There being but little wind in the valley, this was not so
difficult an undertaking as it may seem. And the poor fellows were very
glad of the shelter, for some of them were shivering, since, not knowing
what to do, they were less active than ourselves. No sooner were they
housed than they fell to eating ravenously. Both the car and the sleds
had been abundantly provisioned, so that there was no immediate fear of a
famine among us.
Inside the car we soon had things organized very much as they were during
our voyage from the earth. We read, talked, and smoked to our hearts'
content, almost forgetting the icy mountains that tottered over us, and
the howling tempest which, with hardly an intermission, tore through the
cloud-choked air a thousand or two thousand feet above our heads. We
talked of our adventure with the meteors, which seemed an event of long
ago, and then we talked of home--home twenty-six million miles away! In
fact, it may have been thirty millions by this time, for Edmund had told
us that Venus, having passed conjunction while we were at the caverns,
was now receding from the earth.
But while we thus strove to kill the time and banish thoughts of our
actual situation, Edmund sat apart much of the time absorbed in thought,
and we respected his privacy, knowing that our only chance of escape lay
in him.
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