But--Heavens!--how sweet it was after the musty quiet of the death-chamber below! Inch by inch, he worked his way back in the teeth of it, and crawled spent into his bee-hive.

Then, ravenous with his exertions, he broke one of his eggs into his tin dipper, and forthwith emptied it outside, and the gale swept away the awful smell of it.
The next was as bad, and his hopes sank to nothing.
The third, however, was all right.

He mixed it with some cognac and whipped it up with a stick, and the growlers inside fought over it contentedly.
He was almost afraid to try another.

However, he could get more to-morrow.

So he broke the fourth, and found it also good, so whipped it up with more cognac, and felt happier than he had done since he nibbled his rabbit-bones.
As he lay that night, and the gale howled about him more furiously than ever, his thoughts ran constantly on the dead man lying in the silent darkness down below.
It was very quiet down there, and dry; but this roaring turmoil, with its thunderous crashings and hurtling spray, was infinitely more to his taste, wet though he was to the bone, and almost deafened with the ceaseless uproar.