"Lord, Colonel, if we had a team—"
"Yes, I know. We'll probably owe our lives to the fact that we haven't."
It suddenly occurred to the Boy that, although he had just done a pretty good tramp and felt he'd rather die than go fifty feet further, it was the Colonel who was most tired.
"How's everybody?"
"Oh, I s'pose we might all of us be worse off."
"What's the matter?"
He was so long answering that the Boy's eyes turned to follow the serious outward gaze of the older man, even before he lifted one hand and swept it down the hill and out across the dim, grey prospect.
"This," said the Colonel.
Their eyes had dropped down that last stretch of the steep snow slope, across the two miles of frozen river, and ran half round the wide horizon-line, like creatures in a cage. Whether they liked it or whether they didn't, for them there was no way out.
"It's the awful stillness." The Colonel arraigned the distant ice-plains.