Hagar said no more, and Gusty left the cabin. Hagar wrapped her children up in their little warm light blankets and long cloaks, and then put on her own close travelling dress, and had scarcely completed her preparations when Gusty came down again, and assisted her with the children by taking charge of one while she insisted on keeping the other on deck. And what a deck it was! She toiled up the gangway knee-deep in snow, while the sharp and driving sleet cut into her face, nearly blinding and smothering her; it was almost impossible to see a foot in advance; in an instant her whole dress was covered white and stiff with snow, that froze as it fell. It was only her warm breath that kept mouth and nostrils free for breathing, and saved her from a freezing suffocation. Gusty kept hold of one hand; drawing her through the snow-drifts beneath, and the falling avalanche of sleet around, he guided her to the edge of the vessel, lowered the two children half smothered in their wrappings, to the oarsmen in the skiff, handed Hagar down, and descended after her; while the sleet whirling thick around them threatened to convert the little boat with its freight into a huge snowball. The two oarsmen pulled swiftly through the white tempest for the shore—providentially wind and tide were in their favor; they soon reached the beach—but, oh! what a howling wilderness of a shore it was upon this tremendous night! On their left the promontory, like some huge ice-peak of the arctic regions, loomed horribly through storm and darkness; while towards the right the white shore stretched away in a dim horizontal line—a half-guessed vague terror like the shores of the frozen ocean seen through the night. Using their oars as poles they pushed the boat through the rushing water and crusted ice, and landed it upon the beach immediately under the promontory. Pausing a moment to gather breath after their great exertions, the two men took each of them a child, and Gusty drew Hagar’s frost-crusted arm within his own, and they stepped from the boat, and struggled on through the deep snow and against the driving storm to the little fishing-house against the side of the promontory. The wind and sleet were in their face, blowing from behind the other side of the promontory. As they toiled on towards it they found the snow less and less deep, until coming under its cover they trod upon bare though frozen ground, and reaching the fishing-house found it perfectly dry, as the ground was for many yards around it; a better protected place than was the cabin of the ship they had left. Taking away the prop that fastened the door, they entered. The men stood holding the children. Hagar dropped upon an upturned fishing-tub; while Gusty, taking a small wax candle and tinder-box from the pocket of his great coat, struck a light, and holding it about surveyed the premises, as the men, giving the children to Hagar, returned to the boat to fetch the trunks.