The afternoon sun shed abundance of light but afforded no warmth. The traveling was through a cheerless cold that intensified by degrees. The toil of marching had begun to tell on the men; they moved with less elasticity, their limbs began to lag as from some indefinable hindering pressure. This pressure seemed to come from without like unfriendly hands holding them back, but they knew it was really the weakening fibers protesting from within.
Only three of the travelers were untouched by this peculiar lethargy. Maskwa ran as ever with his unchanging, lurching stride. Dunvegan, knowing not the hint of weariness, traveled mechanically, his mind dwelling on personal things. And Baptiste Verenne still hummed of his sunny France, asking:
"Te souvient-il du lac tranquille
Que' effleurait l'hirondelle agile,
Du vent qui courbait le roseau Mobile,
Et du soleil couchant sur l'eau. Si beau?
Ma cœur, te souv——"
"G'wan, Baptiste, ye Frinch rogue," cried Terence Burke, "ye've no sister here to ask that. An' phwat the divil's the use o' askin'? Shure it's not France but Greenland we're in. An' it's on a howly treadmill o' snow we're walkin'."
Pete Connear kicked the Irishman's calves from behind with the toes of his snowshoes.
"Walk faster, man," he urged. "It makes it twice as easy and the frost doesn't touch you then."
But Terence shivered in the trail. The sweat of the morning's travel had chilled on him at the noonday halt, and he felt the lowering temperature keenly.
"It's so beastly cowld," he groaned dismally, "that me thoughts freeze 'fore Oi can express thim."
The sailor kicked him again to cheer him on. "Bucko! Bucko!" he growled.
And Baptiste Verenne, smiling, flashed white teeth over his shoulder and remarked: