luding our very dishevelled minds.

There was no doubt that we were in the devil of a mess, and it was not
altogether our fault. We had had to put our igloo more or less where we
could get rocks with which to build it. Very naturally we had given both
our tent and igloo all the shelter we could from the full force of the
wind, and now it seemed we were in danger not because they were in the
wind, but because they were not sufficiently in it. The main force of the
hurricane, deflected by the ridge behind, fled over our heads and
appeared to form by suction a vacuum below. Our tent had either been
sucked upwards into this, or had been blown away because some of it was
in the wind while some of it was not. The roof of our igloo was being
wrenched upwards and then dropped back with great crashes: the drift was
spouting in, not it seemed because it was blown in from outside, but
because it was sucked in from within: the lee, not the weather, wall was
the worst. Already everything was six or eight inches under snow.

Very soon we began to be alarmed about the igloo. For some time the heavy
snow blocks we had heaved up on to the canvas roof kept it weighted down.
But it seemed that they were being gradually moved off by the hurricane.
The tension became well-nigh unendurable: the waiting in all that welter
of noise was maddening. Minute after minute, hour after hour--those snow
blocks were off now anyway, and the roof was smashed up and down--no
canvas ever made could stand it indefinitely.

We got a meal that Saturday morning, our last for a very long time as it
happened. Oil being of such importance to us we tried to use the blubber
stove, but after several preliminary spasms it came to pieces in our
hands, some solder having melted; and a very good thing too, I thought,
for it was more dangerous than useful. We finished cooking our meal on
the primus. Two bits of the cooker having been blown away we had to
balance it on the primus as best we could. We then settled that in view
of the shortage of oil we would not have another meal for as long as
possible. As a matter of fact God settled that for us.

We did all we could to stop up the places where the drift was coming in,
plugging the holes with our socks, mitts and other clothing. But it was
no real good. Our igloo was a vacuum which was filling itself up as soon
as possible: and when snow was not coming in a fine black moraine dust
took its place, covering us and everyth