Day had broken cold and grey when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail. He climbed the high earth‑bank where a little‑travelled trail led east through the pine forest. It was a high bank, and he paused to breathe at the top. He excused the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning. There was no sun or promise of sun, although there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day. However, there seemed to be an indescribable darkness over the face of things. That was because the sun was absent from the sky.

This fact did not worry the man. He was not alarmed by the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun. The man looked along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white. North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white. The one thing that relieved the whiteness was a thin dark line that curved from the pine‑covered island to the south. It curved into the north, where it disappeared behind another pine‑covered island. This dark line was the trail—the main trail. But all this—the distant trail, no sun in the sky, the great cold, and the strangeness of it all—had no effect on the man.