The arrogant sun had stalked away into the evening, trailing behind him
banners of gold and crimson, and a swift twilight was streaming over the
land. As the sun passed, the eyes of two men on a high hill followed it,
and the look of one was like a light in a window to a lost traveller.
It had in it the sense of home and the tale of a journey done. Such a
journey this man had made as few have ever attempted, and fewer
accomplished. To the farthermost regions of snow and ice, where the
shoulder of a continent juts out into the northwestern Arctic seas, he
had travelled on foot and alone, save for his dogs, and for Indian
guides, who now and then shepherded him from point to point. The vast
ice-hummocks had been his housing, pemmican, the raw flesh of fish, and
even the fat and oil of seals had been his food. Ever and ever through
long months the everlasting white glitter of the snow and ice, ever and
ever the cold stars, the cloudless sky, the moon at full, or swung like a
white sickle in the sky to warn him that his life must be mown like
grass. At night to sleep in a bag of fur and wool, by day the steely
wind, or the air shaking with a filmy powder of frost; while the
illimitably distant sun made the tiny flakes sparkle like silver--a
poudre day, when the face and hands are most like to be frozen, and all
so still and white and passionless, yet aching with energy. Hundreds
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