midday
Then there was sign number two of bad weather coming , namely , the tingling in his fingers and sometimes `` a scattered pain in t ' joints . '' So Sally left his fur-path for the day , hurried back to his tiny home among the trees , and , calling his dogs together , harnessed them quickly and started at once for the winter houses at the bottom of Grey Wolf Bay . A tenderfoot could have told now that they were `` in for weather . '' The snow by midday was not falling , it was being shovelled down in loads . The temperature had dropped so rapidly that the flakes , as large as goose feathers , were dry and light , a fact that with the increasing wind made the going like travelling through a seething cauldron . Unfortunately the men were already over the crest of the White Hills when they realized that the storm which had swept down on them had come to stay . There was no stemming the gale on the wind-swept ice of those hillsides , even could they have faced the fiercely driving snow .