began to grow dim, he told her stories out of strange books
that he had read, as he remembered them--first the story of
Aladdin and then others.

"Once," began Aladdin, though his teeth were knocking together
and his arms aching and his nose running--"once there was a
man named Ali Baba, and he had forty thieves--"




III


Even in the good north country, where the white breath of the
melting icebergs takes turn and turn with diamond nights and
days, people did not remember so thick a fog; nor was there a
thicker recorded in any chapter of tradition. Indeed, if the
expression be endurable, so black was the whiteness that it
was difficult to know when morning came. There was a fresher
shiver in the cold, the sensibility that tree-tops were
stirring, a filmy distinction of objects near at hand, and the
possibility that somewhere 'way back in the east the rosy
fingers of dawn were spread upon a clear horizon. Collisions
between ships at sea were reported, and many a good sailorman
went down full fathom five to wait for the whistle of the
Great Boatswain.

The little children on the island roused themselves and groped
about among the chilled, dripping stems of the trees; they