hypnotic influence, feels his own will and power suddenly
going from him, so I felt the entire hopelessness of further struggle
against the supernatural forces I was contending with. Falling backwards
on the snow, I made a last desperate effort to gaze at the glittering
stars ... my sight became dim and obscured....

For how long this semi-consciousness lasted, I do not know. "God! how
ghastly! Doctor! Kachi!" I tried to articulate. My voice seemed choked in
my throat. Was what I saw before me real? The two men, as if frozen to
death by the side of each other, seemed lying on that vast white sheet of
snow, motionless as statues of ice. In my dream I attempted to raise
them. They were quite rigid. I knelt beside them, calling them and
frantically striving to bring them back to consciousness and life.
Bewildered, I turned round to look for Bijesing, and, as I did so, all
sense of vitality seemed to freeze within me. I saw myself enclosed in a
quickly contracting tomb of transparent ice. It was easy to realise that
I too would shortly be nothing but a solid block of ice, like my
companions. My legs, my arms were already congealed. Horror-stricken as I
was at the approach of such a hopeless, ghastly death, my sensations were
accompanied by a languor and lassitude indescribable but far from
unpleasant. To some extent thought or wonderment was still alive. Should
I dwindle painlessly away, preferring rest and peace to effort, or should
I make a last struggle to save myself? The ice seemed to close in more
and more every moment. I was choking.

I tried to scream! to force myself through the suffocating weight on me!
I gave a violent plunge, and then everything had vanished. The frozen
Kachi, the doctor, the transparent tomb! Nothingness!

[Illustration: THE SPECTRE AND CIRCULAR RAINBOW]

At last I was able to open my eyes, which ached as if needles had been
stuck into them. It was snowing hard. I had temporarily lost the use of
my legs and fingers. They were frozen. So violent was the shock of
realising how very near death I had really been, that in waking up from
the ghastly nightmare I became acutely alive to the full importance of
instantly making my way down to a lower level. I was already covered with
a layer of snow, and I suppose it was the frigid pressure on my forehead
that caused the dream. It is, however, probable that, had it not been
for the hideous vision that shook my nerves free of paralysing torpor, I
shoul