A Night in the Snow | Page 6

sat in them well protected by their warm coats, happier far than their human fellow-sufferer, who knew that for him there must be no rest that night if he would see the light of another day.
Having climbed the hill, I walked along its crest for some distance, till suddenly I again lost my footing, and shot down the hill, as far as I can judge, on the opposite side into another ravine. This was, if possible, a more fearful glissade than my previous one; it was a very precipitous place, and I was whirled round and round in my descent, sometimes head first, sometimes feet first, and again sideways, rolling over and over, till at last, by clutching at the gorse bushes, and digging my feet into the snow as before, I once more managed to check my wild career, and bring myself to a stand; but I had lost my hat and a pair of warm fur gloves, which I had on over a pair of old dogskins. The loss of these fur gloves proved very serious to me, as my hands soon began to get so numbed with the cold, that they were comparatively useless.
At the bottom of the ravine into which I had now fallen, I found myself again involved in snow drifts, and had still more difficulty than before in getting out of them. I had tumbled into a very soft one far over my head, and had to fight, and scratch, and burrow for a long time before I could extricate myself, and became more exhausted than at any other time during the night. I only ventured to take my brandy very sparingly, wishing to husband it as much as possible, and there was but a very tiny drop left. My hands, as I have said, were so numbed with cold as to be nearly useless. I had the greatest difficulty in holding the flask, or in eating snow for refreshment, and could hardly get my hands to my mouth for the masses of ice which had formed upon my whiskers, and which were gradually developed into a long crystal beard, hanging half way to my waist. Icicles likewise had formed about my eyes and eyebrows, which I frequently had to break off, and my hair had frozen into a solid block of ice. After the loss of my hat, my hair must, I suppose, have become filled with snow, while I was overhead in the drifts. Probably this was partially melted by the warmth of my head, and subsequently converted into ice by the intense frost. Large balls of ice also formed upon my cuffs, and underneath my knees, which encumbered me very much in walking, and I had continually to break them off. I tried to supply the place of my hat by tying my handkerchief over my head, but found that by no possible effort could I make a knot, and that I could only keep it on my head by holding the corners between my teeth. It was equally impossible to refasten my overcoat, only a thin tweed (for I had dressed lightly, in expectation of hard exercise), which had become unbuttoned in my last fall. It may seem absurd to mention it, but the cravings of hunger grew so keen, stimulated as they were by the cold and the great exertion, that it actually occurred to me whether I could eat one of my old dogskin gloves. I was, however, deterred from making the attempt, partly by the prospect of its toughness, and partly by the fear of greater injury to my hands from frost bite, if they were deprived of their last covering. My exhaustion was so great that I fell down every two or three steps, and the temptation to give in and lie down in the snow became almost irresistible, and had to be struggled against with every power of mind and body. I endeavoured to keep constantly before me the certain fact, that if sleep once overcame me I should never wake again in this life. The night seemed interminably long. Again and again I tried to calculate the time, but always came to the same conclusion, that many hours must elapse before the return of daylight. The wind had gone down, and the stillness became so oppressive, that I often spoke aloud for the sake of hearing my own voice, and to ascertain that the cold, which was intense, had not deprived me of the power of speech. The hares still sported and burrowed on the hill sides, but excepting these there were no signs of life whatever.
Never did shipwrecked mariner watch for the morning more anxiously than did I through that weary, endless night, for I knew that a glimpse of the distance in