Masters of the Wheat-Lands by Harold Bindloss

A bitter wind was blowing when Wyllard stood outside the little tent the morning after he had made a landing on the ice. He was to leeward of the straining canvas which partly sheltered him, but the raw cold struck through him to the bone, and he was stiff and sore from his exertions during the previous day. His joints ached unpleasantly, and his clothing had not quite dried upon him. He was conscious of a strong desire to crawl back into the tent and go to sleep again, but that was one it would clearly not be wise to indulge in, since they were, he believed, still some distance off the beach, and the ice might begin to break up at any moment. It stretched away before him, seamed by fissures and serrated ridges here and there, for a few hundred yards, and then was lost in the snow. As he gazed at it he shrank from the prospect of the journey through the frozen desolation.

With a shiver he crawled back into the tent where his two companions were crouching beside the cooking-lamp. The feeble light of its sputtering blue flame touched their faces, which were graver than usual, but Charly looked up as he came in.