30 
THE HUT IN A STORM. 
cooked coffee, and drank again; and when by our 
tired instincts we thought that twelve hours must 
have passed, we treated ourselves to a meal,—that 
is to say, we divided impartial bites out of the raw 
hind-leg of a fox, to give zest to our biscuits spread 
with frozen tallow. 
“We then turned in to sleep again, no longer heedful 
of the storm, for it had now buried us deep in with the 
snow. 
“But in the mean time, although the storm con¬ 
tinued, the temperatures underwent an extraordinarj' 
change. I was awakened by the dropping of water 
from the roof above me; and, upon turning back my 
sleeping-bag, found it saturated by the melting of its 
previously-condensed hoar-frost. My eider-down was 
like a wet swab. I found afterward that the pheno¬ 
menon of the warm southeast had come unexpectedly 
upon us. The thermometers at the brig indicated 
+26°; and, closer as we were to the water, the weather 
was probably above the freezing-point. 
“When we left the brig—how long before it was we 
did not know—the temperature was —44°. It had 
risen at least seventy degrees. I defy the strongest 
man not to suffer from such a change. A close, op¬ 
pressive sensation attacked both Hans and myself. 
We both suffered from cardiac symptoms, and are up 
to this moment under anxious treatment by our com¬ 
rades. Mr. Wilson, I find, has had spasmodic asthma 
from it here, and Brooks has a renewal of his old 
dyspnoea. 
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