A fur-trader upon Victoria Island in the Arctic Archipelago, stepping from his cabin into the shadowless daylong twilight, felt a change of weather. He had long ago stopped bothering with the thermometer, but from experience he knew that the customary twenty or thirty below zero had yielded to something far colder. He spat experimentally, and the spittle crackled as it struck the ice-covered ground; that meant about fifty below. It was much too cold for snowflakes to form, but a few tiny spicules and ice-needles settled upon the fur of his sleeve, as the falling temperature squeezed from the already dry air some last vestiges of moisture. A steady breeze moved from the northeast. Along the lines of his cheek-bones above his thick beard, already he felt a numbness. The dog which had followed him from the cabin whimpered a little. “Softy!” said the trader; but he recognized the warning, and went back into the cabin. He brushed from his beard the frost which had formed from his breathing. Then he filled the tea-kettle, knowing that the dry air, when warmed inside the cabin, would suck the moisture from his throat and eye-balls. He decided to stay inside.

•

Undimmed by day the circling constellations glittered over polar ice and snow; the North Star stood at the zenith. Now and again, above the frozen ocean, the aurora flared bright. Hour by hour the heat radiated off. The temperature fell; the weight of air grew heavier; the pressure rose. And inevitably the hour of the break grew closer.

FOURTH DAY

1

Weather-wise after their kind, men say, the frogs from their puddles croak before rain, and the mountain goats move to the sheltered face of the peak before the blizzard strikes. Such also may have been the wisdom of man’s ancestors before man was. In nerve-endings now decadent, they felt the moisture in the air; in the liquids of their joints they sensed the falling pressure.

The ages passed; brow and chin moved forward; man walked two-legged upon the earth. Hunter lying in wait, seed-gatherer wandering afield—they came to know vaguely the warnings of wind and cloud. And as fire (the new-found ally) flickered upon the cave-wall, they entrusted their knowledge to language (that great preserver of knowledge), fashioning rhymes and saws and proverbs. But language, which always said too much or too little, was also a great corrupter of knowledge. He who handled words most cunningly was seldom the wisest, but the catchiest proverbs, not the truest, survived. (So even yet those who speak English say:

Rain before seven,

Clear before eleven.

But those who speak other languages do not say that particular foolishness, not because they are wiser, but because in their speech the two numerals fail to rhyme.)