The scuffling and tearing commenced now to the right.
“Yes; it’s quite loose now, and falls down. Ah! no good; here is the solid rock running up as far as I can reach.”
“I can hardly breathe. It is growing hotter every moment.”
“No; it is cooler here. I can reach right up and stand against the rock.”
The speaker’s companion in the terrible peril crept over the snow to his side and rose to his feet, to find the air purer; and, like a drowning man who had raised his head for the moment above water, he drank in deep draughts of the cold, sweet air.
“Hah!” he gasped at last hoarsely, after reaching up as high as he could, “the rock has saved us for the moment. The snow slopes away from it like the roof of a shed.”
“Yes; if we had been a few feet farther from it we should have been crushed to death. Let’s try and tear a way along by the foot of the rock.”
They tried hard in turn till they were utterly exhausted and lay panting; but the only result was that the loose snow beneath them became trampled down. No, not the only result; they increased the space within what was fast becoming a snow cavern, one of whose walls was the solid rocky side of the ravine.
“Are we to die like this?”
“Is this to be the end of all our golden hopes? Oh, heaven help us! What shall we do? The air is growing hotter; we have nearly exhausted it all, and suffocation is coming on fast. I can’t, I won’t die yet. Help! help! help!”