where I was. The stones I had only just seen had disappeared as by enchantment. I was somebody's plaything, and I knew now that Death had his own peculiar sense of humor. Visibility was just barely five yards. I sat down. This looks like the end, I thought. I am a dead man. An Eskimo would have built an igloo in this blizzard: I couldn't. I hadn't had enough practice. I thought of those men on Herschel Island who had been playing football just outside the settlement when a blizzard had sprung up. They had crawled into icehouses to escape it. Five had frozen to death. I tried to dismiss the thought, saying to myself that I must keep my head. Still, here I was, ten minutes from the Post and already dead. A living dead man! The Idea amused me and I thought, I must make a note of it. But how, being dead, could I make a note of it? This little humorous passage was useful: it furnished me momentary relief. If you see a man in a blizzard bending over a rock you may be sure it is me and that I am lost. The shadow that I now am is scrutinizing that rock as soberly as it has ever stared at anything in the world. It is trying to remember, saying to itself: Have I ever seen this bit of rock before? A geologist would not look at it half as intently, Certainly I had seen it before, but where? When? Then, after a moment, I straightened up and said to myself as calmly as I could, No. I do not know this bit of stone. Suddenly I thought I saw something and hurried towards it. A black dot. But no. A single swift gust of wind erased it from this grey blotting-paper, Death was playful. There are people with whom Death plays for three whole days. I gave up the notion of direction. I began merely to roam. If there was a chance in a million that I should come out safe, I was taking it. I do not know what happens to the brain, or if eyes are capable of going mad, but every one who has been lost like this will tell you of extraordinary optical effects. You rush towards a landmark a quarter of a mile away, sure that it is one of the beacons round the Post: it is four yards off and is a tuft of blackened weed. This time I really saw a curiously black spot and my heart jumped as I recognized it. It was one of another set of traps I was serving. But how could it be? For it meant I was out at sea! How could I, in a radius of half a mile, have wandered so far off my course? The shore line. "I follow the shore line!" Stubbornly, afraid that if I did not cling to the word I should lose the thing, I repeated to myself, "The shore line." It might easily have slipped away from me: I had already proof enough that things were as malicious as people. And I knew the shore line should curve: why was it not curving, confound it! It curved, thank God! I was safe. Up there at the Post, Gibson must have been thinking that I too would be good for five foxes a season. Not this time! There was the beacon straight ahead of me, and I was going straight towards it. A gust. The snow blinded me. I looked again. Where was that beacon? This was really too much! Fortunately, my retina if not my mind knew in what direction I should be going. I sprang forward, ... and a form emerged from the blizzard close enough to touch me. It was Gibson. "Mm! he said. 'I was beginning to be worried."

...from KABLOONA by Gontran de Poncins

Contributed by Doris Golden

Page Index	Prev	Page 13	Next	Issue Index