The wind strengthened into a strong blow, and the particles began to huddle about the sleeping forms, covering them with a thin white sheet. One of the huskies lifted its head, sniffed a moment, and then whined—a long-drawn whine. Manou slept on. The blow increased to a gale, droning over the sharp ice-edges on the hills; the drift came fast and thick, threatening to cover man and dogs completely. Another husky awoke, sprang to its feet, and howled dismally; Manou stirred, cursed the brute, and went to sleep again. The gale grew into the awful Northern hurricane; it shrieked through the ravines, and hissed away among the sharp peaks; it grew wilder and stronger, and, dragging the fur blanket from the sleeping man, drew it to itself and carried it over the snow hills out of sight. The dogs were huddled in a solid mass, yelping and howling. Manou felt the cold and heard the raging of the wind. “Dieu! la tempête du Nord!” he cried in terror, and groped for the blanket; and, when he could not find it, began to sob and to scream curses at God and the storm.
He rose to his feet; the wind upset him; he rose again, and again the gale threw him. Then he started on his hands and knees to find the blanket. He crawled up the slope of the hill near by, thinking that it would have lodged on the side, but it was not there. He crawled farther on to the top. Here the wind was doubly strong; it seemed to shriek: “I got the blanket out of the valley! I have _you_ here!” It buffeted and beat him along ahead of it, turning him over and over, Manou fighting and cursing all the way. He could not get back to the dogs; he dug his fingers into the crust until the blood ran and their ends were split. In vain! Inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by yard, the wind pushed and hurtled him along. The frightful cold ate into his heart, his liver, the nerve-centres of his spine; he gave up fighting, and the wind rolled his body to a little precipice. He fell over its edge, down, down, until, with a soft thud, he struck a deep drift, and sank in. The white mass closed over his body like water, and filled his nose and his ears, choking him into insensibility.
Overhead the storm raged on for hours, until finally it sank as gradually as it had come, the gale dying to a strong blow, the strong blow into a steady wind, the steady wind into a breeze, and the breeze into little drafts that also died away. The sun rose from the snow-haze, and marvelled not; it was used to these things—used to going down at night, and, on rising the next morning, to seeing the barrens changed, a hill here where it was flat yesterday, a ravine there where yesterday stood a hill.