CHAPTER X.
The Prince and the Remora.
If he had been too warm before, the prince was too cold now. The hill of the Remora was one solid mass of frozen steel, and the cold rushed out of it like the breath of some icy beast, which indeed it was. All around were things like marble statues of men in armour: they were the dead bodies of the knights, horses and all, who had gone out of old to fight the Remora, and who had been frosted up by him. The prince felt his blood stand still, and he grew faint; but he took
heart, for there was no time to waste. Yet he could nowhere see the Remora.
“Hi!” shouted the prince.
Then, from a narrow chink at the bottom of the smooth, black hill,—a chink no deeper than that under a door, but a mile wide,—stole out a hideous head!
It was as flat as the head of a skate-fish, it was deathly pale, and two chill-blue eyes, dead-coloured like stones, looked out of it.
Then there came a whisper, like the breath of the bitter east wind on a winter day:
“Where are you, and how can I come to you?”
“Here I am!” said the prince from the top of the hill.