It was amazing to see those two gigantic dogs run. They kept the sled almost under us. We came to the south of the island and they went down a declivity and out over the frozen, snow-covered water. Toroh was lashing them with a long whip. I put on more power, and we gradually drew ahead. When we had crossed the broad expanse of bay, the sled was no more than a black blob in the distance. It swung to the right, turned and went back--lost to our sight in the gathering darkness. We were alone, headed southward to Azeela's native country. * * * * * Azeela and her people live on an island which once was the mainland--the southeastern corner of the United States, as you know it. It's a narrow, crescent-shaped island, something like Cuba in outline, but smaller. It's separated from the mainland by a channel some ten miles at its greatest width. The climate, now, is vastly different from your time-world. Climate is the most potent factor of all that influences mankind. The change throughout ten thousand years was dramatic in its effects: it hastened decadence, it drove civilization toward the equator. And then, as though nature were bent upon destruction, disease sprang up in the only warm regions left--disease that could not be coped with. Insects, carrying and transmitting deadly bacteria, swarmed over what we call the torrid zone, making it almost uninhabitable. You must realize over how long a period this went on. Even that was thousands of years before Azeela's birth. This island had formed, and nature had seemed to hold it the one place where humanity could make its last stand. A volcano stood at each end; beneficent, treasured because they contained heat. The internal fires of the earth had broken through here. Hot springs and geysers dotted the land. A river just below the boiling point rose from subterranean depths, flowed for a hundred miles, and plunged down again. And a huge range of mountains running east and west on the mainland to the north offered shelter from the cold winds that were coming down. Anglo-Saxons with a strain of Latin had settled on this palm-covered, tropical island long before the conditions farther north had become so drastic. They kept to themselves and fought against the pollution of their blood by others; they were descendents of the highest type of Earth civilization. For centuries they were left to themselves, to drift along in their own fashion. But with the coming of the cold, the mixed races of the north began moving down--coveting the island. Then these island people suddenly sprang into activity. Defense of the homeland brought action; lost arts of war were revived. The Anglese--that is as near the sound of their word for themselves as I can get--repulsed all comers.