80 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



There was one cloud in the east which the sun had 

 chosen out from among its fellows to flush with pink, 

 and beyond the ice barrier in the bay, the water caught 

 up its reflection and repeated it and juggled with it and 

 glorified it, until the river was like an opal in the 

 shimmer of silver and rose. Closer at hand, over the 

 ice the sunshine lay so golden and mellow that one 

 quite forgot the chilliness of the air and thought of 

 flowers and hay-fields. But although there were as yet 

 no flowers beside the Yenesei, nothing could surpass 

 the splendours of the ice as the light smote across the 

 fljes, discovering their grottos, bulwarks, and pinnacles 

 of silver and malachite. Here and there a great block, 

 melting after the day's sunshine, fell asunder with a 

 crash into a gigantic shining star. Other slabs were 

 fringed with a delicate tracery of rime, and more were 

 so hewn by the ceaseless grinding to and fro that their 

 blunted edges were white as marble with wonderful 

 green veins. And the air was full of the strangest 

 sound in the world. It was a peculiar hissing and 

 rustling, not very loud, and yet as clear as a million 

 mournful whispers. It was the noise of the melting of 

 the ice, made by the smaller blocks, as, one by one, they 

 split and dropped, tinkling, upon their fellows, and by 

 the groaning of the larger pieces as the river forced 

 them seawards before the advancing summer. 



The only dark and ugly thing in all that glory of 

 ice and sunshine was the little squat square house with 

 its rubbish heaps and troop of prowling dogs ; and I 

 was glad to turn my back upon it and wander away 

 over the marsh. There were two Yurak chooms close 



