The wind whipped about him, breathed mournfully in the frozen recesses of the silent valley below. The sweat of fear formed on Rod's forehead and he shuddered. Bugs or no bugs, he should have known better than to venture away from the rest of his friends alone.
He had left the advance base of the expedition for a short explorative jaunt, thinking he might pick up something new in the way of fauna, of which the bleak Antarctic wastes had little to offer. He had caught several large mosquitoes and, entranced by the desolate beauty of this weirdly distorted and quiet void, had wandered farther than he had intended. Then he had seen the little growth of lichen high on an icy crag. Thinking to add the specimen to his private collection, he had climbed the precipitous wall, and here he was, trapped, without his ax, unable to move up or down....
He pressed his young body against the ice as a freezing gale lashed about him in a swirl of snow. Far below, he could see his haversack beside the cliff.
"Lord!" he breathed. If he fell here they would never find him—the snow would hide his body in no time. And he must get down or soon fall, frozen stiff.
He slid his free foot about the wall; there was a slight indention just below. He must chance it. Gingerly, he shifted his weight. Ice crumbled beneath his foot. He drew back. He heard a crackling below and looked down as the sound grew into a deep rumble. A great chunk of ice had been dislodged just below him. It thundered down into the valley and the vast walls of the surrounding glacier answered in clangorous echoes, hurled them back and forth till the valley was filled with deafening voices.
Rod stared, transfixed with the sound. He did not hear the siren scream from above as tons of ice smashed down upon him.
It fell into the chasm, roared in a sparkling explosion....
His first thought was that there was something which he must do. The concrete idea lurked far back in the hazy shadows of forgetfulness and, grope as he might, he could not bring the notion into full comprehension; it was but a vague, unformed feeling. Next came the realization of a faint humming in his ears. It whispered in a monotonous drone and he listened to it for some time. Then consciousness slowly dawned upon his lazy mind. He remembered the deep echoes in the valley of ice, something sweeping him away to sudden blackness....
He looked about him, dazed. He did not know what he expected to find, but this certainly was not it.