ty set themselves
forthwith first to listen to the professor's explanation of the
peculiarities of the weapons, and next, to practise diligently with them
for a full hour; at the expiration of which, as the rifles were really a
splendid arm and simple enough to handle when their action had been
clearly explained, the quartette had fully regained their confidence in
themselves and each other, having done some most excellent shooting.

Meanwhile the channel hourly grew more narrow and intricate; and, to add
still further to the difficulties of the passage, the wind shifted round
and began to blow freshly from the northward, bringing with it a dense
and bitterly cold fog. The travellers struggled gallantly against these
adverse circumstances as long as any progress northward was at all
possible, being desirous of realising, as fully as might be, for
themselves the difficulties experienced by explorers in these high
latitudes; but at length they found themselves so completely hemmed in
by vast floes and drifting masses of pack-ice that to prolong the
struggle would only be endangering the ship, and they were reluctantly
compelled to own themselves beaten and to rise into the air.

They rose to a height of five hundred feet above the sea-level, and, at
this elevation, found themselves entirely free of the fog. So far this
was well, but the dense masses of heavy grey snow-laden cloud which
obscured the heavens above them, and the threatening aspect of the sky
to windward, told them that their holiday weather was, at all events for
the present, gone, and that they were about to experience the terrors of
a polar gale. The temperature fell with astounding rapidity; and they
were compelled to beat a rapid retreat to their state-rooms, there to
don additional garments. This done, they sallied out on deck, to find
that during the short period of their retirement a heavy snow-storm had
set in, the air being so full of the great white blinding flakes that,
standing abreast the pilot-house, it was impossible to see either end of
the ship. Floating in the air as they were it was, of course,
impossible for them to estimate the strength of the gale, the only
apparent movement of the atmosphere being that due to their own passage
through it. Though heading to the northward, with the engines making a
sufficient number of revolutions per minute to propel them through still
air at the rate of thirty miles per hour, it was quite on the