A few hours later it seemed that the wind had been to the end of the world and had turned to hurry northward again, for it began to beat up steadily from ahead of them, but not strongly enough to overcome the tide it had set with it in its headlong dash. To their left, far away, they could catch occasional glimpses of a jagged coast-line. Out to the right little was to be seen but the tossing flotilla of bergs, gradually fretting away into tide ice. With the return of the wind from the south, Polaris was puzzled to note once more the recurrence of a phenomenon over which he had pondered often. The air was growing warmer! Another manifestation came; more puzzling by far than that of the warming breeze. One day they awoke and found the air filled with drifting white particles. As far as the eye could see it seemed that a shower of fine snow was falling. But the storm was not of snow! Settling weblike in the crannies of the ice, filming the crests of the waves, hanging impalpably in the breeze, it was ashes that was falling! Whence came this strangest of all storms? Polaris and Rose Emer stared at each other, completely at a loss. "If we are to go far enough, we are to find out some great new thing, lady," said the man. * * * * * Soon after the battle with the bears they had abandoned the first iceberg. The floe had broken away on that side until the berg's sheer side was opposed to the fury of the wind and waves, and Polaris feared that it would topple under the constant impact with other bergs, and pitch them into the tide. They crossed the narrow path to the twin berg, threaded the pass of the bears, and found on the farther side a cavern in the ice, partly filled with drift snow, where the animals had made their lair. There they were now confined, as in a castle. The plane of the floe had all been beaten away. Even the ridge between the bergs was gone, and the waves rolled between the twin towers of ice, still held together beneath the surface of the waters by a bond that no crash had severed. The wind subsided, but the air remained warm. No longer were they within the realm of eternal ice, for, outside their prison, the surfaces of the revolving bergs at times actually dripped. The ice was thawing! Then a kink in the current caught them and shot them straight to shore. From the crest of their watchtower, Polaris and the girl viewed the approach. Along the shore-line for miles the drift ice lay like a scum on the water, with here and there the remnant of a mighty iceberg jutting up. Of those, their own refuge was the largest remaining.