“Then we must go forward. We will find the Paramutan. They must be here. Somewhere.”

“We go forward only when the storm lets us.”

They took turns, one tending the fire, one getting wood. Darkness came quickly and Ortnar had difficulty in finding the cave with the last load of wood. The temperature had dropped sharply and there were white spots on his cheek that he rubbed with snow. They were both silent now because the time for talking was past. There was nothing more to be said.

The storm continued for days to the count of a hunter’s hand. One day for every finger—including the thumb. They went out only for wood, melted snow for water. And felt the first knife of hunger in their guts as they rationed out the remaining scraps of food.

It was on the next day that there was the first break in the storm. The wind died down and the snow seemed to be thinning.

“It is over,” Kerrick said, hopefully.

“We cannot be sure yet.”

They emerged into grim daylight. Snowflakes still drifted down from the dark gray sky. For a short while the falling snow thinned a little and they could see the waves breaking on the beach, running high up on the pebbled shore. The seas were heavy, foam-topped, dark.

“There!” Kerrick shouted. “I saw something out there—it’s a boat of some kind. Wave to them, wave!”

They stumbled down to the shore, into the edge of the foaming sea and stood there, leaping and shouting hoarsely. Once the boat rode high onto a wave and they thought that they could even make out some figures aboard it. Then the waves rose up again and hid it from sight. The next time they saw the boat it was further out, going north.

It disappeared once again among the mountainous waves and never reappeared.

Wet and exhausted they stumbled back to the cave, barely visible now through the driving snow as the storm struck again with redoubled fury.

The next day they ate the last of their food. Kerrick was licking the crumbled bits of sour meat from his fingers when he looked up and caught Ortnar’s eye. He wanted to speak but could not.

What could he say?

Ortnar pulled the furs about him and turned away.

Outside the storm winds blew, screaming along the cliffs. The ground beneath them trembled as the high waves thundered down onto the beach.

Darkness came and with it a great and all-possessing despair.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Outside the paukarut the blizzard blew with unceasing fury, the wind hurling the snow before it across the arctic ice. Nothing could live before its blast, nothing moved in this totally barren landscape—other than the attacking blizzard. It heaped high around the snow-banked paukaruts until each had a downwind drift like a white beard. In the frozen desert of endless night there was only darkness and certain death.