odd. Although but a few
minutes had elapsed, the coast mountains no longer loomed clear against
the horizon, and his visual range appeared foreshortened, as though the
utter distances had lengthened, bringing closer the edge of things.
The twin peaks seemed endlessly distant and hazy, while the air had
thickened as though congested with possibilities, lending a remoteness
to the landscape.

"If it blows up on us here, we're gone," he thought, "for it's miles to
shelter, and we're right in the saddle of the hills."

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 suffer