It didn't take me longto realize I couldn't make it very far if I continued in this state. I was soaked to the bone. My clothes were heavy with water, and the air around me was bitterly cold. Mr. Crepsley had told me what to do if this ever happened: get rid of the wet clothes quickly, or I'd freeze to death inside them.

It took a lot of effort to get out of my clothes. My fingers were numb, and I ended up having to use my teeth to tear my way out. But I felt better after I'd undressed. A great weight had been lifted from my body, and although the full force of the cold hit me immediately, I started at a brisker pace.

It didn't bother me that I was wandering around as naked as the animals of the wild. There was nobody to see. Even if there had been, I wouldn't have cared — being so close to death, modesty was the last thing on my mind.

My brisk pace didn't last long. After a while, I began to understand just how serious a mess I was in. I was stranded in the middle of nowhere, no clothes to protect me from the cold, beaten to a pulp, physically and mentally drained, with nothing to eat. It was a struggle just to keep moving. In a matter of minutes, I would run out of energy and collapse. The cold would set in. Frostbite and hypothermia would finish me off.