All through the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third the storm continued, sweeping with terrific force down the ravine, and whirling the snow in dense masses from the snow-field overhead.
Christmas Eve was worse, with the temperature down to 38 degrees below zero and the wind up to eighty miles an hour in gusts, and during the greater part of Christmas Day we were all confined to our sleeping-bags and half buried in the snow that had drifted in on us.
As a consequence we had no religious service, and if anybody said a De Profundis it was between his crackling lips under his frozen beard. We had no Christmas dinner either, except a few Plasmon biscuits and a nip of brandy and water, which were served out by good old O'Sullivan who had come with me as doctor to the expedition.
On St. Stephen's Day I made a round of the camp and found the ponies suffering terribly and the dogs badly hit. The storm was telling on the men too, for some of them were down with dysentery, and the toes of one poor chap were black from frostbite.
I was fit enough myself, thank God, but suffering from want of sleep or rather from a restless feeling which broken sleep brought with it.
The real truth is that never since I sailed had I been able to shake off the backward thought that I ought not to have left my dear one behind me. In active work, like the gale, I could dismiss the idea of her danger; but now that I had nothing to do but to lie like a log in a sleeping-bag, I suffered terribly from my recollection of her self-sacrifice and my fear of the consequences that might come of it.
This was not so bad in the daytime, for even in the midst of the whirling snow and roaring wind I had only to close my eyes, and I could see her as she came up the road in the sunshine that Sunday morning when she was returning from church in her drooping hat and fluttering veil, or as she looked at me with her great "seeing eyes" at the last moment of all when she compelled me to come away.
But the night was the devil. No sooner did I drop off to sleep than I awoke with a start at the sound of her voice calling me by my name.
"Martin! Martin!"
It was always a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer and I think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was crying to me to come back.