The evening before the departure, just as they were about to take supper, Penellan was breaking up some empty casks for firewood, when he was suddenly suffocated by a thick smoke. At the same instant the snow-house was shaken as if by an earthquake. The party uttered a cry of terror, and Penellan hurried outside. It was entirely dark. A frightful tempest—for it was not a thaw—was raging, whirlwinds of snow careered around, and it was so exceedingly cold that the helmsman felt his hands rapidly freezing. He was obliged to go in again, after rubbing himself violently 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 André 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.