One evening in May, when the sun was declining, or taking his dip towards the lower part of the northern sky, clouds began to bank rapidly up from the south-west. It had been clear and frosty before this.
It soon grew quite dusk. The clouds were very dense and very black—in great rolling masses that certainly threatened something most unusual.
Dr Barrett gazed with some uneasiness at the gathering storm.
In less than half an hour the sky was entirely obscured, and the wind, which had blown at first as if to place the clouds in position, fell dead. So for a time matters remained, the clouds still in shapeless masses rolling around among each other without any apparent cause. Gradually, however, they lost shape, and the whole firmament merged into one unbroken vault of darkest grey. Then pellets of snow, not bigger than millet seeds, began to fall, faster and faster and faster.
Dr Barrett gave orders for the camp to be made up at once, and supper to be cooked.
The snow-pellets merged into great flakes larger than crown pieces, and it grew darker and darker.
Then there was a thunder-clap that appeared to shake the very earth.
Darker still. What with the gloom of this abnormal night, and the falling snow, the men could hardly see each other’s faces. The thunder was now loud, awful, incessant; the lightning spread all round among the still fast-descending snow. It was lightning of a sort you never see except in Greenland. You are enveloped in the blaze; it is around and above you everywhere—a white, dazzling bath of flame.
Poor Byarnie knelt beside the sledge, and buried his head in his hands. The giant was praying, Paddy crossed himself, and boy Bounce began to cry. Meanwhile the doctor sat on a bundle of bags, stolidly smoking, and Fingal crouched close to his feet; and ever, in the intervals of the thunder-claps and their awful reverberation among the mountains, was heard the melancholy howling of the sledge dogs.