Thompson had not quite reached that pass,
when he came down to Wrangel by the sea, but he was not far off. When he
looked back, he could scarcely trace by what successive steps he had
traveled. But he had got up out of that puddle into which a harsh
environment and wounded egotism had cast him. He was in a way to be what
the world called a success.
He was not so sure of that himself. But he stayed himself with certain
props, as before mentioned. The base of more than one of these useful
supports had been undermined some time before by a sequence of events
which presented the paradox of being familiar to him and still beyond
his comprehension.
He was a long way from being aware, in those early summer days of 1916,
that before long some of the aforementioned props were to buckle under
him with strange and disturbing circumstance.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FUSE--
It was in this period that certain phases of the war began to shake the
foundation of things. I do not recall who said that an army marches on
its stomach, but it is true, and it is no less a verity that nations
function primarily on food. The submarine was waxing to its zenith now,
and Europe saw the gaunt wolf at its door.
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