“You were glad of that?”
“Glad of the first sign of life?”
“And the second thing?”
“The day when I looked south and saw the sky was yellow.”
“What did that mean?”
“Land. All the rest’s a blur. And in the blur two shadows—Ky and I, on the homeward journey—the journey that I knew even then wouldn’t end at home. Ky and I. All our companions dead. The last dog, even our infinitesimal rations of pemmican, gone. Everything gone, but Ky and my title-deeds.”
“I don’t see how you bore it—how you kept alive.”
“I don’t know. Later we fed on the small crustaceans in the ice-channels, then the narwhal. But in the strain I think my wits went. Mercifully I can’t recover much in that blur of agony till the moment that stands out clear as conflagration in the dark—that moment when I set our course by the shadow my staff cast, and saw—” He dropped his hollow jaw, staring at some horror unspeakable.
“What was it you—”
“I saw that while we were stumbling blindly toward the blessed South—faster still the ice that we were on was drifting north.”