Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/174

 was not possible, and shelter was nowhere to be found upon the unbroken plain. There was but one direction in which we could move, and that was with our backs to the gale. Much as I should have liked to continue the journey one day more, it was clear to me that longer delay would not alone endanger the lives of one or two members of my party, but would wholly defeat the purposes of the expedition by the destruction of all of us.

It was not without much difficulty that the tent was taken down and bundled upon the sledge. The wind blew so fiercely that we could scarcely roll it up with our stiffened hands. The men were suffering with pain, and could only for a few moments hold on to the hardened canvas. Their fingers, freezing continually, required active pounding to keep them upon the flickering verge of life. We did not wait for neat stowage or an orderly start. Danger suggests prompt expedients.

Our situation at this camp was as sublime as it was dangerous. We had attained an altitude of five thousand feet above the level of the sea, and we were seventy miles from the coast, in the midst of a vast frozen sahara, immeasurable to the human eye. There was neither hill, mountain, nor gorge anywhere in view. We had completely sunk the strip of land which lies between the mer de glace and the sea; and no object met the eye but our feeble tent, which bent to the storm. Fitful clouds swept over the face of the full-*orbed moon, which, descending toward the horizon, glimmered through the drifting snow that whirled out of the illimitable distance, and scudded over the icy plain;—to the eye, in undulating lines of downy softness; to the flesh, in showers of piercing darts.