He rubbed his nose, not reflectively, but savagely, in order to
drive the blood into it, and urged the dogs to their work again.
He travelled on the frozen surface of a great river. Behind him it
stretched away in a mighty curve of many miles, losing itself in a
fantastic jumble of mountains, snow-covered and silent. Ahead of
him the river split into many channels to accommodate the freight
of islands it carried on its breast. These islands were silent and
white. No animals nor humming insects broke the silence. No birds
flew in the chill air. There was no sound of man, no mark of the
handiwork of man. The world slept, and it was like the sleep of
death.

John Messner seemed succumbing to the apathy of it all. The frost
was benumbing his spirit. He plodded on with bowed head,
unobservant, mechanically rubbing nose and cheeks, and batting his
steering hand against the gee-pole in the straight trail-stretches.

But the dogs were observant, and suddenly they stopped, turning
their heads and looking back at their master out of eyes that were
wistful and questioning. Their eyelashes were frosted white, as
were their muzzles, and they had all the seeming of decrepit old
age, what of the frost-rime and exhaustion.

The man was about to urge them on, when he checked himself, roused
up with an effort, and looked around. The dogs had stopped beside
a water-hole, not a fissure, but a hole man-made, chopped
laboriously with an axe through three and a half feet of ice. A
thick skin of new ice showed that it had not been used for some
time. Messner glanced about him. The dogs were already pointing
the way, each wistful and hoary muzzle turned toward the dim snow-