Frank Hardy felt an overpowering sense of loneliness as he wandered about among the rocks and the deep drifts. He seemed to be alone in a world of swirling, shrieking winds and flailing snow that stormed down from a sky of leaden hue.
He shouted again and again, but to no avail.
It was mid-afternoon, but the sky was so dark that it seemed almost dusk. If darkness fell and they were lost out on the mountain there was little hope that they would survive until morning. They would perish from exposure.
"I'd better go back to Hank Shale's place and get a searching party to come up and look for Joe," he thought.
This seemed the only sensible solution. But when he turned and tried to find the trail down the mountain again he found that it eluded him. There was not the vestige of a trail, not the sign of a path.
"And I'm lost too!" he muttered.
The wind shrieked down from the rocks. The snow swirled furiously about him. The blizzard raged. The roaring of the storm drummed in his ears as he stumbled and floundered about among the rocks and snow.
The Hardy boys were lost, separated, in the storm.