his arms and sit

But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit there. He realized
that he could not kill the dog. There was no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could
neither draw nor hold his sheath knife nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it
plunged wildly away, with tail between its legs, and still snarling. It halted forty feet
away and surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward. The man looked down at
his hands in order to locate them, and found them hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck
him as curious that one should have to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands
were. He began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against his
sides. He did this for five minutes, violently, and his heart pumped enough blood up to the
surface to put a stop to his shivering. But no sensation was aroused in the hands. He had an
impression that they hung like weights on the ends of his arms, but when he tried to run the
impression down, he could not find it.