Far to
the south the sun climbed steadily to meridian, but between it
and the frozen Yukon intervened the bulge of the earth. The
Yukon lay in a night shadow, and the day itself was in reality a
long twilight-light. At a quarter before twelve, where a wide
bend of the river gave a long vista south, the sun showed its
upper rim above the sky-line. But it did not rise
perpendicularly. Instead, it rose on a slant, so that by high
noon it had barely lifted its lower rim clear of the horizon. It
was a dim, wan sun. There was no heat to its rays, and a man
could gaze squarely into the full orb of it without hurt to his
eyes. No sooner had it reached meridian than it began its slant
back beneath the horizon, and at quarter past twelve the earth
threw its shadow again over the land.
The men and dogs raced on. Daylight and Kama were both savages
so far as their stomachs were concerned. They could eat
irregularly in time and quantity, gorging hugely on occasion, and
on occasion going long stretches without eating at all. As for
the dogs, they ate but once a day, and then rarely did they
receive more than a pound each of dried fish. They were
ravenously hungry and at the same time splendidly in condition.
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