ible to wear out the cold spell, in
some tolerable comfort, beneath rugs and blankets. On the whole, it was
thought that the berths might be made more serviceable by this expedient,
than by putting their materials into the stoves. Accordingly, within an
hour after Roswell and his mate had returned from their brief out-door
excursion, the whole party was snugly bestowed under piles of rugs,
clothes, sails, and whatever else might be used to retain the animal heat
near the body, and exclude cold. In this manner, six-and-thirty hours were
passed, not a man of them all having the courage to rise from his lair,
and encounter the severity of the climate, now unrelieved by anything like
a fire.

Roswell had slept most of the time, during the last ten hours, and in this
he was much like all around him. A general feeling of drowsiness had come
over the men, and the legs and feet of many among them, notwithstanding
the quantity of bed-clothes that were, in particular, piled on that part
of their person, were sensitively alive to the cold. No one ever knew how
low the thermometer went that fearful night; but a sort of common
consciousness prevailed, that nothing the men had yet seen, or felt,
equalled its chill horrors. The cold had got into the house, converting
every article it contained into a mass of frost, The berths ceased to be
warm, and the smallest exposure of a shoulder, hand, or ears, soon
produced pain. The heads of very many of the party were affected, and
breathing became difficult and troubled. A numbness began to steal over
the lower limbs; and this was the last unpleasant sensation remembered by
Roswell, when he fell into another short and disturbed slumber. The
propensity to sleep was very general now, though many struggled against
it, knowing it was the usual precursor of death by freezing.

Our hero never knew how long he slept in the last nap he took on that
memorable occasion. When he awoke, he found a bright light blazing in the
hut, and heard some one moving about the camboose. Then his thoughts
reverted to himself, and to the condition of his limbs. On trying to rub
his feet together, he found them so nearly without sensation as to make
the consciousness of their touching each other almost out of the question.
Taking the alarm at once, he commenced a violent friction, until by slow
degrees he could feel that the nearly stagnant blood was getting again
into motion. So great had been Roswell's alarm, and so