The thought that he might, and in all probability would die that very night, had occurred to him when he had sat down behind the sledge. Although still warm from the tea he had drunk, and from moving about so much among the snow-drifts, he knew that this warmth would not last long, and that he would not be able to warm himself any more by mere locomotion, for he felt himself growing very weary; he felt himself in the condition a horse feels himself to be when he stops short, and has to be fed in order that he may go on working. Moreover, one of his feet in its bursted foot was frost-bitten, and his big toe had lost all sense of feeling. And his whole body was growing colder and colder.
The thought that he would die that very night did not strike him as particularly unpleasant or as particularly dreadful. The thought of it did not strike him as particularly unpleasant, because his whole life had never been a perpetual feast; on the contrary it had been an interminable servitude of which he was beginning to weary. The thought of death was not particularly terrible, because he felt himself dependent not only upon those masters, like Vasily Andreich, whom he had served here below, but also upon that Chief Master who had sent him into this life, and he knew that even when he died he would still be in the power of that Master, and that that Master would do him no harm.
"'Tis a pity to chuck away as useless what one has lived into and got accustomed to; but how can it be helped?—one must get accustomed to a new state of things, that's all."
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