"Maybe it's here we are to find Jackie and Peggs' motheranfather," said the Villain, "and not at the North Pole at all."
"Oh, I hope so," said Sweetclover.
It was getting very cold now, for you know that the higher you go up in the air, the colder it gets. That's why there's snow on the mountain tops. And it began to storm; at first tiny flakes of snow fell, and then faster and thicker till it was snowing very hard, and the pigeons could scarcely see where they were flying.
"It seems to me," said the Villain, "that every time I get upon a boat or a bird or anything, it begins to storm."
By this time it was really a blizzard and one by one the poor pigeons' wings became so covered with snow they could not fly and fell to the ground and lay on the snow.
Of course they fell in different places, and Kernel Cob and Jackie Tar and Sweetclover and the Villain were separated.
Each one looked about for the others as best he could and, after much searching about, the Villain found Sweetclover huddled in the snow and very cold indeed. So he pulled off his coat and wrapped it about her shoulders, although she tried her best to prevent him from making such a sacrifice, but he said:
"I will certainly suffer more seeing you shiver, than I would from the cold itself."
You see he was a kind-hearted Villain, and it was too bad that he was painted to look like one at all.
So he dug a hole in a snowbank and they crawled into it, and in that way they were shielded from the wind.