The snow-wind!
Have you ever heard it, reader mine?
If you have listened to it only half as often as I have done, you will be able to tell it by the sound, as it goes moaning round your dwelling, although at the midnight hour. Should you even have gone to bed ere it comes on, and are awakened by it, you will shiver a little and say to yourself, “That is the snow-wind.” A nervous shiver it would be, a shiver born of thought and thankfulness, for there is something in the voice of this heartless wind which seldom fails to cast a momentary sadness over the spirits of the listener—not necessarily an unpleasant sadness, for you have to thank Heaven you are not out on the moor or out on the plain, and exposed to it. And if sitting by your own hearth when you hear it, the fire seems to burn more cheerily, and the room around you looks more pleasant and homelike.
The snow-wind does not shriek and whistle, and scream, as does an ordinary gale; it is heard but in one low, long-drawn dreary monotone. It never threatens to tear off roofs or uproot trees; it does not get very high at one moment to sink into semi-silence the next; it hardly ever alters its key-note, but keeps on—on—on in its one sad wail.
If you hear a wind like this on a winter’s night, be sure that, if flakes are not already falling, the snow is on its wings, and soon it will be shaken off.
The snow-wind! I have been out on the icy plains of Greenland when it has begun to blow, and made all haste to reach my ship. I have heard it in moorland wilds when far from home, and made speedy tracks backward to my hut, my very dogs seeming to know what was coming, and trotting on with heads down and tails almost trailing on the ground. If it comes at night the stars always hide themselves, and the very moon—should there be one—appears to shelter behind the unbroken surface of dark grey clouds.
Every wild creature knows the sough of the snow-wind. Bears creep farther into their dens when they hear it; wolves hide under the pine trees; the fox dreams not of leaving his burrow; rabbits cower closer beneath the tree roots, and birds seek shelter under the thickest boughs.
“The snow-wind,” continued Castizo. “Are we all safe and secure, Ritchie?”
“We be, I’m thinking, sir. I noticed the Indians covering the front of their huts. I think everything is done, and, before I came in, sir, I slewed the funnel round against the breeze; that’s the way the fire burns so cheerily.”
“Thanks, Ritchie; I’m sure I don’t know what we would do without so genuine a sailor to keep us straight. Ah! here comes Pedro with steaming bowls of maté. Now, boys all, I call this the acme of comfort.”