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It was he who led the way up while we followed, watching him so that we could hold him if he slipped. But his strength held out until we got to shelter, though it was the last real effort he was able to make for himself.
We found under a deep overhang of blue ice a part-frozen dirt shelf, and behind that a cave with a soft dirt floor - and so long did it already seem to us since we had seen earth that we handled it with affection and in need for reassurance. Touching it released odours, and we knew that this was guano, or droppings, and looking up thought we could see bats, but there were none, they had been killed by the cold. Yet in this cave, with the unfrozen dirt beneath our feet, there was something that disturbed us, made us look continually over our shoulders.
We spread our pelts on the cave floor, and lit a big fire in the entrance, using the guano as fuel; and when the flames leaped up, and the smoke began to eddy, we heard a stirring in the heart of the cave, as if creatures were alerted, and were withdrawing farther and deeper. We kept vigil all that night, though in the comparative warmth of the place we all found it easy to sleep. We each took a watch, and all felt that a watch was being kept on us - we had a sense of being stared at. In the morning, we felt the lack of something that it had not occurred to us to supply ourselves with. We needed a torch. There was no branch or stick or anything that would make a torch. The daylight fell only a little way into the cave. All five of us, in a strong close group, went as far into the cave as we dared, and knew that not far from us were living beings. We sensed a mass of living warmth. Many small things? A few large ones? And if large, what? The vegetation-eateis of our lost time could not have survived.
Did the little snow rodents mass in what caves still were free of the ice packs? Did the great birds nest in caves? Was there some other kind of bird or animal we had not imagined?
It was with feelings of loss, even of anguish, that we left those creatures behind: this was because, of course, we identified with them. How could we not, pressed in upon as we were, so that our lives became ever smaller and narrower? We could feel for these poor animals, whatever they were, surviving in an icebound cave.
We travelled on polewards, but more slowly because of No
How still it was through that long night, and how beautiful! The silence was so deep we could hear the small crystalline whispering of the stars. And, before dawn, when the cold was so intense our thick fleecy coats seemed to have crumbled away, leaving us naked, one of the high glittering peaks that surrounded us let out a violent cracking noise, as the icy blast bit into it, and this sound was echoed by another peak, and in a moment all the mountains seemed to be shouting and groaning and protesting with the cold. And then it was silent again, and the stars sparkled and invited. We did not believe we would survive the night, and in the first light that made everything glitter and hurt our eyes we found No
It seemed to us that the sun here at the top of our world was hotter than anywhere on our journey. It will be remembered that I said there was the very slightest inclination of our planet on its axis, which had never been enough to make much difference in our good times; but now we wondered if perhaps, because we were in such extremities of climate, this small slant might make enough of a change to call it a summer, when the other pole in its turn reached forward closer to the sun. Well, it turned out that it was so: there was the briefest season of weather when a slight increase in warmth made it possible to bring on crops and cosset a few vegetables. But it could not be summer enough to change our situation.
Here at the top of the planet, with nothing around us but glazed ice on which we could hardly keep our footing, we had to acknowledge that we had not found anything that could be of use as foodstock, except perhaps the white snow creatures. Which did not live up here, in these latitudes - here nothing lived. And our small livingness, our slow and cold-confused thoughts seemed to us out of place, almost an affront to nature which had ordained only the silences of the ice, the shrieking of the storms.
On the way back, the girl fell ill and we had to pull her along on one of the carts - there was room for her, now we had eaten nearly all our dried meat. When we reached the valleys, where the small movement of the snow animals showed on the snows among the shadows of the great birds that swung their white wings overhead, we caught several. This was easy, for they did not know enough to fear us. They were confiding little beasts, and snuggled up to the girl who lay half-conscious on her bed, and their sweetness and warmth revived her, and she wept for the first time, because of the death of her friend No