“Give me the thermometer,” demanded Vasling.
Aupic handed it to him. It showed ten degrees below zero inside the house, though the fire was lighted. Vasling raised the canvas which covered the opening, and pushed it aside hastily; for he would have been lacerated by the fall of ice which the wind hurled around, and which fell in a perfect hail-storm.
“Well, Vasling,” said Penellan, “will you go out, then? You see that we are more safe here.”
“Yes,” said Jean Cornbutte; “and we must use every effort to strengthen the house in the interior.”
“But a still more terrible danger menaces us,” said Vasling.
“What?” asked Jean.
“The wind is breaking the ice against which we are propped, just as it has that of the promontory, and we shall be either driven out or buried!”
“That seems doubtful,” said Penellan, “for it is freezing hard enough to ice over all liquid surfaces. Let us see what the temperature is.”
He raised the canvas so as to pass out his arm, and with difficulty found the thermometer again, in the midst of the snow; but he at last succeeded in seizing it, and, holding the lamp to it, said,—
“Thirty-two degrees below zero! It is the coldest we have seen here yet!”