the junction of the Chandalar River was made. It was
while negotiating the rough surface of Chandalar that the "terror of the
North" came down.

Jim heard it coming before Angela was aware of any unusual sound. For two
days there had been no wind, saving a light zephyr that laid its bitter
finger on the exposed flesh. Now a legion of devils were preparing for
attack. A sound like unto a human sigh broke the silence. It died away
and came again, a little stronger. Immediately Jim pulled the "leader" dog
to the lift and cracked the long whip over the team.

"Mush, darn you, mush!"

"What's that?" inquired Angela, as an uncanny groaning met her ears.

"The wind. Gee, but she's going to raise the dead!"

The high bank loomed up and the sled turned a half-circle and came close
under a protecting bluff. Jim tied the team to a tree and ran forward to
Angela. She was standing terror-stricken at the sound of the approaching
monster. Behind her was a huge snow-drift. He pointed to the white mass,
and shouted that his voice might be heard above the Niagara of sound.

"We'll sure freeze stiff unless we git inside that--hurry!"

They bored their way into the crisp snow, like dogs in a rabbit-hole.
There was scarcely need to urge Angela to use her strength. The noise of
the approaching blizzard was like to fifty thousand shrieking devils. The
little light that remained was suddenly blotted out. At nearly a hundred
miles an hour the solid mass of wind and snow came roaring down from the
mountains. The whole earth seemed to reel under the impact. Inside the
sheltering snow mass it was cold enough, but outside nothing human could
live. The dogs, familiar with this phenomenon of the higher latitudes, had
crawled into the snow and would lie there until the noise subsided.

The two humans huddled up inside the snow heard nothing and saw nothing.
It was as if the whole world had suddenly crashed into a sister planet and
was hurtling into space, a broken mass. Hours passed and no change came.
Occasionally the snow-drift seemed to shift a little, and Jim dreaded that
some clutching finger of the wind would tear the frozen morsel of shelter
from the cliff and drive it into thin air. That were indeed the end, for
at fifty degrees below zero the Arctic hurricane is like a knife, from
whose murderous edge no escape is possible.

They crawled lower in the snow until they reached the ice itself. It was
suffocating, for the wind had blown in