As I stood, I plunged and staggered, and I found
the dogs sprawling, with whimperings, on the heaving floor.
I did not care. Instinctively, daftly, brutishly, I harnessed ten of
them to my sledge; put on Canadian snow-shoes: and was away
northward--alone.
The sun shone with a clear, benign, but heatless shining: a ghostly,
remote, yet quite limpid light, which seemed designed for the lighting
of other planets and systems, and to strike here by happy chance. A
great wind from the S.W., meantime, sent thin snow-sweepings flying
northward past me.
The odometer which I had with me had not yet measured four miles, when I
began to notice two things: first that the jewelled meteor-stones were
now accumulating beyond all limit, filling my range of vision to the
northern horizon with a dazzling glister: in mounds, and parterres, and
scattered disconnection they lay, like largesse of autumn leaves, spread
out over those Elysian fields and fairy uplands of wealth, trillions of
billions, so that I had need to steer my twining way among them.
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