You wish you had Dr. Kane's "Arctic Explorations." A perusal of his coldest chapter might warm you a little. You get out into the snow, and flounder along to the engine. There it is, with its nose in the drift like a setter, and sings as feebly as a tea-kettle. The water drips through the joints of its harness, and hangs in icicles. Did you ever see an icicle grow? Now is your time. A drop of water runs down to the tip of the needle, halts and freezes. Then another, and another. Some get a little way, and give out. So the icicle grows bigger. Others manage to reach the point. So the icicle grows longer. It is about the only vegetable that grows downward, except Spanish moss. The engineer takes his dinner out of a little tin pail, and eats it before your eyes. The fireman keeps up the fire, and warms his feet before your toes. You ask the driver what is going to be done. He suspends the polishing of a chicken bone for a second, and says, "Waitin' for time!" Meanwhile the wind has been busy. It has chucked your hat into the bank, and filled it with snow, Scripture measure.
You go to the rear of the train and look back. You cannot see whence you came, nor how you ever _did_ come, nor where you will ever get away. A brakeman starts out with a flag, and plods along the track. He needn't. There is nothing in the world that can come, and no more danger of colliding with a train than there is with the Fourth of July. He has started for the last station, but he is in sight as long as you can see him, and you could see him longer only it is getting dark. By-and-by he returns, riding on an engine that catches us by the heels and drags us back to the station, where the hours put a great deal of lead in their shoes, and stalk slowly through the night. Two or three boys come in. They are all of a bigness, like young Esquimaux. They _are_ Esquimaux. They stand between you and the stove, and stare at you. Like the moon, only one side of them is ever visible, and that is the _fore_ side. They are glad there is a storm, glad the train is stopped. It's fun. One of them has a basket of apples. You buy some. You might as well try to eat a stalactite. They were frozen coming to the depot, or before they started, or as soon as they ripened, and you never knew when. Those boys laugh at your discomfiture, and you hope there are white bears in Labrador, and that one of them is in a drift outside with a good appetite, and that he will catch that apple-vender and empty the basket and eat the boy! By-and-by the first engine gives a frosty whistle and the second engine gives another, and the conductor lets his head in at the door and shouts "All aboard!" as if he had been hindered all this while waiting for you to buy apples and wish for bears; and the passengers clamber into the car and huddle up, and away they go.