below and his brain reproduced an accurate picture of the gulch that
pierced the high tableland. It was wide just there, but narrowed
farther on, and a river, fed by a glacier, flowed through the defile.
The river was probably frozen, although it ran fast. The wires went
down obliquely, and in one place there was a straight fall of a hundred
feet. The rest of the rugged slope was very steep and one needed some
nerve to follow the row of posts when the light was good.

Jim did not hesitate when he had got his breath. With a blizzard
raging, his job would not bear thinking about. He let go the post and
slipped down some distance. When he stopped he got up badly shaken and
crawled down cautiously, trying to keep the line in sight, but it was
not a logical sense of duty that urged him on; he only knew he must not
be beaten. He fought instinctively, because this was a region where to
give ground in the battle generally means to die.

He reached a bend of the line where a post stood on a broken pitch that
was almost a precipice. Twenty or thirty yards below it became a
precipice and Jim met the full force of the wind as he crept round the
corner. Then he saw a trailing wire, and, a little farther on, a
broken post that had slipped down some distance. Crouching in the snow
behind a rock for a few minutes, he thought hard. Although the post
was short and not very heavy, he could not drag it back while the wire
was attached. The latter must be loosed, and fixed again when the post
was in its place, but it would be enough if the line was lifted a foot
or two from the ground. Proper repairs could be made afterwards; the
important thing was the Government messages should not be held up. For
all that, it would be hard to reach the spot.

He crawled down and stopped beside the post. The snow was blinding,
the wind buffeted him savagely, and since he was near the top of the
precipice it was risky to stand up. His fur mittens embarrassed him,
but he could not take them off, because when the thermometer falls
below zero one cannot touch steel tools with unprotected hands. After
some trouble, Jim loosed the wire and then saw the broken ends would
not meet. However, since the line curved, a post could be cut in order
to shorten the distance, and he crawled back to the spot where he had
left his ax. Had he not been used to the snowy wilds, he could not
have found the tool.

He cut the post and, with numbed and clums