It was a long, agonized advance against the forces of Death. They dared not stop for an instant to breathe or think. They must plod their frantic way whose every step was a lifted labour, and hardly could they cheer on any fainting spirit amongst them who threatened to lag to his destruction. The snow deepened; and often now they floundered into drifts, and must struggle forth and on with their hearts sobbing in their breasts.
At length, when dusk was a little threatening to foreclose, they came down upon trees and a mass of choked underwood. This, like desperate men, blind and unreasoning, they fought through—crossed a downward slope of white—plunged into a second great tangle of growth, tore their way through it, and brought up sharp before a little low door that seemed to pierce the base of an inverted bowl of snow set in a small clearing. It was no time to wonder or inquire. Tuke kicked at the woodwork, and it reeled open on screaming hinges. They saw an aperture leading to some darkness of refuge—stooped, and one by one scrambled in and sank exhausted upon the rubbish that lay beneath.
CHAPTER XLI.
Perhaps a half-hour elapsed before any one of the exhausted men was able to do more than sigh and shift his aching limbs on the bed of rubbish where he lay. They had taken the precaution to pull the door to behind them, and though they were thereby condemned to a profound darkness, the close sunken quarters, warmed with the natural heat of their bodies, wrought a life in them by degrees and a gradual curiosity as to the character of their refuge.
Luvaine was the first to drag himself upright. Standing with his shoulders on a level with the door-sill, he cautiously made a little opening and looked forth long and critically. Then he reclosed the aperture and sat himself down again.
“David,” he said (from that time he, as far as possible, ignored his host), “are you recovered?”
“Convalescent, sir”—he was heard to sit up in the darkness; “I’m at the brandy and beef-tea stage.”
“That’s a pity, for neither will you taste again this side the grave.”
“Oh, Luvaine! What do you mean, man? Where are we?”
“That I can’t tell you—unless it’s a tool-house sunk in some spinney. But, for our prospects—look for yourself, David.”