“I am certain to go wrong,” I said to myself.

“It is out of my power to follow a direct course without something to serve as a compass.  I will go back to the village and wait till morning.”

Wheeling about in my tracks, I resumed my wearisome tramp through the heavy snow, and kept it up until I was certain I had travelled fully a fourth of a mile.  Then when I paused a moment and gazed ahead and around, I was confronted by blank darkness on every hand.  What a proof of a man’s tendency to go wrong, that in aiming at a village of fifty dwellings, and only a fourth of a mile away, I had missed it altogether!

This discovery gave me my first thrill of real alarm.  I shouted, but my voice fell dead in the snowy air.  The gale was blowing more furiously than ever, and the cold was so intense that it penetrated my thick clothing and caused my teeth to rattle together!

“You can be of no use to me,” I exclaimed, flinging away the small bag of flour.  “The village can’t be far off, and I will find it.”

Determined to retain my self-possession, I made a careful calculation of the proper course to follow, and plunged into my work with more vigor than ever.  I continually glanced up in quest of the flickering lights, and listened, in the hope of hearing some sound that could guide me, but nothing of the kind was seen or heard, and it was not long before the terrible truth burst upon me that I was lost.

Aye, and lost in a blizzard!  The wind had risen almost to a hurricane; the cold cut through the thickest clothing, and the snow struck my face like the prick of millions of needles.  I shouted again, but, convinced that it was a useless waste of strength, I soon ceased.

It was certain death to remain motionless, and almost equally fatal to push on; but there was a possibility that I might strike the right direction, and anything was preferable to remaining idle.  And so, with a desperation akin to despair, I threw all the vigor at my command into my benumbed limbs, and bent every possible energy to the life and death task before me.

The sleet drove against my cheeks with such spiteful and penetrating fierceness that I could make no use of my eyes, I could only bend my head to the blast and labor through the snow, praying that Providence would guide my footsteps in the right direction.

I was plodding forward in this heavy, aimless fashion when I noticed that the violence of the gale was drifting the snow.  Sometimes I would strike a space of several yards where it did not reach to my ankles.  Then I would suddenly lurch into a wall that reached to my shoulders.  After wallowing through this, I might strike a shallow portion again, where, while walking quite briskly, a windrow of snow would be hurled against my breast and face with such fury as to force me backward and off my feet.

Bracing myself, I waited until there was a sufficient lull in the blizzard for me to make some use of my eyes.  I blinked and peered toward the different points of the compass, but without catching the first twinkle of light.