“Nay, nay,” was the reply. “We will be exhausted soon enough. As well lie down and die as run.”
The guide going on in front at a moderately quick pace, with Tom in the rear, they now began to retrace their steps.
But soon the snow began to drive athwart the track in a blinding shower, the wind and cold also increased till the former gained all the awful strength of a blizzard. In less than five minutes their footprints in the soft snow were entirely obliterated. But Samaro held on unheeding, and now and then some hummock of ice dimly seen through the snow-cloud proved to Tom that they were still in the right track.
There was no talking now. Indeed had they shrieked even, their voices would hardly have been heard in the howling of that awful storm.
How long they had walked Tom never knew: it seemed hours and hours; but he was drowsy, stupid, and all but benumbed. He was aroused at length from his lethargy by the Indian violently shaking him, for he had almost sunk down with the terrible fatigue. Samaro, standing there by his side all clad in ice and snow, looked like the very spirit of the storm.
Tom pulled himself together once more and followed his guide.
At last, at long, long last they were descending.
Tom could breathe more freely now at every step. The terrible tightness across his chest had gone, and the fearful feeling of suffocation that had half-garrotted him.
Then the snow changed gradually to sleet, the sleet to rain, and the rain to mountain-mist. In half an hour the sun was shining brightly, though all around the terrible mountain-top the clouds still curled and mixed.
They were saved! Saved but by the merest chance; for Samaro now told Tom that had the wind changed by so much as two points of the compass, as it often does during these blizzards, they must both have sunk and perished.