With the viciousness of spattering shrapnel that first salvo of frozen pellets raked me across the right cheek. The tingle of pain was astonishingly sharp, like that from the blow of a back-snapped thorn branch on an overgrown trail, and I was a bit surprised when an explorative finger revealed no trace of blood. Hunching my neck brought my face under cover, but the batteries of the storm had got my range now and there was a decided sting to the impact of those baby icebergs, even through my slicker and shirt. People are very prone to exaggerate about the size of hail-stones, so I shall endeavour to make a special effort to be conservative about these. They felt a lot bigger when they hit, of course, but as I examined heaps of them afterward the average size seemed to be about that of shrapnel or large marbles. There may have been hail-stones the size of hens' eggs, but no one who was ever exposed to them in the open can have lived to tell the tale. Men looking out through the bars of jail may have seen them and survived to make affidavits; most other authentic reports of egg-sized hail-stones will doubtless be pretty well confined to the minutes of coroners' juries. Indeed, I am inclined to think that a considerable crimp would have been put in my down-river schedule by the comparatively diminutive pellets I faced on this occasion but for the shelter I presently found for my head under the side of the skiff. As the hail-stones, flying before the wind, were hurtling along almost horizontally, huddling under the lee bow of the skiff protected just about all of me but my feet. Even that was not good enough, however, for the impact of the blows on the tops of my toes left an extraordinary ache behind it--something that I could not contemplate standing for an indefinite number of murderous minutes. Clawing over the side for a canvas or _poncho_ to buffer the worst of the barrage, my hand came in contact with the roll of my sleeping pocket. That gave me an idea. The wind, getting inside the hollow bag, nearly tore it from my hands as I started to unroll it, but once I got it smothered under me the rest was easy. With my legs inside of the bag and the uninflated rubber mattress between my feet and the hail-stones, about all I had to bother about seemed to be a wind strong enough to carry the boat away and me with it.