Pierre, half blinded as he was, arose uneasily and cast the air like a wild beast, his great head thrown back, his nostrils quivering.

“I smell the win’,” he cried.  “Mon Dieu!  She’s goin’ blow!”

A volatile pennant floated out from a near-bye peak, hanging about its crest like faint smoke.  Then along the brow of the pass writhed a wisp of drifting, twisting flakelets, idling hither and yon, astatic and aimless, settling in a hollow.  They sensed a thrill and rustle to the air, though never a breath had touched them; then, as they mounted higher, a draught fanned them, icy as interstellar space.  The view from the summit was grotesquely distorted, and glancing upward they found the guardian peaks had gone a-smoke with clouds of snow that whirled confusedly, while an increasing breath sucked over the summit, stronger each second.  Dry snow began to rustle slothfully about their feet.  So swiftly were the changes wrought, that before the mind had grasped their import the storm was on them, roaring down from every side, swooping out of the boiling sky, a raging blast from the voids of sunless space.

Pierre’s shouts as he slashed at the sled lashings were snatched from his lips in scattered scraps.  He dragged forth the whipping tent and threw himself upon it with the sleeping-bags.  Having cut loose the dogs, Willard crawled within his sack and they drew the flapping canvas over them.  The air was twilight and heavy with efflorescent granules that hurtled past in a drone.

They removed their outer garments that the fur might fold closer against them, and lay exposed to the full hate of the gale.  They hoped to be drifted over, but no snow could lodge in this hurricane, and it sifted past, dry and sharp, eddying out a bare place wherein they lay.  Thus the wind drove the chill to their bones bitterly.

An unnourished human body responds but weakly, so, vitiated by their fast and labours, their suffering smote them with tenfold cruelty.

All night the north wind shouted, and, as the next day waned with its violence undiminished, the frost crept in upon them till they rolled and tossed shivering.  Twice they essayed to crawl out, but were driven back to cower for endless, hopeless hours.

It is in such black, aimless times that thought becomes distorted.  Willard felt his mind wandering through bleak dreams and tortured fancies, always to find himself harping on his early argument with Pierre:  “It’s the mind that counts.”  Later he roused to the fact that his knees, where they pressed against the bag, were frozen; also his feet were numb and senseless.  In his acquired consciousness he knew that along the course of his previous mental vagary lay madness, and the need of action bore upon him imperatively.

He shouted to his mate, but “Wild” Pierre seemed strangely apathetic.

“We’ve got to run for it at daylight.  We’re freezing.  Here!  Hold on!  What are you doing?  Wait for daylight!” Pierre had scrambled stiffly out of his cover and his gabblings reached Willard.  He raised a clenched fist into the darkness of the streaming night, cursing horribly with words that appalled the other.