Rea grew more silent day by day, and as he sat before the fire his wide shoulders sagged lower and lower.

Jones, unaccustomed to the waiting, the restraint, the barrier of the north, worked on guns, sleds, harness, till he felt he would go mad.

Then to save his mind he constructed a windmill of caribou hides and pondered over it trying to invent, to put into practical use an idea he had once conceived.
Hour after hour he lay under his blankets unable to sleep, and listened to the north wind.

Sometimes Rea mumbled in his slumbers; once his giant form started up, and he muttered a woman's name.

Shadows from the fire flickered on the walls, visionary, spectral shadows, cold and gray, fitting the north.