“Yes,” said the sick man, and Hildegarde saw the mouth set harder yet under the tawny cloud. “The day he died we came upon a great piece of timber frozen aslant in the ice. Borisoff had been queer, wandering all those last days. But that great shaft that had come from some land where the trees grow glorious and tall, the sight of it excited him so that it cleared his head. He said it was Siberian spruce, and had come from his own forests of the Yenisei. And he talked about the currents that had carried it so far—talked rationally. We found initials carved on one end: ‘F. N.—H.’ If ever there had been more the record was frayed out of existence by the timber catapulting against the ice. ‘I’ll rest here,’ Borisoff had said, and”—a long time seemed to go by—“I’ve no doubt he rests well. Splendid fellow, Borisoff.
“The next day I cut his name on the great log, and I went on alone.”
“You and Ky!”
He nodded. “Ky and the dogs that were left, fighting our way over the ice-moraines in a hard, fierce light, that seemed to come from every point of the compass at once. I remember a curious optical delusion overtook me. I lost all faculty of seeing the snow-covered ice I walked on. I could feel it, of course, at every step. I could see my snow-shoes sharp as if they’d been silhouettes poised in air. But the terrible white light that bathed the universe seemed to be flooding up from under my feet as well as beating on my head. Round that white bossed shield of the frozen sea the sun moved in his shrunken circle, with no uprising and no setting, abhorring shadow. Like that, day and night, night and day.”
“For how long?”
“For a thousand years. A dog killed to feed the rest, and still on, ‘for miles on miles on miles of desolation—leagues on leagues on leagues, without a change.’ In a world as dead and white as leprosy.” He closed his eyes, as if the midnight glare still dazzled him.
In her sleep again the dog had been moving and moaning.
“Ky is in pain,” said the girl, very softly, hardly daring to whisper.
The sick man opened his eyes and faintly shook his head. “Only dreaming. I do the same myself. Wake in the dark, and think the pressure has sent the ice towering above us. And while we try to get across the broken blocks, suddenly they begin to grind and growl and to writhe and thunder, as if moved to hatred of us. Ky lost a yoke-fellow in such a place, crushed between the shrieking boulders. Quiet, Ky! The exploring’s all done. At least”—he looked up—“I’d like to think—”
“You may.”