Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/983



WAY off as far as the eye could follow stretched the dull even sea of ice, steely smooth in places, in others shattered and piled in jagged heaps. A picture of loneliness, a presentment of desolation. A polar bear poised on a frozen cake would hardly have been astonishing, so natural would the appearance have seemed. A swooping gull, however, was apparently the only living thing in sight. And yet life was not lacking. Here and there many dark dots maculated the white monotony of the snow. They might appear no more than the black, ice-caught pieces of driftwood or wreckage near at hand. A closer view, though, showed movement. A speck developed into a man. Nor did the look of such a one as emerged into recognition go far to dissipate the impression of arctic conditions. He might well have led one to believe him a dweller of the farthest North. Landscape, snowscape, icescape, whatever the scene might be called; the flora—or the absence of it; the fauna, man and dog,—all added to the impression of a magic transference to another zone. And if everything else failed, the temperature would have come to sustain the fancy. Escape from that conclusion was impossible. With a cruel bitterness the wind drove over the open in a fury. The cold was great enough for the arctic regions. One might easily feel that the limits of human advance had been reached and a new record established. One's nose and one's ears and one's toes all ministered to the illusion with a painful realism that was most convincing.

Out there on the lake two miles from the shore the breath seemed to freeze, and there appeared to be every likelihood of the blood doing likewise. The sense of remoteness was depressing. The loneliness might have been appalling. A relief expedition at the least might easily be considered necessary to restore one to humanity. An arctic explorer far from ship and "cache" apparently could not be more hopelessly lost.

A turn of the head, however, made a difference of half a hemisphere, for there were the irregular angular lines of a big modern city. The smoke trailed heavily across the sky. The