The men on the trail had lost all sense of degrees of cold. It was simply cold. Always cold. A thermometer would have frozen solid. They knew that. Cold? So long as a strong, warm life burned in their bodies, and their stores of food remained, it was the best they could hope for.
And the dogs. They were bred to the Arctic cold. So is the bear of the Pole. They needed no better than to follow their labours with a couch burrowed beneath the snows, and hours for the dream feast which their ravening appetites yearned and never tasted.
The outfit had broken trail as Steve had promised, and it was moving through the ghostly world like insects a-crawl over the folds of an ill-spread carpet.
The course had been deflected in response to the change of wind. Steve had left the shelter of the river where it had definitely turned northward. He had left it without regret. He had no regret for anything which did not further his purpose. Adresol! The quest of the Adresol pastures was the whole aim and object of his life. Somewhere out there over the desolate wastes he believed the great secret of it all lay awaiting his discovery. Nothing else, then, was of any significance.
For the moment Nature seemed bent on favouring him. For over two hundred miles she had beaten him well-nigh breathless. She had hurled her storms at him without mercy, and, at the end of her transcendent fury, she had found him undismayed, undefeated. Perhaps his tenacity excited her admiration. Perhaps she was nursing her wrath for a more terrible onslaught. Whatever her mood he was ready to face it.
At the beginning of the third week since leaving the shelter on the river Steve trod the first of the western hills under foot, and awaited the coming of the train upon its summit. His dark, fur-clad figure stood out in relief against the world about him. It looked squat, it was utterly dwarfed in the twilit vastness. But there was something tremendous in the meaning of that living presence in the voiceless solitudes which the ages have failed to stir.
The sleds were still. The dogs lay sprawled for rest awaiting the will of their masters. Julyman stood abreast of Steve, tall, lean, but bulky in his frosted furs. Oolak stood over his dogs, which were his first care.
"You can feel it now," Steve said, thrusting a hand under his fur helmet. A moment later he withdrew fingers that were moist with sweat. "If the wind came down at us out of the hills now we'd need to quit our furs. Do you get that? Quit our furs here in the dead of winter. It's getting warmer every mile."
"It warm. Much warm. Oh, yes."