Which excerpt from The Call of the Wild best helps readers to visualize how thin Buck has become? And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team as in a nightmare. He pulled when he could; when he
could no longer pull, he fell down.
His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib and every
bone in his frame were outlined cleanly through the loose hide
O Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon him. Like his mates, he was barely able to
get up
O Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly hands searched for broken bones. By the time his search had
disclosed nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the sled was a quarter of a mile away.