Sometimes we turn round and walk with our backs to the terrible blast. Often we fall, but we help each other up, for we are hand in hand as brothers ever should be.
Jill whispers—it seems but a whisper though he is shouting—in my ear at last.
“I can do no more, brother. I am sinking.”
I feel glad—glad of the excuse to sink down among the snow and rest a little. Only a little. We creep close together, with our backs to the storm, pulling up our mantles round our heads and drawing in our legs for warmth. Oh, those good guanaco mantles, what a blessing they are now!
I keep talking to Jill and he to me, though we each have to shout into the other’s ear.
I remember calling—
“Jill, we must not sleep. Are you drowsy?”
“No, not very.”
“To sleep were death.”
After a few moments, in an agony of desperation, thinking and fearing more for my brother than myself, I spring up, and again we try to wrestle on. The dogs keep close to our heels, though we hardly can see them, so covered are they with snow and ice.