Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/788

pany had landed and were staring at her from a little distance of the land, and these people were as silent as the frozen air, as frozen ship. They stared at her and made no move and made no sound.

She noticed that were all dressed in their winter furs, and while she stood ice began to creep into her veins. One of the ship's company suddenly strode forward a few paces and held up a bundle in his mittened hand. She saw the bundle contained her clothes, her broad furry trousers, her great tozy helmet and gloves.

To get from the ship to the ice was painful but not difficult, for a rope ladder was hanging against the side and down this she went. The rungs felt hard as iron for they were frozen stiff, and the touch of those glassy surfaces bit into her tender hand like fire. But she got to the ice and went across it towards her companions.

Then, to her dismay, to her terror, all these suddenly, with one unexpressed accord turned and began to run swiftly away from her, and she, with a heart that could scarcely beat, took after them.

Every few paces she fell, for her shoes could not grip on the ice, and each time she fell those monsters stood and turned and watched her and the man who had her clothes waved the bundle at her and danced grotesquely, silently.

She continued running, sliding, falling, picking herself up until her breath went and she came to a halt unable to move a limb further and scarcely able to breathe, and this time they did not stay to look at her. They continued running but now with greater and greater speed, and she saw them become black specks away on the white distance, and she saw them disappear, and there was nothing left where she stared but the long white miles and the terrible silence and the cold.

How cold it was! and with that there rose again a little wind, keen as a razor, which whipped into her face, swirled about her ankles like a whip, and stabbed under her armpits like a dagger.

"I am cold," she murmured.

She looked backwards whence she had come, but the ship was no longer in sight, and she could not remember in what direction it lay. Then she began to run in any direction. Indeed she ran in every direction to find the ship, for when she had taken an hundred steps in one way she thought frantically, "This is not the way," and at once she began to run on the opposite road. But run as she might