y with snow.

"It is a tempest," said he. "May heaven grant that our house may
withstand it, for, if the storm should destroy it, we should be
lost!"

At the same time with the gusts of wind a noise was heard beneath
the frozen soil; icebergs, broken from the promontory, dashed
away noisily, and fell upon one another; the wind blew with such
violence that it seemed sometimes as if the whole house moved
from its foundation; phosphorescent lights, inexplicable in that
latitude, flashed across the whirlwinds of the snow.

"Marie! Marie!" cried Penellan, seizing the young girl's hands.

"We are in a bad case!" said Misonne.

"And I know not whether we shall escape," replied Aupic.

"Let us quit this snow-house!" said Andre Vasling.

"Impossible!" returned Penellan. "The cold outside is terrible;
perhaps we can bear it by staying here."

"Give me the thermometer," demanded Vasling.

Aupic handed it to him. It showed ten degrees below zero inside
the house, though the fire was lighted. Vasling raised the canvas
which covered the opening, and pushed it aside hastily; for he
would have been lacerated by the fall of ice which the wind
hurled around, and which fell in a perfect hail-storm.

"Well, Vasling," said Penellan, "will you go out, then? You see
that we are more safe here."

"Yes," said Jean Cornbutte; "and we must use every effort to
strengthen the house in the interior."

"But a still more terrible danger menaces us," said Vasling.

"What?" asked Jean.

"The wind is breaking the ice against which we are propped, just
as it has that of the promontory, and we shall be either driven
out or buried!"

"That seems doubtful," said Penellan, "for it is freezing hard
enough to ice over all liquid surfaces. Let us see what the
temperature is."

He raised the canvas so as to pass out his arm, and with
difficulty found the thermometer again, in the midst of the snow;
but he at last succeeded in seizing it, and, holding the lamp to
it, said,--

"Thirty-two degrees below zero! It is the coldest we have seen
here yet!"

[Illustration: "Thirty-two degrees below zero!"]

"Ten degrees more," said Vasling, "and the mercury will freeze!"

A mournful silence followed this remark.

About eight in the morning Penellan essayed a second time to go
out to judge of their situation. It was necessary to give an
escape to the smoke, which the wind had several times repelled
into the hut. The sailor wrapped his cloak tig