary wigwam, this was tightly closed. It was the medicine lodge23 of the shaman.
Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn had entered one of the lodges immediately after the tumult28 caused by their arrival had subsided29, and Manikawan now followed her mother into another lodge. There were no Indians visible. The moans of the grief-stricken mother, rising above the voices of men in the lodge which Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn had entered, were the only sounds.
The air was bitterly cold, but the tragedy enacting30 around him had for a time rendered Shad quite insensible to it. When he did finally realise that, standing inactive, he was numbed31 and chilled, he still lingered a little before joining Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn, dreading32 to enter the famine-stricken lodges.
At last, however, necessity drove him to do so, and within the lodge he discovered that a council was in progress. In the centre a fire burned, and around it the men, solemn and dignified33, sat in a circle. One after another of the Indians spoke20 in earnest debate. They were considering what action they should take to preserve their lives, and Shad, as deeply interested as any, felt aggrieved34 that he could not immediately learn the final result of the conference, which came to an end as the sun cast its first feeble rays over the barren ranges that marked the southeastern horizon.
When the council closed the Indians filed out of the lodge, and one, a tall old man, fantastically attired35 in skins, entered the medicine lodge alone, carefully closing the entrance after him to exclude any ray of light.
Immediately drum beats were heard within the tent, accompanied by a low groaning36 and moaning, which gradually increased in volume and pitch until presently it became a high, penetrating37, blood-curdling screech38. This continued for perhaps half an hour, the drum beats never ceasing their monotonous39 rat-tat-tat.
The shaman, or medicine man, thus working himself into a frenzy40, at length believed he saw within the lodge the ghostly form of the particular Matchi Manitu, or evil spirit, responsible for the disappearance41 of the caribou42 and the resulting famine.
This spirit's wrath43 it was believed had for some reason unknown to the Indians been aroused against them. Only the shaman could get into communication with the spirit, and learn from it what course the Indians would be required to pursue to placate44 its wrath, and remove its curse.
When the appearance of the spirit was announced, the shaman began to supplicate45 and implore46 the Matchi Manitu to withdraw from the people the pursuit of Famine; to return the caribou to the land; and to preserve the lives of the dying.
Presently in tones of joy the shaman announced that he had succeeded in enlisting47 the services of the Matchi Manitu, and with the announcement the din14 within the lodge ceased, and for several minutes mysterious whisperings were heard.
Suddenly the shaman threw over the lodge, and in a state of exhaustion48 tottered49 forward. Still under the influence of the paroxysms into which he had worked himself, he delivered in a wandering, disconnected jumble50 of meaningless sentences the demands of the Matchi Manitu. These consisted of many unreasonable51 and impossible feats52 that the people were required to accomplish before the Spirit of Starvation--the Gaunt Gray Wolf--would cease to follow upon their trail.
The Indians began at once to break camp. Sishetakushin had reported no caribou to the southward. Their only remaining hope was to reach the haven53 of Ungava post to the northward54; and they were to begin the life-and-death struggle northward at once--a struggle in which many were to fall.
A sense of vast relief was experienced by Shad when Sishetakushin resumed the march. Famished55 and weak as he was, this was inexpressibly preferable to a continuance with the starving crowd, and he turned his back upon the camp, little caring whence their trail led.
For a while they continued northward upon the frozen bed of a stream, which they had been following for several days, then a sharp turn was made to the eastward56, and as the sun was setting they came upon the ice of a wide lake.
At the end of a half-hour of slow plodding57 across an arm of the lake, they entered the edge of sparsely58 wooded forest and halted. Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn began at once to remove the snow from the top of what appeared to be a high drift, and a little below the surface uncovered the roof of a cache similar to the one they had made on the shores of the Great Lake of the Indians, where Shad and Ungava Bob had found them.
Shad's heart gave a bound when the object of the journey was revealed to him. Here was food and promise of life! And Bob's words, so often repeated when they were stranded59 on the island, flashed into his mind:
"It's th' Lard's way. He's watchin' you when you thinks He's losin' track o' you. He's takin' care o' you an' you does your best t' take care o' yourself."
Manikawan and her mother stretched the deerskin cover upon wigwam poles used the previous summer and still standing near the lake, and Shad cleared the snow from the interior of the wigwam, while the women broke boughs60 and laid the bed.
In the meantime, Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn opened the cache and transferred its precious contents to the wigwam. A fire was kindled61, and in the cosy62 warmth of their shelter they broke their fast, which had now extended over a period of thirty-six hours.
The small portion of dried caribou meat doled63 out to each was far from satisfying. Some of the tea which Ungava Bob had given the Indians still remained. A kettle of this was brewed64, and it served to stimulate65 and warm them. Then they lighted their pipes and for a time smoked in silence.
At length Sishetakushin, turning to Mookoomahn, began:
"On the Lake of the Beaver66 to the northward we have a small store of atuk weas (deer's meat). We also have there the cover of a lodge. Three suns will pass before we can reach this store of food. On the Great Lake we have another store.
"Sishetakushin and the woman will travel to the Lake of the Beaver. With the store of provisions and the lodge which we find on the Lake of the Beaver we will travel northward to the lodge of the white man, where the water of the river joins the big sea water, and where we shall find food.
"Mookoomahn and the maiden, with the friend of White Brother of the Snow, will travel southward to the Great Lake. Mookoomahn will show the white man the way to the lodge of White Brother of the Snow. Then he will return to the Great Lake and trap the marten and the mink67.
"When the sun grows strong, and drives away the Spirit of the Frost, Mookoomahn will travel northward to the Lake of the Beaver. There he will find Sishetakushin and the woman to welcome him. He will take his food from the waters as he travels.
"The maiden will remain in the lodge of White Brother of the Snow. Sishetakushin gives her to White Brother of the Snow. She is his. White Brother of the Snow is of our people. He will be glad, and the maiden will be glad. White Brother of the Snow has white man's food in great store. Mookoomahn will not be hungry."
"Mookoomahn will do as Sishetakushin directs," answered Mookoomahn.
For a time all smoked in silence, then Sishetakushin resumed:
"Of the dried meat on the toboggan Mookoomahn and those who are with him will eat but once during each sun. They will eat little. If they eat much, the meat will soon be gone, and the Spirit of Starvation will overtake them and destroy them."
"Mookoomahn and those that are with him will do as Sishetakushin directs," said Mookoomahn.
A series of signs and pantomime conveyed to Shad the substance of Sishetakushin's remarks. He understood that on the morrow the party was to separate. That he with Mookoomahn and Manikawan were to return to the Great Lake, and that they had been cautioned to husband their provisions.
He surveyed the small bundle of jerked venison with misgivings68. Even with one light meal a day he calculated that it could not last them above three weeks. Their journey from the cache on the Great Lake to their present position had consumed a month, including a period of one week when they were stormbound.
Should they be fortunate and encounter no storms, the food, sparingly doled out, might serve to sustain them. If storms delayed them, it certainly would not.
In any case their lives must hang in the balance until the cache was reached, unless game were encountered in the meantime, which seemed highly improbable.
A meagre meal was served at an early hour the following morning. As usual, camp was broken long before day, and then came the farewells.
The parting between Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn was affecting, that between the women more stoical. Shad regretfully shook the hands of the old Indian and his wife. They had been friends to him, and he had no expectation that he should ever see them again.
Then Shad and his companions turned southward into the wide wastes of frozen desolation that lay between him and his friends. It was to be a journey of tragic69 experiences--a journey that was to try his metal as it had never yet been tried.
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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nether
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| adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会 | |
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shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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rime
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| n.白霜；v.使蒙霜 | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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paramount
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| a.最重要的，最高权力的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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chide
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| v.叱责；谴责 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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lodges
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| v.存放( lodge的第三人称单数 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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circumference
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| n.圆周，周长，圆周线 | |
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protruded
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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30
enacting
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的现在分词 ) | |
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numbed
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| v.使麻木，使麻痹( numb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dreading
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| v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的现在分词 ) | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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34
aggrieved
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| adj.愤愤不平的，受委屈的；悲痛的；（在合法权利方面）受侵害的v.令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式)；令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
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attired
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| adj.穿着整齐的v.使穿上衣服，使穿上盛装( attire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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37
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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38
screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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40
frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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41
disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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42
caribou
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| n.北美驯鹿 | |
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43
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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44
placate
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| v.抚慰，平息(愤怒) | |
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45
supplicate
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| v.恳求；adv.祈求地，哀求地，恳求地 | |
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46
implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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47
enlisting
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| v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的现在分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
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48
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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49
tottered
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| v.走得或动得不稳( totter的过去式和过去分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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50
jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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51
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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52
feats
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| 功绩，伟业，技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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53
haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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54
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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55
famished
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| adj.饥饿的 | |
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56
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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57
plodding
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| a.proceeding in a slow or dull way | |
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58
sparsely
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| adv.稀疏地；稀少地；不足地；贫乏地 | |
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stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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60
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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61
kindled
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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62
cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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63
doled
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| 救济物( dole的过去式和过去分词 )； 失业救济金 | |
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64
brewed
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| 调制( brew的过去式和过去分词 )； 酝酿； 沏（茶）； 煮（咖啡） | |
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stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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66
beaver
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| n.海狸，河狸 | |
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mink
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| n.貂，貂皮 | |
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68
misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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