Canst thou be my sole world, my universe!

the time I made the second try, everyone, even Jackstraw and myself, was shaking and shivering in the bitter cold. Normally, we wouldn't have felt it muchin very cold weather we wore two complete sets of furs, the inner one with the fur inside, the outer with the fur outside. But we'd given our extra pairs away to Corazzini and Zagerofurs were essential in that ice-box of a tractor cabinand suffered just as much as the others. Occasionally, someone would jump down from the tractor and run alongside to try to get warm, but so exhausted were most from sleeplessness, hunger, cold and eternally bracing themselves against the lurching of the tractor, that they were staggering from exhaustion within minutes and had to come aboard again. And when they did come aboard, the sweat from their exertions in such heavy clothes turned ice-cold on their bodies, putting them in worse case than ever, until finally I had to stop it. It grieved me to do what had to be done, what I saw must be done, but there was no help for it. The weariness, the cold and the sleeplessness could be borne no longer. When I finally gave the order to stop it was ten minutes after midnight, and we had been driving continuously, except for brief fuel and radio halts, for twenty-seven hours. CHAPTER EIGHTWednesday 4 A.M.8 P.M. Despite our exhaustion, despite our almost overwhelming need for sleep, I don't think anyone slept that night, even for a moment, for to have slept would have been to freeze to death. I had never known such cold. Even with twelve of us jam-packed inside a tiny wooden box built to hold five sleeping people at the most, even with the oil fire roaring up the chimney all night long and wanned by a couple of cups of piping hot coffee apiece, we all of us suffered agonies during these dark hours. The chattering of teeth, the St Vitus' dance of tremor-ridden limbs knocking against the thin uninsulated wooden walls, the constant rubbing as someone sought to restore life to a frozen face or arm or foot. These were the sounds that never ceased. How the elderly Marie LeGarde or the sick Mahler survived that night was indeed a matter for wonder. But survive they did, for when I looked at my luminous watch, saw that it was almost four o'clock and decided that enough was enough, both of them were wide awake when I switched on the little overhead light. Weak enough normally, that light was now no more than a feeble yellow glow- an ominous sign, it meant that even the tractor batteries were beginning to canon elph sd1000 digital cameras freeze upbut enough to see the crowded circle of faces, white and blue and yellowing with frostbite, the smoke-like exhalations that clouded in the air before them with every breath they took, the film of slick ice that already covered the walls and all of the roof except for a few inches round the stove pipe exit. As a spectacle of suffering, of sheer unrelieved misery, I don't think I have ever seen its equal. "Insomnia, eh, Doc?" It was Corazzini speaking, his teeth chattering between the words. "Or just forgotten to plug in your electric blanket?" "Just an early riser, Mr Corazzini." I glanced round the haggard and pain-filled faces. "Anybody here slept at all?" I was answered by mute headshakes from everybody. "Anybody likely to sleep?" Again the headshakes. "That settles it." I struggled to my feet. "It's only 4 a.m., but if we're going to freeze to death we might as well freeze on the move. Not only that, but another few hours in this temperature, and that tractor engine will never start again. What do you think, Jackstraw?" "I'll get the blow-torches," he said by way of answer, and pushed his way out through the canvas screen. Almost at once I heard him begin to cough violently in the deadly cold of the air outside, and, in the intervals between the coughing, we could clearly hear the dry rustling crackling of his breath as the moisture condensed, froze and drifted away in the all but imperceptible breeze. Corazzini and I followed, choking and gasping in turn as that glacial cold seared through throat and lungs, adjusting masks and goggles until not a millimetre of flesh was left exposed. Abreast the driving cabin I drew out my torch and glanced at the alcohol thermometerordinary mercury froze solid at38then looked again in disbelief. The red spirit inside the glass had sunk down to within an inch of the bulb and stood on the line of -68exactly one hundred degrees of frost. Still well below Wegener's -85, further short still of the incredible -125 that the Russians had recorded at the Vostok in Antarctica, but nevertheless the lowest, by almost fifteen degrees, that I had ever experienced. And that it should happen nownow, two hundred miles from the nearest human habitation, with Jackstraw and myself stuck with two murderers, a possibly