Sandman's Goodnight Stories

by Abbie Phillips Walker

Old North Wind

Old North Wind lived away up in the North Pole Land in the winter, and there her children, the Icebergs, grew.

Old North Wind was very proud of her huge children, and when the long, cold winter was at an end she said: "My big, strong children, come with me. We will float away from this land where there is no one to see your beauty and go to the seas where the ships are sailing.

"Of course, you all cannot go, but I will take the three big brothers because they are the strongest, and show the old South Wind and the Sun we are stronger and mightier than they."

So the three largest of the icebergs broke away from their brothers and sailed away with old North Wind, who blew her chilling breath on them as they went along.

"Ah, my beauties," she said, "I will make you so strong that no breath of harm can come to you, and you shall crush the big ships and make all who see you tremble with fear."

The Icebergs believed old North Wind, for they had never been away from North Pole Land and did not know anything about the warm South Wind, or how warm and melting Mr. Sun could be.

So they sailed and sailed until they came to the big ocean where the ships had to cross as they went from one land to another.

Old North Wind kept close to her big children, but one day old South Wind saw them.