nderstood vaguely why he was only warm--not dead. For this very wind
that took his cry had built up a sheltering mound of driven snow against
his body while he slept. Like a curving wave it ran beside him. It was
the breaking of its over-toppling edge that caused the crash, and the
coldness of the mass against his neck that woke him.

Dawn kissed the eastern sky; pale gleams of gold shot every peak with
splendour; but ice was in the air, and the dry and frozen snow blew like
powder from the surface of the slopes. He saw the points of his ski
projecting just below him. Then he--remembered. It seems he had just
strength enough to realise that, could he but rise and stand, he might
fly with terrific impetus towards the woods and village far beneath. The
ski would carry him. But if he failed and fell ...!

How he contrived it Hibbert never knew; this fear of death somehow
called out his whole available reserve force. He rose slowly, balanced a
moment, then, taking the angle of an immense zigzag, started down the
awful slopes like an arrow from a bow. And automatically the splendid
muscles of the practised ski-er and athlete saved and guided him, for he
was hardly conscious of controlling either speed or direction. The snow
stung face and eyes like fine steel shot; ridge after ridge flew past;
the summits raced across the sky; the valley leaped up with bounds to
meet him. He scarcely felt the ground beneath his feet as the huge
slopes and distance melted before the lightning speed of that descent
from death to life.

He took it in four mile-long zigzags, and it was the turning at each
corner that nearly finished him, for then the strain of balancing taxed
to the verge of collapse the remnants of his strength.

Slopes that have taken hours to climb can be descended in a short
half-hour on ski, but Hibbert had lost all count of time. Quite other
thoughts and feelings mastered him in that wild, swift dropping through
the air that was like the flight of a bird. For ever close upon his
heels came following forms and voices with the whirling snow-dust. He
heard that little silvery voice of death and laughter at his back.
Shrill and wild, with the whistling of the wind past his ears, he caught
its pursuing tones; but in anger now, no longer soft and coaxing. And it
was accompanied; she did not follow alone. It seemed a host of these
flying figures of the snow chased madly just behind him. He felt them
furiously smite his neck an