13. But soon afterwards everything was veiled in mist; the temperature rose to 7° F., then came driving snow, which gradually increased to a snow-storm, and in order not to be cut off we were obliged once more to keep together. Dreadful as the weather was, we could not venture to put up the tent; march we must, in order to escape before the wind destroyed the ice-bridges on the way back. We trudged along under enormous glacier walls, enveloped in whirling snow. Sounding all round, we escaped the abysses with difficulty. We could scarcely even breathe and make head a against the wind. Our clothes were covered with snow, our faces were crusted with ice, eyes and mouth were firmly closed, and the dark sea beneath us was hidden from our view. We ceased to hear even its roar, the might of the storm drowning everything else. Haller, a few paces ahead, continually sounded, so as to keep us clear of fissures. We could scarcely follow him or recognise his form. We saw nothing even of the enormous glacier walls under which we toiled along, except that at times we caught a glimpse of them towering aloft. At every hundred paces we halted for a few minutes to remove the ice which formed itself on our eyes and round our mouths. We stilled our hunger with the hope, that we should find and dig out the body of the bear which we had shot a month ago. But we dared not rest, nor await the abatement of the storm, until we had crossed the glacier and felt the firm ground, free from ice, beneath our feet. This we compassed after a march of seven hours. Utterly exhausted, we then put up the tent on a stony slope, got beneath it, white with snow, wet through and stiffened with ice; notwithstanding our hunger, we lay down to sleep without eating. Not a morsel of bread could we venture to serve out from the small stock of provisions that remained. Our prospects were gloomy in the extreme. If open water, or even a broad fissure at Cape Frankfort, separated us from the ship, we must inevitably perish on the shores of Wilczek Land. [Illustration: THE SLEDGE IN A SNOW-STORM.]