It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch.

It was nine o’clock.

It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun.

He was used to the lack of sun.

It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.

The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice.

On top of this ice were as many feet of snow.

It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed.

North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island.

and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.

It was not because he was long used to it.