of man and beast, and wash the soiled world clean."

So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to weep the leaves
into their graves; to weep the seeds into their seed-beds, and
weep the soil into the plains; to get the rich earth ready for the
winter, and then creep northward to the ice-world, and there die.

Weary, and still more weary, slowly and more slowly still, they
will journey on far northward, across fast-chilling seas. For a
doom is laid upon them, never to be still again, till they rest at
the North Pole itself, the still axle of the spinning world; and
sink in death around it, and become white snow-clad ghosts.

But will they live again, those chilled air-mothers? Yes, they
must live again. For all things move for ever; and not even
ghosts can rest. So the corpses of their sisters, piling on them
from above, press them outward, press them southward toward the
sun once more; across the floes and round the icebergs, weeping
tears of snow and sleet, while men hate their wild harsh voices,
and shrink before their bitter breath. They know not that the
cold bleak snow-storms, as they hurtle from the black north-east,
bear back the ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to
their father, the great sun.

But as they fly southwards, warm life thrills them, and they drop
their loads of sleet and snow; and meet their young live sisters
from the south, and greet them with flash and thunder-peal. And,
please God, before many weeks are over, as we run Westward-Ho, we
shall overtake the ghosts of these air-mothers, hurrying back
toward their father, the great sun. Fresh and bright under the