ong months.
Between October 21 and November 8 the Yukon would close until the middle
of May. She realized that she had, as yet, tasted but the latter end of
winter. To live through the whole length of the Arctic night, away in the
vast wilderness of the North, was a prospect that appalled her.

She wandered up the bank, and through the dense growth of hemlock that led
to a precipitous hill. High up on its slope she stopped and surveyed the
landscape. Despite the bitterness of her soul, she could not repress an
exclamation of wonderment.

Stretching away in all directions was tier upon tier of snow-clad peaks,
aglow with the soft radiance of the low-lying sun as it swept the horizon
towards the North in its uninterrupted circuit of the heavens. The
southern end of the Alaskan range seemed like an opalescent serrated bow,
changing to violet through all the darker hues of the spectrum by some
strange freak of the atmosphere, only to leap into glorious amber as the
fringe of a cloud passed across the origin of illumination.

Everything seemed so vast, so forbidding, it reduced her to a state of
ignominy. If one desired a sense of Eternity, here it was. Time and space
merged into one inscrutable entity--the Spirit of the North. She had felt
that Spirit when crossing the passes that led to the Klondyke. Here it was
limned in clearer form. The everlasting peaks; the aquamarine glaciers,
roaring and plunging into the sea; the vast forests sprawling across the
valleys and up the bases of the mountains to some two thousand feet,
virgin as they were ten thousand years ago; the noisy fiords cumbered with
the ice of crystal rivers, breaking the deathlike silence with
ear-splitting concussions--all combined in one awe-inspiring picture of
nature's incomparable handiwork.

And here under her feet were fragrant flowers, lured from the shallow
covering of earth and matted creeper to last but a brief season, and then
to sleep the whole long winter under the snow.

She sighed and made her way down the hill towards the tent. Beside the
fire was Jim, gazing into the past. She thought her husband was like this
strange immense land--cruel but magnificent, primal and alluring, yet
hateful. As she approached, a similar comparison entered Jim's mind, with
her as the object.

"Cold and proud as a mountain peak," he muttered. "There's no sun that can
melt her, no storm that can move her. God, but she's beautiful!"

CHAPTER XI

FRUIT