The assurance that he had a home at his back in which neither cold nor storm could reach him inspirited him with an optimism which he had not felt at any time during the day.
From the timber he had borne a precious bundle of finely split kindlings of pitch-filled spruce, and with a handful of these he built himself a tiny fire over which, on a longer stick brought for the purpose, he suspended his tea pail, packed with snow.

The crackling of the flames set him whistling.

Darkness was falling swiftly about him.
By the time his tea was ready and he had warmed his cold bannock and bacon the gloom was like a black curtain that he might have slit with a knife.

Not a star was visible in the sky.

Twenty feet on either side of him he could not see the surface of the snow.