“Lightens the load and me too,” he said with a laugh, as he thrust his head through the loop and tugged at the sledge; but it did not seem lighter. It grew more heavy, and the obstacles were terrible to surmount.
But he knew he was in the right track through the pathless waste of heaped-up snow. There was no mistaking that awful gorge, with the rocks piled up like Titanic walls on either side. He knew that he could not go wrong. All he had to do was to persevere, and he plodded on.
“Never mind if it’s only yards instead of miles surmounted,” he muttered. “They are so many yards nearer the winning post.”
At last, as he fought his way on, with his unwonted exertions beginning to tell mentally and bodily, he broke out talking wildly to fight back the horrible sensation of depression, and was brought to a standstill, the sledge having jammed between two blocks of ice-covered rock; and he stood for some minutes gazing round hopelessly at the fast-dimming scene, which had looked picturesque in the morning, but appeared awful now.
“I ought to have had a companion,” he muttered, “if it had only been a dog.”
He stood still, staring at the precipices on either side, whose chasms were beginning to look black; then at his jammed-in sledge; and he felt that he must drag it out and go on again, for night was coming on, and he could not camp where he was.
Then as he was wearily and slowly stooping down to drag the sledge back, he made a sudden bound as if electrified, tried to run, tripped, and fell heavily.
For all at once there was a roar like thunder, a terrible rushing sound, the echoes of the mountains seemed to have been let loose, and his hair began to bristle, while a cold perspiration gathered on his face as he listened to the sounds dying away in rumbling whispers.
“Away up to the right,” he said to himself as he gazed in that direction, realising that it was a snow-fall. Thousands of tons had gone down somewhere out of sight; but he was safe, and giving the sledge a jerk, he set it free, guided it over the snow, and prepared for another start.
But that avalanche had somewhat unnerved him, for he had been looking out for a place to camp, and it now seemed madness to think of coming to a halt there.