Publisher's Synopsis
"It's a lie! I don't and I won't believe it." The speaker half whispered that, and then he shouted, "Do you hear?" There was a pause, and then from the face of a huge white snow-cliff there came back the word "hear." "Well done, echo!" cried the speaker. "Echo," came back. "Thankye; that's quite cheering; anything's better than that horrible silence. What do they say? When a man gets in the habit of talking to himself it's a sign that he is going mad? Once more, it's a lie! A man would go mad in this awful solitude if he didn't hear some one speaking. Snow, snow, snow, and rock and mountain; and ugh! how cold! Pull up, donkey! jackass! idiot! or you'll freeze to death." The speaker was harnessed by a looped rope to a small, well-packed sledge, after the fashion of one who tracks about along the Thames; but how different here! No sunny river, no verdant flowing mead or hanging summer wood, but winter, stern winter in its wildest, and the heavy sledge, in answer to the tugging at the rope, now sticking fast amongst the heaped-up stones frozen together in a mass, now suddenly gliding down sharp slopes and tripping its owner up, so that again and again, during an awful day's tramp, he had fallen heavily. But only to struggle up, shake the snow from his fur-lined coat, and continue his journey onward towards the golden land where the nuggets lay in wondrous profusion waiting the bold adventurer's coming-heaped-up, almost fabulous riches that had lain undiscovered since the beginning of the world.
