the wreckage, and the lesser moon had burst again from
below the horizon, we found that we were at the foot of a mighty
ice-barrier, from which outcropped great patches of the granite
hills which hold it from encroaching farther toward the south.

What fate! With the journey all but completed to be thus wrecked
upon the wrong side of that precipitous and unscalable wall of rock
and ice!

I looked at Thuvan Dihn. He but shook his head dejectedly.

The balance of the night we spent shivering in our inadequate
sleeping silks and furs upon the snow that lies at the foot of the
ice-barrier.

With daylight my battered spirits regained something of their
accustomed hopefulness, though I must admit that there was little
enough for them to feed upon.

"What shall we do?" asked Thuvan Dihn. "How may we pass that which
is impassable?"

"First we must disprove its impassability," I replied. "Nor shall
I admit that it is impassable before I have followed its entire
circle and stand again upon this spot, defeated. The sooner we
start, the better, for I see no other way, and it will take us more
than a month to travel the weary, frigid miles that lie before us."

For five days of cold and suffering and privation we traversed the
rough and frozen way which lies at the foot of the ice-barrier.
Fierce, fur-bearing creatures attacked us by daylight and by dark.
Never for a moment were we safe from the sudden charge of some huge
demon of the north.

The apt was our most consistent and dangerous foe.

It is a huge, white-furred creature with six limbs, four of which,
short and heavy, carry it swiftly over the snow and ice; while the
other two, growing forward from its shoulders on either side of
its long, powerful neck, terminate in white, hairless hands, with
which it seizes and holds its prey.

Its head and mouth are more similar in appearance to those of a
hippopotamus than to any other earthly animal, except that from
the sides of the lower jawbone two mighty horns curve slightly
downward toward the front.

Its two huge eyes inspired my greatest curiosity. They extend in
two vast, oval patches from the center of the top of the cranium
down either side of the head to below the roots of the horns, so
that these weapons really grow out from the lower part of the eyes,
which are composed of several thousand ocelli each.

This eye structure seemed remarkable in a beast whose haunts were
upon a glaring field of ice and