“’Tis—in a way. ’Tis solemn, boy. Here we are hid away—a vessel could be fifty feet away and we not see her. She could be twenty feet away and she not see us—we’re that white. But there’s a consolation—the thicker it comes the sooner it’ll stop.”
“Then this should stop soon.”
It did stop finally; after what Martin judged to be ten or twelve hours. It melted from the sea, then thinned above, and the sky shone through. Not a broad sweep at first, but patches here and there. It was later before the clear dome and the familiar stars shone out.
“There’s the Great Dipper, boy—see it? It must be three o’clock in the mornin’ by the placin’ of it.”
“Three in the morning—and we rowing since three o’clock yesterday afternoon!”
“Aye, boy. And there’s the North Star and those other little stars I don’t know the names of. We’ll keep the North Star one good point off the starb’d bow, boy, and on that course till mornin’, and then we’ll go by the sun.”
The morning came, and the boy noted that six inches of snow covered the inside of the dory everywhere—gunnels, strakes, and thwarts, except where they had been sitting, and the bottom of the dory, except where their champing boots and the heat from within them had beaten it into a slush; and that the snow was dazzling white under the morning sun. But above all he felt the cold.
“The wind must have shifted, Martin, it’s so much colder.”
“Aye, boy. ’Tis no’west now.”
“A cold wind—the coldest of all, isn’t it, Martin?”