60 deg. below? Is it
a sort of chinook in the dead of winter?"

He raised his eyes to the faces of his companions. The dusky figures
were half hidden behind the smoke of the fire, which rose between them.
He nodded at the steady gazing black eyes.

"Yes," he said. "Guess that break's come. We'll be out on the trail
right away. And we'll beat up against a breeze that's warming. It'll
lead us to--the Heart of Unaga."

* * * * *

The splendour of the Arctic night was shining over the world. There was
scarcely a breath of wind. The air currents were still from the west,
but the wind had died out. For the moment the amazing warmth which had
stirred the imagination of Steve and his companions had passed.

A silver sheen played upon the limitless fields of snow. It was like a
world of alabaster. The light came from every corner of the heavens. It
came from the glory of a full moon, hard-driven to retain supremacy over
its satellites. It came from the myriads of burnished stars, gleaming
with a clarity, a penetrating sparkle, unknown to their brethren of
lower latitudes. It came from the supreme magnificence of an aurora of
moving light, dancing and curtseying with ghostly grace, as though
stepping the measure of a heavenly minuet. Its radiance filled half the
dome of night. It was a glory of frigid colour to ravish the artist eye.

The men on the trail had lost all sense of degrees of cold. It was
simply cold. Always cold. A thermometer would have frozen solid. They
knew that. Cold? So long as a strong, warm life burned in their bodies,
and their stores of food remained, it was the best they could hope for.

And the dogs. They were bred to the Arctic cold. So is the bear of the
Pole. They needed no better than to follow their labours with a couch
burrowed beneath the snows, and hours for the dream feast which their
ravening appetites yearned and never tasted.

The outfit had broken trail as Steve had promised, and it was moving
through the ghostly world like insects a-crawl over the folds of an
ill-spread carpet.

The course had been deflected in response to the change of wind. Steve
had left the shelter of the river where it had definitely turned
northward. He had left it without regret. He had no regret for anything
which did not further his purpose. Adresol! The quest of the Adresol
pastures was the whole aim and object of his life. Somewhere out there
over the desolate wastes he be