re is the most complete
silence. All animal life is hidden away. Not a rabbit flits across the
trail; in the absolutely still air not a twig moves. A rare raven passes
overhead, and his cry, changed from a hoarse croak to a sweet liquid
note, reverberates like the musical glasses. There is no more delightful
sound in the wilderness than this occasional lapse into music of the
raven. We wound through the scrub spruce and willow and over the
niggerhead swamps, a faint tinkle of bells, a little cloud of steam; for
in the great cold the moisture of the animals' breath hangs over their
heads in the still air, and on looking back it stands awhile along the
course at dogs' height until it is presently deposited on twigs and
tussocks. We wound along, a faint tinkle of bells, a little cloud of
steam, and in the midst of the cloud a tousle of shaggy black-and-white
hair and red-and-white pompons--going out of the dead silence behind
into the dead silence before. The dusk came, and still we plodded and
pushed our weary way, swinging that heavy sled incessantly, by the gee
pole in front and the handle-bars behind, in the vain effort to keep it
on the trail. Two miles an hour was all that we were making. We had come
but thirteen or fourteen miles out of twenty-four, and it was dark; and
it grew colder.

The dogs whined and stopped every few yards, worn out by wallowing in
the snow and the labour of the collar. The long scarfs that wrapped our
mouths and noses had been shifted and shifted, as one part after another
became solid with ice from the breath, until over their whole length
they were stiff as boards. After two more miles of it it was evident
that we could not reach the mail cabin that night. Then I made my last
and worst mistake. We should have stopped and camped then and there. We
had tent and stove and everything requisite. But the native boy insisted
that the cabin was "only little way," and any one who knows the misery
of making camp in extremely cold weather, in the dark, will understand
our reluctance to do so.

I decided to make a cache of the greater part of our load--tent and
stove and supplies generally--and to push on to the cabin with but the
bedding and the grub box, returning for the stuff in the morning. And,
since in the deepest depths of blundering there is a deeper still, by
some one's carelessness, but certainly by my fault, the axe was left
behind in the cache.

With our reduced burden we made better p