A grand long-haired dog was by his side; he was listening, seemingly as intently as his master.
The moon was shining full, the deep purple sky was sown thick with brilliant stars,—one could have read small print easily, it was so light.
Not a breath of air was stirring.
The intensity of the cold was indescribable: if there had been the slightest wind, this man could not have stood thus, in this open space, and lived.
He was a large man really, but the immensity of his surroundings, the vast field of dazzling snow on which he stood, made him appear to be a pigmy, whilst his loneliness and solitude gave a note of unutterable melancholy to the scene.
Several minutes passed, neither dog nor man moving from this attitude of strained attention. All nature was absolutely motionless; no branch stirred in the near forest, nor was one flake of snow wafted by the softest zephyr—yet there was no silence. The far-off woods resounded with frequent sharp reports, as if firearms were being discharged there, the nearer rocks and trees from time to time gave forth detonations like fusilades of musketry, and beneath his feet—he stood on a broad space of water, turned to ice of unknown depth, cushioned deep with snow—were groanings, grindings, cracklings, and explosions. It was the terrible arctic cold that caused this tumult. One could almost fancy that these two figures, silhouetted black against the dazzling white, were frozen solid too.
At length the man moved, and, patting his companion's head with his gauntleted hand, spoke, "No, good dog," he sighed, "it's another hallucination." And the dog looked up at him, and whimpered, then turned his gaze again in the direction it had been before, with eagerness.
It was impossible to guess from this man's appearance what he was like: he was so enveloped in wrappers only his eyes were visible; but his voice proclaimed him to be gently bred—it had the accent of a cultivated Englishman.
"No good," he went on muttering. "Let us get back, old Patch, my sole companion in this awful wilderness; it was not a shot we heard, only the frost that made that clamour," and he made as if to move away.
But the dog evidently was not satisfied. He sat down, kept his nose pointed in the one direction, and whimpered again and again. The man stood still and listened.