“Don’t all go near the flag,” one said; “you may be treading on their bodies.”
They arrived within ten yards of the flag, in which they soon recognised a red pocket-handkerchief. They were silent now, awestruck at the thought that their companions were lying dead beneath.
“Perhaps it is not theirs,” the eldest of the party said presently. “Anyhow I had better take it off and carry it home.”
Treading cautiously and with a white face, for he feared to feel beneath his feet one of the bodies of his friends, he stepped, knee-deep in the snow-drift, to the flag. He took the little stick in his hand to pluck it up; he raised it a foot, and then gave a cry of astonishment and started back.
“What is the matter?” the others asked.
“It was pulled down again,” he said in awestruck tones. “I will swear it was pulled down again.”
“Oh, nonsense!” one of the others said; “you are dreaming.”
“I am not,” the first replied positively; “it was regularly jerked in my hand.”
“Can they be alive down there?” one suggested.
“Alive! How can they be alive after five days, twenty feet deep in the snow? Look at the flag!”