Part 51 (1/2)

”No Maybe you don't,” he went on ”You see, I got a--notion The wind's west--now It should be a hell of a cold wind It isn't No It should be hellish cold,” he reflected ”Why isn't it? The hills lie west The big hills Maybe _the_ big hill Well? I kind of wonder Maybe it's that It's a guess A hell of a guess Does the ind hereabouts blow across the big fire hill? And are those fires so al where all the world's freezing at 60 below? Is it a sort of chinook in the dead of winter?”

He raised his eyes to the faces of his coures were half hidden behind the smoke of the fire, which rose between the black eyes

”Yes,” he said ”Guess that break's coainst a breeze that's wara”

The splendour of the Arctic night was shi+ning over the world There was scarcely a breath of wind The air currents were still from the west, but the wind had died out For the ination of Steve and his companions had passed

A silver sheen played upon the limitless fields of snow It was like a world of alabaster The light calory of a full moon, hard-driven to retain supremacy over its satellites It ca with a clarity, a penetrating sparkle, unknown to their brethren of lower latitudes It caht, dancing and curtseying with ghostly grace, as though stepping the measure of a heavenly lory of frigid colour to ravish the artist eye

The rees of cold It was simply cold Always cold A ther as a strong, warm life burned in their bodies, and their stores of food res They were bred to the Arctic cold So is the bear of the Pole They needed no better than to follow their labours with a couch burrowed beneath the snows, and hours for the drea appetites yearned and never tasted

The outfit had broken trail as Steve had prohostly world like insects a-crawl over the folds of an ill-spread carpet

The course had been deflected in response to the change of wind Steve had left the shelter of the river where it had definitely turned northward He had left it without regret He had no regret for anything which did not further his purpose Adresol! The quest of the Adresol pastures was the whole aim and object of his life Soreat secret of it all lay awaiting his discovery Nothing else, then, was of any significance

For thehih breathless She had hurled her storms at him without mercy, and, at the end of her transcendent fury, she had found him undismayed, undefeated Perhaps his tenacity excited her ad her wrath for a ht Whatever herof the third week since leaving the shelter on the river Steve trod the first of the western hills under foot, and awaited the coure stood out in relief against the world about him It looked squat, it was utterly dwarfed in the twilit vastness But there was so presence in the voiceless solitudes which the ages have failed to stir

The sleds were still The dogs lay sprawled for rest awaiting the will of their masters Julyman stood abreast of Steve, tall, lean, but bulky in his frosted furs Oolak stood over his dogs, which were his first care

”You can feel it now,” Steve said, thrusting a hand under his fur helers that were moist with sweat

”If the wind came down at us out of the hills noe'd need to quit our furs Do you get that? Quit our furs here in the dead of winter It's getting warmer every mile”

”It warination were being sorely taxed

Steve nodded

”Yes,” he said ”It isn't wind now There's no wind It's the air It's waret hot as hell”

He drew a profound breath He felt that victory was very near It only needed----

”We got to beat on all we know,” he said, exarab every uess the things waiting on us Yes We'll 'mush' on”

His tones were deep The restraint of years which the Northland had bred into hie of a hope that was almost certainty And his order was obeyed by ency of his ress slackened froly lily in a succession of low hills and shallow hollows, now it see of her handiwork, and had hurled the rest of the world into a wreckage of broken, barren hills

Into the ed