On the 8th, at 3 A. M., they arrived at Cape Sumner, and, getting through the rubble-ice near the shore, gained the steep snow-slope which lay between the foot of the cliffs and the line of immense floe-bergs along the shore, stranded and pressed close up to the snow-slope. Between the bergs and the slope, the wind had made great gaps, deep and tortuous. The only way to get along was either through these gaps—often like pits—or to take the slope above and run the risk of tumbling down into them, sledge and all, sometimes fifteen or twenty feet. There was often no alternative but the latter. Lockwood expected to find it calm there by reason of the protection of the bluffs, but, on the contrary, the wind came down from above in gusts and whirlwinds, filling the air with eddying columns of snow. When about a mile from the Polaris Boat Camp, they encountered an immense mass of snow entirely filling up the ravine from top to bottom. Leaving the sledge, Lockwood went on to see if he could reach the Boat Camp, but could hardly keep his feet on account of the wind. Returning, he and Frederick made a small hole in the side of a large drift, and, pulling in everything the dogs could possibly eat, prepared to “weather the storm.” By 9 A. M., _supper_ had been eaten in darkness, for they had no candles, and Frederick, wedged close up to him in the frozen sleeping-bag, was snorting away like a steam-engine. Lockwood soon fell asleep too, but woke up to find the sleeping-bag and his footgear and clothes wet with the moisture such close quarters produced. Everything inside was thawing. Soon after, masses of snow falling down through a number of rents in the side and roof of the excavation, he began to think they would be smothered alive. But while thinking about it, he went to sleep again, leaving Frederick snorting as before. Just how long they slept in that snow-bank, they did not know, but when they did wake up and try to emerge, they found themselves completely snowed in, and only got out by vigorous use of their knives, so hard and compact had the ice and snow become. Frederick being able to understand only signs and a very few words chiefly referring to food, their conversation was very limited.