To me she is fractious, tiresome, and a faggot. Yet the subtle desirableness is in her, for me. As it is in the brown hen, or even a sow.

It floats on a cushion of huzun, the way an air-hockey puck hovers above the game table.

The brig and the ice round her are covered by a strange black obscurity: it is the frost smoke of arctic winters.

The further fact that almost the only articulate opposition to statehood within Alaska came from representatives of or persons closely associated with absentee business interests which are the traditional betes noires in any colonial area, presented an opportunity for branding even mild questioning of the movement as unAlaskan.