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They shaped into glowing life the phantoms of grace that were always flitting before their enchanted eyes, and poured into inanimate marble their rapt and passionate souls. They struck the lyre to wild and stirring songs whose tremulous echoes still linger along the corridors of Time. Some sought the icebound North, and grappled with dangers by field and flood.

The Murmansk railway was not complete, the route to Archangel was icebound from November to May, and the single rail across Siberia was further hampered by indolence and corruption on the part of the railway workers and their staff. Russia was the most isolated of the Allies, and the attempt to open a shorter connexion by a naval attack on the Dardanelles had been frustrated.

How out of place would seem a Jove with his beard in ringlets a trim Apollo a sleek Bacchus an ambrosial Venus a slim Diana, and all their attendant groups of Oreads and Cupids amid the ocean mists, and icebound torrents, the flame-scarred mountains, and four months' night of a land which the opposing forces of heat and cold have selected for a battle-field!

The sources of the Yangtse are to be found in the mountain ranges of Thibet, and as during winter and early spring the deep snows of those lofty regions lie icebound and the great river is fed only by local rains, its waters dwindle in volume until they find a level forty feet below that of summer and autumn, when torrid heat and torrential rains thaw the snows in Central Asia and fill the river-bed with a thick, brown current which, after overflowing into and filling all lakes, tributaries and unprotected lowlands in the Yangtse valley, sweeps eastwards to the ocean, a foaming torrent of irresistible force.

He has wandered far from his icebound southern temples in search of adventure. I came upon him in the pits of Aaanthor; but though I have known him so short a time, I can vouch for his bravery and loyalty."

A line of defence was, nevertheless, taken up by the British under Wallmoden, by the Dutch under their hereditary stadtholder, William V. of Orange, and by an Austrian corps under Alvinzi; the Dutch were, however, panic-struck, and negotiated a separate treaty with Pichegru, who, at that moment, solely aimed at separating the Dutch from their allies; but when, in December, all the rivers and canals were suddenly frozen, and nature no longer threw insurmountable obstacles in his path, regardless of the negotiations then pending in Paris, he unexpectedly took up arms, marched across the icebound waters, and carried Holland by storm.

All the seamen and fishermen who lay icebound at Marstrand used to pass Torarin's cabin to climb the rocks and look for any sign of the ice parting in the coves and sounds. Elsalill stood many a time at the cottage door and followed with her eyes the men who mounted the ridge.

Beowulf was his name, a man of immense strength and courage, and a mighty swimmer who had developed his powers fighting the "nickers," whales, walruses and seals, in the icebound northern ocean. When he heard the story, Beowulf was stirred to go and fight the monster and free the Danes, who were his father's friends. With fourteen companions he crosses the sea.

The day had become cloudy, and showers fell all the evening, but not heavily enough to prevent every man, woman, and child from rushing out to "speak" the down-coming boat Ontario, and hear her report on the state of the ice-fields. She had been six days icebound at Duluth and the answer to our captain's inquiry was "Forty miles of ice; only one passage.