slender branch of a tree, were nearly all that Ossaroo required
to make as deadly a shaft as need be hurled.

They were without anxiety, on the score of being able to kill such
animals as the place afforded. Even had they been without arrows, they
felt confident that in such a circumscribed space they would have been
able to circumvent and capture the game. They had no uneasiness about
any four-footed creature making its escape from the valley any more than
themselves. There could be no other outlet than that by which they had
entered. By the ravine only could the four-footed denizens of the place
have gone out and in; and on the glacier they had observed a beaten path
made by the tracks of animals, before the snow had fallen. Likely
enough the pass was well-known to many kinds, and likely also there were
others that stayed continually in the valley, and there brought forth
their young. Indeed, it would have been difficult for a wild animal to
have found a more desirable home.

The hope of the hunters was that many animals might have held this very
opinion, and from what they had already observed, they had reason to
think so.

Of course they had not yet abandoned the hope of being able to find some
way of escape from their singular prison. No, it was too early for
that. Had they arrived at such a conviction, they would have been in
poor heart indeed, and in no mood for conversing as they did. The birds
and the quadrupeds, and the fruits and roots, would have had but little
interest for them with such a despairing idea as that in their minds.
They still hoped, though scarce knowing why; and in this uncertainty
they went to rest with the resolve to give the cliffs a fresh
examination on the morrow.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

MEASURING THE CREVASSE.

Again, on the morrow, every foot of the precipitous bluffs was minutely
scanned and examined. The circuit of the valley was made as before.
Even trees were climbed in order the better to view the face of the
cliffs that soared far above their tops. The result was a full
conviction, that to scale the precipice at any point was an utter
impossibility.

Until fully convinced of this, they had not thought of going back
through the gap that led to the glacier; but now that all hopes of
succeeding elsewhere had vanished from their minds, they proceeded in
that direction.

They did not walk towards it with the light brisk step of men who had
hopes of success; but