As it was now December the nights were made bright by the light of the aurora, while at noon the sun just shone, a red disk, above the southern horizon. This is the month noted in that region for its severe storms. The days were mostly overcast. The second morning after we had started out across the tundra a light flurry of snow blew up. Chrisoffsky shook his head and said it was going to storm. We were just half way across the bare tundra, the worst place possible in which to try to weather one of these storms, because of the utter lack of fire-wood. Chrisoffsky called back to me that he was looking for a _porgo_, which, in his dialect, means a blizzard. About noon the storm struck us with full force. I was continually standing up in the sledge to catch a sight, if possible, of some trailing pine where we could make an excavation and find fire-wood; but it was all in vain. At last the dogs lost sight of the trail and could follow it only by the sense of smell. When the snow came down so heavily that we could hardly see our leading dogs, we halted to let the others catch up with us. With our snow-shoes we dug down six feet to the ground, making an excavation that was, roughly, eight feet square. Placing the three sledges around the edge of the hole, we banked them in with snow. Then we took a tarpaulin from one of the sledges and with walrus-hide rope improvised a sort of roof over our dug-out. The dogs, after washing themselves, dug holes in the snow and settled down comfortably to sleep. They were almost immediately covered with snow. At this time the thermometer stood thirty-five below zero. We could not tell whether it was actually snowing or whether the snow was only being driven by the wind, but at any rate, the air was filled with it and the prospect was anything but exhilarating. We lined the bottom of the hole with furs, got out our sleeping-bags, and prepared for a long siege.