By the time he reached home, the wind was a gale, the snow a vast blinding cloud, filling the air and hiding the road. Darkness came on instantly, and the wind increased in power, as though with the momentum of the snow. Mr. Stewart came home early, yet the breasts of his horses were already [sheathed in snow]. Other teamsters passed, breasting the storm, and calling cheerily to their horses. One team, containing a woman and two men, neighbors living seven miles north, gave up the contest, and turned in at the gate for shelter, confident that they would be able to go on in the morning. In the barn, while rubbing the ice from the horses, the men joked and told stories in a jovial spirit, with the feeling generally that all would be well by daylight. The boys made merry also, singing songs, popping corn, playing games, in defiance of the storm.
But when they went to bed, at ten o’clock, Lincoln felt some [vague premonition] of a [dread disturbance] of nature, far beyond any other experience in his short life. The wind howled like ten thousand tigers, and the cold grew more and more intense. The wind seemed to drive in and through the frail tenement; water and food began to freeze within ten feet of the fire.
Lincoln thought the wind at that hour had attained its utmost fury, but when he awoke in the morning, he saw how mistaken he had been. He crept to the fire, appalled by the steady, solemn, [implacable clamor] of the storm. It was like the roarings of all the lions of Africa, the hissing of a wilderness of serpents, the lashing of great trees. It benumbed his thinking, it appalled his heart, beyond any other force he had ever known.
The house shook and snapped, the snow beat in muffled, [rhythmic pulsations] against the walls, or swirled and lashed upon the roof, giving rise to strange, [multitudinous sounds]; now dim and far, now near and all-surrounding; producing an effect of mystery and infinite reach, as though the cabin were a helpless boat, tossing on an angry, limitless sea.
Looking out, there was nothing to be seen but the lashing of the wind and snow. When the men attempted to face it, to go to the rescue of the cattle, they found the air impenetrably filled with fine, powdery snow, mixed with the dirt caught up from the plowed fields by a terrific blast, moving ninety miles an hour. It was impossible to see twenty feet, except at long intervals. Lincoln could not see at all when facing the storm. When he stepped into the wind, his face was coated with ice and dirt, as by a dash of mud—a mask which blinded the eyes, and instantly froze to his cheeks. Such was the power of the wind that he could not breathe an instant unprotected. His mouth being once open, it was impossible to draw breath again without turning from the wind.
The day was spent in keeping warm and in feeding the stock at the barn, which Mr. Stewart reached by desperate dashes, during the momentary clearing of the air following some more than usually strong gust. Lincoln attempted to water the horses from the pump, but the wind blew the water out of the pail. So cold had the wind become that a dipperful, thrown into the air, fell as ice. In the house it became more and more difficult to remain cheerful, notwithstanding the family had fuel and food in abundance.
Oh, that terrible day! Hour after hour they listened to that prodigious, appalling, ferocious uproar. All day Lincoln and Owen moved restlessly to and fro, asking each other, “Won’t it ever stop?” To them the storm now seemed too vast; too ungovernable, to ever again be spoken to a calm, even by God Himself.
It seemed to Lincoln that no power whatever could control such fury; his imagination was unable to conceive of a force greater than this war of wind or snow.
On the third day the family rose with weariness, and looked into each other’s faces with a sort of horrified surprise. Not even the invincible heart of Duncan Stewart, nor the cheery good nature of his wife, could keep a gloomy silence from settling down upon the house. Conversation was scanty; nobody laughed that day, but all listened anxiously to the [invisible tearing] at the shingles, beating against the door, and shrieking around the eaves. The frost upon the windows, nearly half an inch thick in the morning, kept thickening into ice, and the light was dim at mid-day. The fire melted the snow on the window-panes and upon the door, while around the key-hole and along every crack, frost formed. The men’s faces began to wear a grim, set look, and the women sat with awed faces and downcast eyes full of unshed tears, their sympathies going out to the poor travelers, lost and freezing.