Sentence No. 159 · 2 September 2026
And while they talked, the voices of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as the night-frost choked and clogged the runnels
Rudyard Kipling, Kim
Rudyard Kipling — Kim (1901) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
Two time-clauses bracket the sentence: 'while they talked' opens it (marked off by the only comma), and 'as the night-frost choked' closes it, giving the cause. The main statement — the voices diminished one by one — sits between them.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 6 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. Hill men smoke and scheme by night while the cold deepens. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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