when the ice closed, should for many moons be imprisoned in the sea.

An unearthly twilight, not unlike that dim greenish luminescence which
filters through emerald panes in the high nave of a great cathedral,
lay upon the earth. The forms of the mourning women were strangely
magnified in the curious semi-luminance and, as their bodies moved to
and fro in the throes of their grief, they might have been, for all
they seemed, shadowy ghosts bemoaning their sins in some weird
purgatory of the dead.

In the northern sky a faint quivering streak of light, resembling the
reflection of far away lightning, played--the first herald of the
aurora. To the south a gash of reddish orange, like the tip of a
bloody-gleaming knife-blade, severed the thick purple clouds. There
was a faint reflected glimmer on the unfrozen southern sea.

Snow had fallen on the land, igloos had been built. Over the village
and against the frozen promontories loomed a majestic yet fearful
shadowy shape--that of a giant thing, swathed in purple, its arm
uplifted threateningly--the spectre of suffering and famine.

This wraith, brought into being by the gathering blackness in the
gulches and crevices of the mountains, filled the hearts of the natives
with unwonted foreboding.

Profound silence prevailed.

Already the sea for miles along the shore was frozen. The open water
lay at so great a distance from the land that the sound of the waves
was stilled. The birds had disappeared. Even the voices of the