CAPE MISERY. 
221 
us, made for the rocks of Eider Island, and, after the 
most exhausting exertions, succeeded in gaining terra 
firma. 
We were now safe from the danger that had seemed 
most imminent; but our condition was not improved. 
We were out on a blank cliff, the wind eddying round 
us so furiously that we could not keep our feet, and 
the air so darkened with the snow-wreaths that, 
although we were in the full daytime of the Arctic 
summer, we could neither see each other nor our dogs. 
CAPE MISERY. 
There was not a cleft or a projecting knob that could 
give us refuge. I saw that we must move or die. It 
was impossible that the ice should continue to resist 
such a hurricane, and a bold channel separated us from 
the shore. Petersen indeed protested that the channel 
was already broken up and driving with the storm. 
We made the effort, and crossed. 
We struck a headland on the main shore, where a 
dark hornblende rock, perhaps thirty feet high, had 
formed a barricade, behind which the drifts piled them¬ 
selves; and into this mound of snow we had just 
