It was an awful journey, every step torture, but Hamlin bent to it, clinging grimly to the bit of his animal, his other arm protecting his eyes from the sting of the wind.

Behind, Wasson wielded a quirt, careless whether its lash struck the horse's flank or Carroll.

And across a thousand miles of snow-covered plain, the storm howled down upon them in redoubled fury, blinding their eyes, making them stagger helplessly before its blasts.
They were still moving, now like snails, when the pale sickly dawn came, revealing inch by inch the dread desolation, stretching white and ghastly in a slowly widening circle.

The exhausted, struggling men, more nearly dead than alive from their ceaseless toil, had to break the film of ice from their eyes to perceive their surroundings.

Even then they saw nothing but the bare, snow-draped plain, the air full of swirling flakes.