the conflagration of the world. And I noticed that its length constantly
reached out and out, and silently grew.

* * * * *

Once I had a very pleasant dream. I dreamed that I was in a garden--an
Arabian paradise--so sweet was the perfume. All the time, however, I had
a sub-consciousness of the gale which was actually blowing from the S.E.
over the ice, and, at the moment when I awoke, was half-wittedly droning
to myself; 'It is a Garden of Peaches; but I am not really in the
garden: I am really on the ice; only, the S.E. storm is wafting to me
the aroma of this Garden of Peaches.'

I opened my eyes--I started--I sprang to my feet! For, of all the
miracles!--I could not doubt--an actual aroma like peach-blossom was in
the algid air about me!

Before I could collect my astonished senses, I began to vomit pretty
violently, and at the same time saw some of the dogs, mere skeletons as
they were, vomiting, too. For a long time I lay very sick in a kind of
daze, and, on rising, found two of the dogs dead, and all very queer.
The wind had now changed to the north.

Well, on I staggered, fighting every inch of my deplorably weary way.
This odour of peach-blossom, my sickness, and the death of the two dogs,
remained a wonder to me.

Two days later, to my extreme mystification (and joy), I came across a
bear and its cub lying dead at the foot of a hummock. I could not
believe my eyes. There she lay on her right side, a spot of dirty-white