Question

Read the passage from Part 1 of “To Build a Fire.”

Once, coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail. The creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom—no creek could contain water in that arctic winter—but he knew also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under the snow and on top the ice of the creek.

In this passage, the man’s reaction can best be described as
.

Answer 1

startled and cautious.

The narrator compares him to “a startled horse,” and he abruptly curves away and retreats several paces—an instinctive, fearful reaction rather than a deliberate investigation.