It was a perfect morning,--a cobalt sky, an ultramarine sea, a golden
sun, an almost wasteful extravagance of crimson over hills of purest
snow, which caught a reflected glow from rock and crag. Between me and
the hills lay miles of rough ice and long veins of thin black slob
that had formed during the night. For the foreground there was my
poor, gruesome pan, bobbing up and down on the edge of the open sea,
stained with blood, and littered with carcasses and debris. It was
smaller than last night, and I noticed also that the new ice from the
water melted under the dogs' bodies had been formed at the expense of
its thickness. Five dogs, myself in colored football costume, and a
bloody dogskin cloak, with a gay flannel shirt on a pole of frozen
dogs' legs, completed the picture. The sun was almost hot by now, and
I was conscious of a surplus of heat in my skin coat. I began to look
longingly at one of my remaining dogs, for an appetite will rise even
on an ice-pan, and that made me think of fire. So once again I
inspected my matches. Alas! the heads were in paste, all but three or
four blue-top wax ones.
These I now laid out to dry, while I searched about on my snow-pan to
see if I could get a piece of transparent ice to make a burning-glass.
For I was pretty sure that with all the unravelled tow I had stuffed
into my leggings, and with the fat of my dogs, I could make smoke
enough to be seen if only I could get a light.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43