Day had broken cold and gray, extremely cold and gray, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon River trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a vague and little-traveled trail led eastward through the timberland. It was a steep bank, and her paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock. There was no sum a clear day, and yet there was a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. it had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful sphere would just peep above the skyline in the south and dip immediately from view. The man hung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon River lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle waves where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, except for a dark line that curved and twisted form the south and away into the north. This dark line was the trail – the main trail – led south five hundred miles to Chilocoot Pass and salt water, and tat led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the north to St. Michael on the Bering sea, twenty-five hundred miles more. But all this – the mysterious, far-reaching trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all – made no impression on the man. It was not because he was used to it. He was a newcomer in the land and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. (from To Build a Fire by Jack London) trail 小径，小道timberland 林区subtle 微妙的sphere 球体，圆体skyline 地平线ice-jam 流冰堆积curve 依曲线行进far-reaching 延伸到远方的weirdness 离奇怪诞A Winter Night Journey