A rather strong wind from the south had sprung up, and obliged them to seek a secure shelter for their tent in the bottom of a ravine. The sky was threatening; long clouds passed rapidly through the air; they passed near the ground, and so quickly that the eye could hardly follow them. At times some of the mist touched the ground, and the tent resisted with difficulty the violence of the hurricane.
| The hut was pitched in a ravine for shelter. |
"It's going to be a nasty night," said Johnson, after supper.
"It won't be cold, but stormy," answered the doctor; "let us take precautions, and make the tent firm with large stones."
"You are right, Doctor; if the wind should carry away the canvas, Heaven alone knows where we should find it again."
Hence they took every precaution against such a danger, and the wearied travellers lay down to sleep. But they found it impossible. The tempest was loose, and hastened northward with incomparable violence; the clouds were whirling about like steam which has just escaped from a boiler; the last avalanches, under the force of the hurricane, fell into the ravines, and their dull echoes were distinctly heard; the air seemed to be struggling with the water, and fire alone was absent from this contest of the elements.
Amid the general tumult their ears distinguished separate sounds, not the crash of heavy falling bodies, but the distinct cracking of bodies breaking; a clear snap was frequently heard, like breaking steel, amid the roar of the tempest. These last sounds were evidently avalanches torn off by the gusts, but the doctor could not explain the others. In the few moments of anxious silence, when the hurricane seemed to be taking breath in order to blow with greater violence, the travellers exchanged their suppositions.
"There is a sound of crashing," said the doctor, "as if icebergs and ice-fields were being blown against one another."
"Yes," answered Altamont; "one would say the whole crust of the globe was falling in. Say, did you hear that?"