ring.
Slanting through the trees it gave little cheer and no warmth. Early in
the afternoon it sank, silhouetting the pointed firs, casting across the
snow long, crimson shadows, which faded into gray. It was replaced by a
moon, chill and remote, dead as the white world on which it looked.

In the great frost continually the trees were splitting with loud,
sudden reports. The cold had long since squeezed the last drops of
moisture from the atmosphere. It was metallic, clear, hard as ice,
brilliant as the stars, compressed with the freezing. The moon, the
stars, the earth, the very heavens glistened like polished steel. Frost
lay on the land thick as a coverlid. It hid the east like clouds of
smoke. Snow remained unmelted two feet from the camp-fire.

And the fire alone saved these people from the enemy. If Sam stooped for
a moment to adjust his snow-shoe strap, he straightened his back with a
certain reluctance,--already the benumbing preliminary to freezing had
begun. If Dick, flipping his mitten from his hand to light his pipe, did
not catch the fire at the second tug, he had to resume the mitten and
beat the circulation into his hand before renewing the attempt, lest the
ends of his fingers become frosted. Movement, always and incessantly,
movement alone could keep going the vital forces on these few coldest
days until the fire had been built to fight back the white death.

It was the land of ghosts. Except for the few hours at midday these
people moved in the gloom and shadow of a nether world. The long
twilight was succeeded by longer night, with its burnished stars, its
dead moon, its unearthly aurora. On the fresh snow were the tracks of
creatures, but in the flesh they glided almost invisible. The
ptarmigan's bead eye alone betrayed him, he had no outline. The ermine's
black tip was the only indication of his presence. Even the larger
animals,--the caribou, the moose--had either turned a dull gray, or were
so rimed by the frost as to have lost all appearance of solidity. It was
ever a surprise to find these phantoms bleeding red, to discover that
their flesh would resist the knife. During the strife of the heavy
northwest storms one side of each tree had become more or less plastered
with snow, so that even their dark trunks flashed mysteriously into and
out of view. In the entire world of the great white silence the only
solid, enduring, palpable reality was the tiny sledge train crawling
with infinite patien