e passing very near the ship. North Wind seized Diamond
and with a single bound, lighted on it. The same instant, South Wind
began to blow and North Wind hurried Diamond down the north side of the
berg and into a cave. There she sat down as if weary on a ledge of ice.

Diamond was enraptured with the color of the air in the cave, a deep,
dazzling, lovely blue that was always in motion, boiling and sparkling.
But when he looked at North Wind he was frightened.

He saw that her form and face were growing, not small, but transparent
like something dissolving away. He could see the side of the blue cave
through her very heart. She melted slowly away till all that was left
was a pale face with two great lucid eyes in it.

"She is dying away!" he said. "Of course, as we go northward, she is
dying away more and more."

After a little, he went out and sat on the edge of his floating island
and looked down into the green ocean. When he got tired of that, he went
back into the blue cave. He felt as if in a dream. He was not hungry,
but he sucked little bits of the berg at times.

At length, far off on the horizon, there rose into the sky a shining
peak, and his berg floated right toward it. Other peaks came into view
as he went on, and at last his berg floated up to a projecting rock.
Diamond stepped ashore and a little way before him saw a lofty ridge of
ice with a gap in it like the opening of a valley. As he got nearer, he
saw it was not a gap but the form of a woman, her hands in her lap and
her hair hanging to the ground.

"It is North Wind on her door-step!" said Diamond joyfully and hurried
on.

[Illustration: HE WAS SURE IT WAS NORTH WIND BUT HE THOUGHT SHE MUST BE
DEAD AT LAST]

She sat motionless with drooping head and did not move nor speak. He was
sure it was North Wind but he thought she must be dead at last. Her face
was white as the snow, her eyes blue as the ice cave, and she had on a
greenish robe like the color in the hollows of a glacier.

He walked toward her instantly and put out his hand to lay it on her.
There was nothing there but intense cold. All grew white about him. He
groped on further. The white thickened about him and he felt himself
stumbling and falling. But as he fell, he rolled over the threshold. It
was thus that Diamond got to the back of the north wind.

And what did he find? There was no North Wind in sight nor snow nor ice.
It was a country where even the ground smelled sweetly,