ashes were left where a great blaze had been. Over these ashes pine twigs
and branches were spread, and over them again blankets. The word was then
given to turn in, and Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen lay
down in this comfortable bed. Each wished to give way to their captain,
but he would not consent. He and Cloud-in-the-Sky wrapped themselves in
their blankets like mummies, covering the head completely, and under the
arctic sky they slept alone in an austere and tenantless world. They
never know how loftily sardonic Nature can be who have not seen that land
where the mercury freezes in the tubes, and there is light but no warmth
in the smile of the sun. Not Sturt in the heart of Australia with the
mercury bursting the fevered tubes, with the finger-nails breaking like
brittle glass, with the ink drying instantly on the pen, with the hair
fading and falling off, would, if he could, have exchanged his lot for
that of the White Guard. They were in a frozen endlessness that stretched
away to a world where never voice of man or clip of wing or tread of
animal is heard. It is the threshold to the undiscovered country, to that
untouched north whose fields of white are only furrowed by the giant
forces of the elements; on whose frigid hearthstone no fire is ever lit;
where the electric phantoms of a nightless land pass and repass, and are
never still; where the magic needle points not towards the north but
darkly downward; where the sun never stretches warm hands to him who
dares confront the terrors of eternal snow.

The White Guard slept.




IV