The roof of both circular part and passage was
soon buried under snow and ice, and hardly distinguishable from the
general level of the white-clad ground. Through the passage, if I passed
in or out, I crawled flat, on hands and knees: but that was rare: and in
the little round interior, mostly sitting in a cowering attitude, I
wintered, harkening to the large and windy ravings of darkling December
storms above me.
* * * * *
All those months the burden of a thought bowed me; and an unanswered
question, like the slow turning of a mechanism, revolved in my gloomy
spirit: for everywhere around me lay bears, walruses, foxes, thousands
upon thousands of little awks, kittiwakes, snow-owls, eider-ducks,
gulls-dead, dead. Almost the only living things which I saw were some
walruses on the drift-floes: but very few compared with the number
which I expected. It was clear to me that some inconceivable catastrophe
had overtaken the island during the summer, destroying all life about
it, except some few of the amphibia, cetacea, and crustacea.
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