Even to the strongest man, there was terror in this storm, the breath
of which came with a roar and struck with a shiver, as the trees creaked
and groaned, and the paths and roads were obliterated. As the tumult
grows hills are leveled, and hollows rise into hills. Every shed-roof is
the edge of an oblique Niagara of snow; every angle the center of a
whirlpool. If you are caught out in it, the Spirit of the Storm flies at
you and loads your eyebrows and eyelashes and hair and beard with
icicles and snow. As you look out into the white, the light through your
bloodshot eyelids turns everything to crimson. Your feet lag, as the
feathery whiteness comes almost to your knees. Your breath comes choked
as with water. If you are out far away from shelter, God help you! You
struggle along for a time, all the while fearing to believe that the
storm which did not seem so very dangerous, is growing more violent, and
that the daylight, which you thought would last for hours yet, seems to
be fading, and that night appears to be setting in earlier than usual.
It is! For there are two miles of snow between you and the sun. But in a
swiftly moving maze of snow, partly spit out of the lowering clouds, and
partly torn and swept up from the gray and cloud-like earth, in a roar
of rising wind, and oppressed by growing anxiety, you stubbornly
press on.
Night shuts down darker. You can not tell, when you try to look about
you, what is sky and what is earth; for all is storm.
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