against such a dogged, enduring breed? Even the Indians did not
travel at such low temperatures, and theirs was the wisdom of
thousands of generations; yet here was this Daylight, from the
soft Southland, harder than they, laughing at their fears, and
swinging along the trail ten and twelve hours a day. And this
Daylight thought that he could keep up a day's pace of
thirty-three miles for sixty days! Wait till a fresh fall of
snow came down, or they struck the unbroken trail or the rotten
rim-ice that fringed open water.

In the meantime Kama kept the pace, never grumbling, never
shirking. Sixty-five degrees below zero is very cold. Since
water freezes at thirty-two above, sixty-five below meant
ninety-seven degrees below freezing-point. Some idea of the
significance of this may be gained by conceiving of an equal
difference of temperature in the opposite direction. One hundred
and twenty-nine on the thermometer constitutes a very hot day,
yet such a temperature is but ninety-seven degrees above
freezing. Double this difference, and possibly some slight
conception may be gained of the cold through which Kama and
Daylight travelled between dark and dark and through the dark.

Kama froze the skin on his cheek-bones, despite frequent
rubbings, and the flesh turned black and sore. Also he slightly
froze the edges of his lung-tissues--a dangerous thing, and the
basic reason why a man should not unduly exert himself in the
open at sixty-five below. But Kama never complained, and
Daylight was a furnace of heat, sleeping as warmly under his six
pounds of rabbit skins as the other did under twelve pounds.