As usual, they had camped close against the side of one of the larger mounds or hummocks. It was of rock, coated heavily with ice and frozen snow. On its beetling side, just above their little camp, a mass of rock had cracked away from the main body of the hummock. Its slow separation had been a matter of years, perhaps ages. That fracture might have been begun by the grinding fangs of a glacier five thousand years ago, and completed by the tireless and eternal frosts.
There it was poised, masked by the snow and ice, waiting its time to fall.
At the moment that the travelers turned their faces from camp, and Polaris started to assist Rose Emer to her seat on the sledge, the hour struck for the fall. Rock grated on rock above them, warning the man to spring back. He dragged the girl aside. A few pieces of ice rattled down. Then the fragment, a weight of tons, toppled squarely down upon the rear of the sledge, crushing it to splinters, and burying it in the loose snow.
They stared at the wreck, and Marcus growled and strained to free himself from the harness.
Polaris dug aside the covering snow. A moment's inspection showed that the sledge was nothing but shattered uselessness. Indeed, could he have repaired it, he had not the chance. It was beneath the mass of the fallen rock, too great a weight for even his powers to remove. Some of their vanishing store of provisions also lay under the rock.
"We still can walk, lady," Polaris said. "We will go on together."
"No, dear friend, we will not walk on," she replied. "See, my foot is hurt, and I can scarcely stand upon it. A splinter of ice struck it when the rock fell—"
Polaris leaped to her side and examined the extended ankle. He found it not broken, but bruised and swelling rapidly. It was true that she could not walk on it, nor would for many days.
He made no answer to her last argument. He tore several skins robes from the fore part of the sledge, and set her down on them. Then, as well as he could, he bandaged the bruised ankle, winding it with strips of hide, outside the girl's boot, for he dared not remove the coverings from the injured limb lest the cold do it irreparable injury.