Then deliberately facing the bitter blast he struck out boldly along the ice and started on his way. CHAPTER XIX IN THE KINGDOM OF THE NIGHT Heigh-ho! for that run along the ice--a matter of half a dozen leagues or so--at dead of night with a keen north-easterly wind whipping up the blood, and motion--smooth gliding motion--to cause it to glow in every vein. Heigh-ho! for the joy of living, for the joy in the white, ice-covered world, the joy in the night, and in the moon, and in those distant lights of Leyden which gradually recede and diminish--tiny atoms now in the infinite and mysterious distance! What ho! a dark and heavy bank of clouds! whence come ye, ye disturbers of the moon's serenity? Nay! but we are in a hurry, the wind drives us at breathless speed, we cannot stay to explain whence we have come. Moon, kind moon, come out again! ah, there she is, pallid through the frosty mist, blinking at this white world scarce less brilliant than she. On, on! silently and swiftly, in the stillness of the night, the cruel skates make deep gashes on the smooth skin of the ice, long even strokes now, for the Meer is smooth and straight, and the moon--kind moon!--marks an even silvery track, there where the capricious wind has swept it free of snow. Hat in hand, for the wind is cool and good, and tames the hot young blood which a woman's biting tongue has whipped into passion. "The young vixen," shouts a laughing voice through the night, "was she aware of her danger? how I could have tamed her, and cowed her and terrified her! Did she play a cat and mouse game with me I wonder.... Dondersteen! if I thought that...." But why think of a vixen now, of blue eyes and biting tongues, when the night with unerring hand clothes the landscape with glory. One word to the north-east wind and he sweeps the track quite clear and causes myriads of diamonds to fly aimlessly about, ere they settle like tiny butterflies on tortuous twigs, and rough blades of coarse grass. One call to the moon and she partially hides her face, painting the haze around her to a blood-red hue; now a touch of blue upon the ice, further a streak of emerald, and then the tender mauves of the regal mantle of frost. Then the thousand sounds that rise all around: the thousand sounds which all united make one vast, comprehensive silence: the soughing of the wind in the bare poplar trees, the rattle of the tiny dead twigs and moaning of the branches; from far away the dull and ceaseless rumble which speaks of a restless sea, and now and again the loud and melancholy boom of the ice, yielding to the restless movements of the water beneath. The sounds which make up silence--silence and loneliness, nature's perfect repose under its downy blanket of snow, the vast embrace of the night stretching out into infinity in monotonous flatnesses far away, to the mysterious mists which lie beyond the horizon.