John was not mistaken about the weather. Three or four hours after our departure the wind increased, and terrific squalls followed each other and threatened to upset our sleighs. The blinding snow dust prevented my seeing my reindeer, and at times I could not even see the head of my sleigh. Night seemed to have taken the place of daylight,--a thick fog could not have been worse. Then, to add to my discomfort, I had continually to break through the mask of ice, which formed again quickly after being broken. It was of no use to look for the furrows of the sleighs that had preceded us, for their tracks were filled at once with snow. Once more I thought I was lost, when I saw John standing still; he was waiting for me, and attached my sleigh to his, so that the mishap of being parted again could not occur. When he had tied the two sleighs, he said: "If we are lost we will be together." Dear John, what a glorious fellow he was! I thought of what I imagined the "Long Night" had said to me after the disappearance of the sun: "I send terrific gales and mighty snowstorms upon ocean and lands." It seemed to me that I could hear her sardonic laugh after telling me of her power. The storm continued to increase, and swept down upon us from the higher mountain sides with a force which I had never witnessed before, though I have crossed the Atlantic more than twenty times in winter and met with furious gales. [Illustration: "We remained seated on the ground, back to back."] When I thought that it was impossible for the wind to blow stronger, the next squall proved that it could. Then we fell in with a number of men of the party. They had stopped; they did not dare to go further, travelling had become impossible; before we knew it we might fall over a precipice, or go in the wrong direction. I managed to look at my thermometer. It was 17 degrees below zero. I wished it had been forty or forty-five, for instead of a windstorm we should then have had glorious still weather. The wind had risen to such a pitch that no snow was left on the ground, though in many places it must have been twenty or thirty feet deep or more. It was all flying in the air, and though it was noon it was quite dark. We remained seated on the ground, back to back, in order to support each other, with our heads bent, to prevent as far as possible the snow getting under our masks. It was a weird sight, as once in a while I could see dimly through the flying snow our bent, immovable bodies, with heads down. Not a man said a word; it seemed as if we were frozen to death. The snow was carried hither and thither, and all at once in a lull of a few seconds fell, forming hillocks, which were in an instant destroyed and sent flying in the air. One of these hillocks settled dangerously near us and scared us.