It seemed like twenty centuries. How did you get me
out? You could not stand upon the drift dust."

"No; I lay upon the yak skin where the snow was harder and tunnelled
towards you through the powdery stuff with my hands, for I knew where
you had sunk and it was not far off. At last I saw your finger tips;
they were so blue that for a few seconds I took them for rock, but
thrust the butt of the rifle against them. Luckily you still had life
enough to catch hold of it, and you know the rest. Were we not both very
strong, it could never have been done."

"Thank you, old fellow," I said simply.

"Why should you thank me?" he asked with one of his quick smiles. "Do
you suppose that I wished to continue this journey alone? Come, if you
have got your breath, let us be getting on. You have been sleeping in a
cold bed and want exercise. Look, my rifle is broken and yours is
lost in the snow. Well, it will save us the trouble of carrying the
cartridges," and he laughed drearily.

Then we began our march, heading for the spot where the road ended four
miles or so away, for to go forward seemed useless. In due course we
reached it safely. Once a mass of snow as large as a church swept down
just in front of us, and once a great boulder loosened from the mountain
rushed at us suddenly like an attacking lion, or the stones thrown
by Polyphemus at the ship of Odysseus, and, leaping over our heads,
vanished with an angry scream into the depths beneath. But we took
little heed of these things: our nerves were deadened, and no danger
seemed to affect them.

There was the end of the road, and there were our own footprints and the
impress of the yak's hoofs in the snow. The sight of them affected me,
for it seemed strange that we should have lived to look upon them
again. We stared over the edge of the precipice. Yes, it was sheer and
absolutely unclimbable.

"Come to the glacier," said Leo.

So we went on to it, and scrambling a little way down its root, made an
examination. Here, so far as we could judge, the cliff was about four
hundred feet deep. But whether or no the tongue of ice reached to the
foot of it we were unable to tell, since about two thirds of the way
down it arched inwards, like the end of a bent bow, and the conformation
of the overhanging rocks on either side was such that we could not see
where it terminated. We climbed back again and sat down, and despair
took hold of us, bitter, black despair.

"What are w