must turn out and wrestle with that slatting, ice-sheathed canvas, and
it was not until half an hour later that everything was fast again.

Once more they crawled into the sleeping-bags, but soon the heat from
their bodies melted the ice upon their clothes, and pools of water
formed under each man, wetting him to the skin. Sleep was impossible. It
grew colder and colder as the night advanced, and the gale increased. At
three o'clock in the morning the centigrade thermometer was at eighteen
degrees below. The cooker was lighted again, and until six o'clock the
party huddled wretchedly about it, dozing and waking, shivering
continually.

Breakfast at half past six o'clock; under way again an hour later. There
was no change in the nature of the ice. Ridge succeeded ridge, hummock
followed upon hummock. The wind was going down, but the snow still fell
as fine and bewildering as ever. The cold was intense. Dennison, the
doctor and naturalist of the expedition, having slipped his mitten, had
his hand frostbitten before he could recover it. Two of the dogs, Big
Joe and Stryelka, were noticeably giving out.

But Bennett, his huge jaws clenched, his small, distorted eyes twinkling
viciously through the apertures of the wind-mask, his harsh, black
eyebrows lowering under the narrow, contracted forehead, drove the
expedition to its work relentlessly. Not Muck Tu, the dog-master, had
his Ostiaks more completely under his control than he his men. He
himself did the work of three. On that vast frame of bone and muscle,
fatigue seemed to leave no trace. Upon that inexorable bestial
determination difficulties beyond belief left no mark. Not one of the
twelve men under his command fighting the stubborn ice with tooth and
nail who was not galvanised with his tremendous energy. It was as though