In about an hour the storm lightened, and the Englishman and the porters started back to the Grands Mulets. I consulted Couttet about making a dash for the summit; but he thought it would be better to wait awhile, and better still to follow the others down the mountain. To this last proposition I decidedly objected, although Couttet was right, as it turned out; for in another hour the storm, which had not entirely ceased at any time, whipped itself into renewed fury, and before noon the wind was howling and shrieking with demoniac energy, and flinging gritty snow and ice in blinding clouds against the hut, which, situated on a ridge, was completely exposed. Fortunately it is strongly built and solidly anchored. While I entertained no reasonable doubt of its security, yet when a blast of extraordinary fierceness made it tremble, as if it were holding itself with desperate grip upon the rocks, I could not help picturing it, in imagination, taking flight at last, and sailing high over the mountains in the wild embrace of the tempest. Time moved with a dreadfully slow pace. The only way to keep warm was to remain in the bunk under a pile of blankets. Once, in my impatience, I got out and painfully hauled on my shoes, which were as cold as ice, and as hard almost; but my feet were blistered through lack of previous exercise, and after hobbling and shivering for a few minutes on the narrow floor, which was partly covered with a constantly accumulating deposit of snow, as fine and dry as flour and as frigid as though it had come straight from the Arctic Circle, I hurried back under the blankets. The invading snow penetrated through cracks that one could hardly see, around the door and the little square window.