es at a time they must toil over chaotic ice-jams,
where they would be fortunate if they made two miles an hour. And
there would be the inevitable bad jams, short ones, it was true, but so
bad that a mile an hour would require terrific effort. Kama and
Daylight did not talk. In the nature of the work they could not, nor
in their own natures were they given to talking while they worked. At
rare intervals, when necessary, they addressed each other in
monosyllables, Kama, for the most part, contenting himself with grunts.
Occasionally a dog whined or snarled, but in the main the team kept
silent. Only could be heard the sharp, jarring grate of the steel
runners over the hard surface and the creak of the straining sled.

As if through a wall, Daylight had passed from the hum and roar of the
Tivoli into another world--a world of silence and immobility. Nothing
stirred. The Yukon slept under a coat of ice three feet thick. No
breath of wind blew. Nor did the sap move in the hearts of the spruce
trees that forested the river banks on either hand. The trees,
burdened with the last infinitesimal pennyweight of snow their branches
could hold, stood in absolute petrifaction. The slightest tremor would
have dislodged the snow, and no snow was dislodged. The sled was the
one point of life and motion in the midst of the solemn quietude, and
the harsh churn of its runners but emphasized the silence through which
it moved.

It was a dead world, and furthermore, a gray world. The weather was
sharp and clear; there was no moisture in the atmosphere, no fog nor
haze; yet the sky was a gray pall. The reason for this was that,
though there was no cloud in the sky to dim the brightness of day,
there was no sun to give brightness. Far to the south the sun climbed
steadily to meridian, but between it and the frozen Yukon intervened
the bulge of the earth. The Yukon lay in a night shadow, and the day
itself was in reality a long twilight-light. At a quarter before
twelve, where a wide bend of the river gave a long vista south, the sun
showed its upper rim above the sky-line. But it did not rise
perpendicularly. Instead, it rose on a slant, so that by high noon it
had barely lifted its lower rim clear of the horizon. It was a dim,
wan sun. There was no heat to its rays, and a man could gaze squarely
into the full orb of it without hurt to his eyes. No sooner had it
reached meridian than it began its slant back beneath the h