The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

: The Wreck of the South Pole. 21 “Welcome to our land,” and although it was the most commonplace phrase, no music ever sounded sweeter in my ears. For had her voice not been most musical and her face and form perfection of artistic grace, these were the first human words | had heard since the day of the shipwreck. ‘The first human words, I say, because those I heard out on the ice fields, coming from no visible per- son, I could not reckon as human. I never have been very forward with women—on the contrary, rather diffident—but I felt no bashfulness with her. Instead, I rapidly stepped up to her side and asked her one question after another as to where I was and what land I was approaching, all of which she answered, still smiling my heart into her own keeping. | “T am Winnifred, and you are approaching the city of Theon, the capital of the state, and will reach it to-night. You are now in the borderland between the state and the land of the ice. Follow me. I came to lead you.” We walked along after that side by side, she plying me with questions as to my journey across the ice, although even then I had an impression that she was doing so merely to hear me talk, rather than because she did not know every detail of it already. I noticed, also, that while she talked with me freely and with perfect ease, she kept, with what I considered needless prudery at the time, several feet away, and never allowed me to approach near enough to touch her. After we had traveled together for an hour or more, we came to the summit of a range of mountains which sloped Connicloool SS (SO)