Oh! How unlike it was to the blue seasons of the
south! Covered with ice, it was only to be distinguished from land by
its superior wildness and ruggedness. The Greeks wept for joy when
they beheld the Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with
rapture the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down
and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in
safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary's gibe,
to meet and grapple with him.
Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs and thus
traversed the snows with inconceivable speed. I know not whether the
fiend possessed the same advantages, but I found that, as before I had
daily lost ground in the pursuit, I now gained on him, so much so that
when I first saw the ocean he was but one day's journey in advance, and
I hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach. With new
courage, therefore, I pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched
hamlet on the seashore. I inquired of the inhabitants concerning the
fiend and gained accurate information. A gigantic monster, they said,
had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols,
putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage through fear of
his terrific appearance. He had carried off their store of winter
food, and placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a
numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same
night, to the joy of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his
journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land; and they
conjectured that he must speedily be destroyed by the breaking of the
ice or frozen by the eternal frosts.
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