As long as the snow did not bury us entirely, we were better off under the tent than anywhere else, because we were protected from the wind.  In half an hour the drift had increased to such an extent that we could no longer turn over, and our supply of air was almost entirely cut off.  We must either get out or be suffocated.  I had drawn my sheath-knife fifteen minutes before in expectation of such a crisis, and as it was already becoming difficult to breathe, I cut a long slit in the canvas above my head and we crawled out.  In an instant eyes and nostrils were completely plastered up with snow, and we gasped for breath as if the stream of a fire-engine had been turned suddenly in our faces.  Drawing our heads and arms into the bodies of our kukhlankas, we squatted down upon the snow to wait for daylight.  In a moment I heard Mr. Leet shouting down into the neck-hole of my fur coat, “What would our mothers say if they could see us now?” I wanted to ask him how this would compare with a gale in his boasted Sierra Nevadas, but he was gone before I could get my head out, and I heard nothing more from him that night.  He went away somewhere in the darkness and squatted down alone upon the snow, to suffer cold, hunger and anxiety until morning.  For more than ten hours we sat in this way on that desolate storm-swept plain, without fire, food, or sleep, becoming more and more chilled and exhausted, until it seemed as if daylight would never come.

Morning dawned at last through gray drifting clouds of snow, and, getting up with stiffened limbs, we made feeble attempts to dig out our buried sledges.  But for the unwearied efforts of Mr. Leet we should hardly have succeeded, as my hands and arms were so benumbed with cold that I could not hold an axe or a shovel, and our drivers, frightened and discouraged, seemed unable to do anything.  By Mr. Leet’s individual exertions the sledges were dug out and we started.  His brief spasm of energy was the last effort of a strong will to uphold a sinking and exhausted body, and in half an hour he requested to be tied on his sledge.  We lashed him on from head to foot with sealskin thongs, covered him up with bearskins, and drove on.  In about an hour his driver, Padarin, came back to me with a frightened look in his face, and said that Mr. Leet was dead; that he had shaken him and called him several times, but could get no reply.  Alarmed and shocked, I sprang from my sledge and ran up to the place where he lay, shouted to him, shook him by the shoulder, and tried to uncover his head, which he had drawn down into the body of his fur coat.  In a moment, to my great relief, I heard his voice, saying that he was all right and could hold out, if necessary, until night; that he had not answered Padarin because it was too much trouble, but that I need not be alarmed about his safety; and then I thought he added something about “worse storms in the Sierra Nevadas,” which convinced me that he was far from being used up yet.  As long as he could insist upon the superiority of Californian storms, there was certainly hope.